kohei

I don't know exactly what it was, but today I was reminded of you. It could be due to the smell of summer, that was when you disappeared...Diablo 3 is comming out tonight, that could be another reason, I still remember when I convinced you to play guild wars 2nd year of university.

Few times a year I would get reminded of you, google your name a few times, last year I asked my best friend's GF to search you up on japan's social network. She said she couldn't find you. Everyone said you went home after you graduated and never heard from you, our mutual friend promised me he would call your home in Japan but I never heard from him ever again. Another friend told me a year ago that you had some differences with the other japs at Trent after I left. Whatever it was, or whatever the reason you chose to disappear, I just want to say that you were supportive and helped me through the toughest times. I wish I could at least return the favor some day.

I jus realized that I don't even have a photo of you no more man. I don't think you were really understood by others while we were in school, at least I didn't fully get to know you til after 1st year. You were active as hell, social, well-liked by just about everyone, I spent more time chilling with you than with my girlfriend to the point she even got jealous.  It was only when I begun my depression that I found out more personal things about you. I finally found out the reason you picked up breakdancing, why you would practice by yourself almost every day for up to 3 hours.


The last time I saw you, you came down to scarborough and I gave you a tour of my school, tried to even convince you to enroll so we can crush again. We practiced at the YMCA that day, you got noticeably better, I watched you practice for the 1st time in over a year and I could see clearly that you never stopped practicing, even after I left Trent. In between I remember us going to a battle at scarborough town center. You convinced me to join the cypher but I had no confidence at all. You didn't bring your shoes so you had to wear mine haha.

I think I told you I was gonna visit you once before you leave, but I never got to it...and before I knew it, you left without telling me and broke all contact with everyone...

I miss you man, you were a role model for me in many ways. You taught me discipline, persistence and most importantly you taught me the strength and power of being low-key and modest. You never talked much, but when you spoke people listened. I still remember when you scored the highest on the first test in year 1 calculus out of 300 ppl. I was so shocked, I thought you were just a slacker like me and that was when you gave me my first lesson on modesty.

I been listening to Dir en grey whole day, I was so into them back then. You would translate the lyrics for me haha, we tried to breakdance to agitated screams of maggots. I remember you telling me your fav song by them was "the final" 

the final

Gazing at unbound intentions...

I can't write characters with my left hand

When blood flows, there is a reason to live...

The words that I find are brilliant

Even if the person that I love

Magnificently scatters in my hand

Even if I carve the meaning of living into my hand

I'll become lifelessly beautiful

The Final

Even if it increases one at a time...

How can I become unsmiling bait?

I can't go back from this deep prison in my heart

I am a defeated person, whose self-torturing hasn't been

Touched by tomorrow

words become realer with gained wisdom - cormega

Back after 6 months of living in Beijing. As I sit in the chair of my grindstation at the comfort of home, I count my blessings. At times i felt like giving up completely, nothing was going my way at all...from the moment i set foot in Beijing everything went wrong. I tried my best to make everything work out but in the end reality is harsh, when it doesn't work out it doesn't work out...nothing I could possibly do. Things don't always need an explanation, a series of events led to myself breaking down mentally and physically.

It was a tough choice to make but looking back if i delayed it further, I don't think I would've taken on the additional stress. a lot of it was just pride and being my own enemy I guess. My friends always told me to stop bitching and move forward but I couldn't...not when I get reminded the REASON why for the past year I woke up every morning like a zombie and frantically turned on my computer to check news. If 2012 really is supposed to be end of the world, mines started on April 2011.

Everything I built upon since I went pro crumbled and fell down on me, buried me deep under. Confidence, motivation, pride...Truth was myself including everyone else....nobody saw it coming. As the anniversary of Black Friday approaches, I recount everything that I've learnt during this time and the feeling I get is the same feeling after going through a 2k downswing...It feels awesome...It's like that same feeling I got when I realized I was a lvl above my competition in CS. It's like guts becomming a better fighter after killing 100 men and comming out of it half dead.

I can't stress enough how valuable this whole experience was for me...The 1st 6 months of my poker career making 5-6k a month to losing my entire bankroll and grinding low stakes for the next 6 months...deliberating over whether to cashout for living expenses or build up bankroll to move up the next month was no fun...The Beijing trip really magnified that entire situation...money became something else for me completely. For the first time ever I realized that my poker decision makings were greatly affected by pressure. Being down $1k a day really started to hurt more than ever.

I arrived home on the last day of February. took no break, setup my workstation the following day and got straight to it. Pulled off my biggest month since setting foot in Beijing back in August. I did so by starting to grind at the $30s to warm up. The figures aren't impressive at all compared to what I used to make but I will forever look at this past month as my greatest achievements. I jus want to say that I couldn't have done any of this without the support I got from my friends. The ones in China and the ones back home...no matter what I go through I often remind myself that I am real lucky to have the realest friends watching my back at all times. When my own family lost faith on me you guys were there and instilled confidence back into me.

REBUILD is 2012 for me. Nothing flashy, imma be lowkey, grind myself back to where I was a year ago. I know this whole experience made me a better, stronger person and I gotta prove it now.

WILL IS TOO STRONG

BEIJING PART 2

I don't feel like writing about what happened after part 1 anymore...as I look back, it's pretty meaningless. In short, I was scammed sorta for 3200 RMB by the realtor ppl....they made some threats and i honestly felt like jus settling so i can start doing wat im supposed to b doing.

I move in the new place, start pokering right away with about 1500 in my roll back in September...Soon I get raped by variance, BR dropped to as low as $400 and I played below $20 for the 1st time in 2 years. writing this shit makes me sad already but there's more...I manage to break even for september on Stars, at this point I was seriously considering getting staked and finally decided to do it thanks to robert and primo...fast forward to present, I am officially on my worst downswing ever...50 BIs under....I remember kkenkk said he had a -80 earlier this year and i remember seeing his graph on 2p2....-50 already feel soul crushing so i can't imagine what he went through...

i've been spoiled lately by just about everyone around me, ppl all trying to make me feel better...truth is i can't and i know this will go on til things turn around in poker...ever since I got here, its like poker put a curse on me...I admit though, other than poker every thing else is just fine...I'm used to not spewing $, in all honesty I got scammed again when alex came but I would also like to put that in the past....other than those 2 incidents, i've been very careful with money...the only purchase I made this month was confucius dialects in english/chinese at the bookstore nearby...hoping this shit will make me smarter and instil some kinda confidence in me again...

I have no choice but to keep going, this seriously feel like the end of th world...call me exageratting, ya'll can jus say "it's just money" but you won't understand it...CJ said earlier this shit's like the butterfly effect or soemthing...as much as i hate to admit...all this shit's related to motherfkn full tilt poker going down....back in april before this shit happened we were talking about everything with optimism...at times we both felt bored and jus wanted to do shit but we were both raking in considerable $ at the time...business was good and there were enough thtings to keep me busy...

so u see now, it's not just about the money, recently i ge tthe urge to go on a violent outbreak, i almost broke my coffee table in half the other day...i fkn hate full tilt for screwing my life over for the past 5 months...I thought i could recover but a string of events turned everything for the worst and I've suffered enough...

Friend of a friend helped me find a tutoring job, hopefully this will distract me a bit while i figure out jus WTF is going on...jus now i busted on the bubble of a mtt QQ < AQ....this downswing is almost at 2k games now....I hope my next entry would be something of a celebration.

BEIJING PART 1

It's been more than a week since I arrived@Beijing...My trip a year ago was different in many ways, i was on vacation, everything felt new to me, i had a blast and the entire trip changed me in many ways. I felt more motivated and questioned hard what I was doing the whole time in Canada. Thoughts lead to action and after returning to Canada, I immediately quit my job and started full timing poker...

Fast forward to the present, in all honesty I almost had to cancel this trip and had doubts many times leading up to Beijing. Back of my mind I constantly worried about poker's time running out eventually, losing my entire bankroll at the time also was worrying...I practically had to use my emergency funds to start a new roll and at the same time grind out $4k profit in 1 and 1/2 month for Beijing expenses. Once again, stress was built ontop of stress...miraculously, I took shots and hit my target, cashed out and Western U'd every cent I made and hopped on a plane...

Things refused to go smooth for me, for one, Me n CJ overlooked the fact that finding a 1 bedroom apartment is a difficult thing in center BJ...and the $2500 RMB/month rent we researched last year was bullshit...the ones we looked at averaged at about $3500/month and all of them required payment of 6 months advance...

I arrived at 3pm on my first day, checked into my hotel and went to a place for peking duck, then right away started looking for apartments through realtors on the streets. My 1st night in BJ = right to business, we scouted 2 places that night, walked blocks because it's impossible to drive around without wasting time parking. day 2 = realtors bringing us to see more places, bullshitting us along the way, using whatever tricks to scam us (my i.d was asked for whatever reason I no longer remember which required my passport...this was clearly a big mistake)As we looked more, we realized that the acceptable ones all cost over $3500 and bargaining was pretty much useless because rentors were even paying EXTRA to get their hands on these places...However by the time I figured this out I lost 2 places which were really baller to other bidders...one of which was super sick, nicely located/renovated and located right between CJ and a subway station.

day 3....things start to get shitty, after an exhausting day 2 (walking all day, looking at 8 different places) I lowered my standards abit and we both decided to seal a deal by end of the day...10 am, our 1st target...place was alright, kinda far but CJ pointed out that his instincts told him the landlord lady is bullshit and she lives too close...ELIMINATION. NOON, we call the realtor who showed us the baller apartment last night at 10pm to negotiate price but was told that it was sold...WTFFFF, that was a huge blow and silence surrounded us for the rest of the afternoon. We went even further, trying out different realtors and found a branch where 2 dudes in their early 20s were cool enough to let us use their computers and find places directly using their PRICELESS INFORMATION. That was a fkn BREAKTHROUGH because we had on our hands what we needed...information on all available 1 bedroom apartments in west beijing...SICK...

However, at this point in my story I was about to make my 1st big mistake in Beijing...these 2 dudes started bringing us to places we were interested in, 1st 2 were bullshit, 3rd one was good, only drawback was it lacked air conditioner but we were willing to buy one myself if the landlord can pay half and they get to keep it when I leave...The landlord asked me a few questions, but we had to step out because someone was there before us...we wait downstairs, 30 minutes go by, we start talking about CS and guns with the realtor dude, turns out he used to be in the military...SICK....then we get a phone call...it's the landlord and O MY...the previous people who entered 5 minutes before us took the place....WTF WTF...

We grew even more silent, found a place for dinner...CJ joked that this is not my year, from April-August, one thing ontop of another, I joked that I should just go back...We decided to have some alchohol to change my luck...by the time the bottle ran out, CJ got a phone call and an apartment we saw on the 2nd day became available again but the landlord requires 6 months upfront@3100. CJ told me the situation and I snap called with K high.

We rushed to the realtor dudes and prepared to set up a time for that night with the landlord to sign...At this point CJ reminded me the fact that We saw this same place on day 2 with a different company and signed a contract...We both agreed that we wanted to give the business to the current dudes, so we told them our situation and they straight up said it was fine, that these things happen all the time in their line of work and it's normal...we took their word...

6 months of rent = a lot of chairman maos (chinese 100s) It was late, dark, bank was closed...I had about 10k in an envelope in my hotel, $1k in my wallet, CJ had $3k in his wallet and more in his car. The plan was to find his car, count how much we had on hand, I go and start signing with the realtor/landlord, while CJ cabs back to the hotel to get my passport and cash. We were counting on the street, tired and stressed out. By the time I got to the realtor place and met the landlord, they gave me a bad piece of news: LANDLORD = NOT REAL LANDLORD, HE RENTED THE PLACE HIMSELF AND IS SUBLETTING...This is bad for me, since CJ have no experience in renting in Beijing, we both didn't like this piece of info...after deliberation, we decided to negotiate and finally accepted on the condition that I pay only the deposit and 1 month upfront...we spent 3 hours signing the fkn contract because the landlord is such a POS tard, i felt like punching his face...he is the purest example of a typical chinese citizen....THEY WANT EVERYTHING FROM U, greedy motherfker won't buldge a single bit...the default copy of the contract provided by the realtor used by millions of landlord/rentors is not good for him, he fkn had to change the wording so many times to finally get what he wanted.

hours pass, 11:30 pm...signing is complete, I pay him and we rush to the place to hand over the housekey...We get back to my hotel at 1am, and moved my shit to my new apartment...4th floor, no elevator, heavy ass suitcases, no lights, tired as fk...

next day, hectic as fk, I had the internet ppl over to set up internet, at the same time hired 2 cleaners to thoroughly clean the place while we watched over them. At the same time I find out the washer is not working...called the landlord who fkn gave me lame shit, at first refused to fix but finally came up with a very lame alternative, troublesome solution...the cleaners leave, we smoke on the couch, sign of relief...CJ suggested I count how much cash on hand I had left and see if the numbers are correct after hotel fees, rent and paying upfront for 1 years internet.......result = I ended up about 1kish short...we recounted a few times and added up shit again and again but still 1k short...I started recounting what happened on the previous hectic day and leaned towards dropping some in the cab because the jeans i wore that day had very shallow pockets...that was the most likely thing to have happened out of all the other possibilities.

We head out to buy stuff for my new place, bed stuff, appliances, etc...CJ's been just as if not more tired than me these past 3 days, after dropping those things off at home, we go for dinner and it start raining. Soon as we sat down, his mom called and she was stuck outside, couldn't get home. We stood up, CJ had to walk 30 minutes back to his car in the rain because there were no cabs at dinner hour (drivers refuse to take customers) I felt really bad at this point...he's been more tired than me in a lot of ways these past 3 days...he havnet been able to spend time with his mom whos been very fragile emotionally since his dad passed...I called him to make sure he was alright...For the first time that night since back in beijing I felt relief...I was hungry because we couldn't eat dinner, I called HMM and cabbed 40 minutes to her place at east end of beijing for dinner....my mood was starting to change as I looked forward to seeing her, I step out the cab infront of the GUCCI store near her place, light a ciggarette and my phone rings....literally seconds after getting off the cab....

TO BE CONTINUED.....

HOLY MOTHERFKING SHIT....

I just got off the phone with my friend in China who was supposed to receive a Western Union transaction from me at a local Beijing bank....I am so motherfkn pissed right I was literally yelling my lungs out....here's what I think about China, Chinese people and our 5000 years of wisdom accumulated and in the end...only to fkn create a society with no wisdom left, everyones a mtherfkn zombie working for a worthless paycheck....if one thing chinks are good at is EFFICIENCY, oh....another one.....PIRACY.

Chinks work hard, we crush our competitors globally till they start smashing our Mercedes, burn our shit, and put knives in our chests....well JEALOUSY IS A MOTHERFKER. The whole world has this jealousy going against China right now, don't deny it...We work 4x more hours, and get paid 10x less...YES, we're efficent at what we do...because the country raised chinks to grow up as zombies...see this is why there will never be a chinese nobel price winner, we'll never CREATE, we'll always COPY. YAO MING was either 1. a fluke  2. some sick government mutant experiment.

I hate it when people automatically assume ppl of asian decent=smart. it's so not fkn true, you can pull millions of chinese high school students out of their classrooms and they can recite entire text books...truth is though, they're fkn clueless and have no practical use in the real world...I've known quite a few very very intelligent ppl in my life, and none of them are chinese...in fact most of my chinese friends are pretty fkn retarded...other than snaking, living off they daddies, and being calculating bastards, most of em are pathetic...

other than our economy, we're devolving...that's the truth...we sacrifice ethics for paper...give in to greed and don give a shit about the ppl next to us...a heap of loose sand like that politician once said...I went back to beijing last year and saw maybe 1 or 2 decent looking girls out of the millions that passed my eyes in the month i was there...why u ask??? cuz its like this...the good looking ones marry ugly old dudes with lots of $$....then make ugly ass babies....ugly ass babies will repeat this process until finally....like chris tucker said "ALL YA'LL LOOK ALIKE"

I said we good at piracy....not exaggerating one bit either...heck we even based our government system on what the soviets used...I witnessed the annual military parade before leaving Beijing in late september/early october....dam that was a spectacle....anyone there could tell u that china's gonna take over the world eventually...but look closely and you'll see that our fighter jet designs = copied from russians, the soldiers carry ak-47 lookalikes, we don't have stealth bombers, or those cool american battlecruisers you see in movies because china can never pirate something as sophisticated as U.S technology....couple billion of ppl but not one scientist who can do it!! why??? because our scientists were all once highschool zombies.

hly shit....i was gonna blog about what happend w/ western union but completely went off...

LV??? GUCCY? FK THAT, WE COPY PIRATE MILITARY HARDWARE



TO BE CONTINUED....???

ADAPT

 













  Just set a record for most games played in a day, grinded 120 games today...woot. On the 29th I called CJ right away and told him about the FT situation, July 3rd I received the stake $$ and immediately jumped right back in business. 600 games later im up $1750ish on stars w/ the bonuses. I turned the $60 rob shipped me on cake for the husng membership into $600 in less than a weak grinding 5s, 10s, 20s, 30s. That put me at about $2300 so far this month...not bad at all considering what happened. Thanks to CJ for being understanding and putting his full trust in me...I had to ask him to help me out cuz I didn't want to go through July with no income...Time is $$.

I made about $5000 in June playing 55s mostly on FT...have about $7000 still on the site though...I'm getting to the point where if there is a chance that I might never get that back, I won't be as pissed off as before. Life goes on...Nobody coulda foretold this, and it had to happen on my first year of going pro. At least I took most of my roll off the site after April 15th, I coulda easily had over 10k+ on the site like I used to...

This will be another test to my patience and persistence, since april 15th, I haven't played a single game > $100s...mostly at the 50s....patiently grinding it out, put in more volume than I did back in the 1st 3 months of the year to make up for profit loss...

In all honestly, I feel like it's always such a close call for me in these, narrowly squeezing through tight situations like I've been doing all my life. I guess I failed at my goal to reach $200-$300s this year. Is it entirely my fault? Obviously not but again I coulda done much better controlling my spending habits. Such is life though....right now I am focused, and feel purpose in what I do...I will forever be my biggest and only critic, other than a few friends I trust, most of you ppl don't ever get to criticize me...don't brag shit to me man, I keep a low profile, real dudes move in silence, your best success is my worst blunder HA.

o ya....and one last thing, ppl get lazy as they grow old in life i think, STOP FKN ASKING ME STUPID QUESTIONS, THERE IS NO TRICK, NO SECRET.....PUT IN WORK AND GET PAID. Phil Ivey is not good because he's a poker prodigy, he's good because he's played more hours of poker than a lot of ppl same age as him when he was young, he lived in casino hotels to up his game, he would bust his tech support pay checks to rebuild his roll, he would repeat that until he gets to that point of awesome. PERSISTENCE IS OMNIPOTENT, ALL I GOT IS PERSISTENCE BOOOOM.