Below are the most recent 11 friends' journal entries.

Wednesday, January 6th, 2010
terrencechan	11:29p	PCA main event, Day 1 Had a good starting table with a few spewboxes, but didn't manage to ever find a big hand against any of them. Finished the day below starting stack, bagging 18,900. Peaked around 55k. Played a hand poorly in the last level against Joe Cassidy where I made at least two incorrect decisions. Tired now. Hopefully tomorrow is better. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 5th, 2010
terrencechan	6:29p	wow, poker hand clusterfuck From PokerNews live reporting of Day 1A of the PCA # 14 minutes ago | Posted by donpeters Controversy at Negreanu's Table ( lengthy hand description, followed by my thoughts ) (10 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, January 4th, 2010
terrencechan	6:16p	Hawaii: Day 4 The PMOW sting seems to be in remission. Slightly itchy, but totally manageable now and I don't even notice it. Woke up at 5:45 to hike Diamond Head. Online reviews indicated it was best to get there before sunset, and Gavin suggested that I try to get there as soon as it opened to avoid the Japanese tourists. Well, really, there is no way to avoid the Japanese tourists, no matter how early you get there. They are all over the place, snapping pictures like crazy. The way up was relatively easy, a quick and not-very-steep 20-minute hike. The only challenging thing was trying not to twist an ankle going up on the uneven terrain in the dark. Once up there the view is quite nice, although again, the fact that it's so busy subtracts quite a bit from the experience. It's not exactly enjoying nature in serenity up there. I played with my settings as much as possible, but really, I'm not a photographer and I own a point-and-shoot: From what might be the place with the most Japanese tourists on Oahu to one where there are probably the least -- the Pearl Harbor memorial/museum. Seriously, this might be the only place in Honolulu where I didn't encounter any Japanese tourists; they are everywhere in Waikiki. Unfortunately for me, the USS Missouri (what I think is generally considered the main attraction) was in drydock and thus unavailable for tours. I toured the Pacific Aviation Museum which was good, but small. I think I spent just the right amount of time in both Tokyo and Hawaii, for my style of travel. Any less and I would have been feeling very rushed; any less and I would have gotten bored and tired of it. Overall, I've enjoyed this trip immensely, and am extremely glad I did it. Not being able to surf was a big downer, but aside from that, I've gotten everything I wanted out of this trip. I would definitely be willing to do Tokyo again by myself; Hawaii, probably less so. Tokyo is much more interesting for the single traveler because it is more about the experience than the doing; Hawaii is certainly more about the doing. I find I enjoy new and unique experiences just fine by myself, but recreational things tend to be more enjoyable with friends or girlfriends. Now I'm writing from the airport in Honolulu, which is one of the more spartan and quaint major city airports I've been to in the US. In about twelve hours, I'll be in Nassau for the PCA and the tourism will be over. It is kind of strange; I imagine not many people go to the Bahamas and not consider it tourism, but this being my fourth year there, I don't plan to do much other than play cards and hang out with people. So, the next update should actually be poker-related! Playing Day 1B, since I'll arrive in Nassau just as 1A gets started. Time to get that three million! (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, January 3rd, 2010
terrencechan	5:04p	heh, just found this upon casual browsing "The sting of the Portuguese man-of-war is more painful than a common jellyfish sting. It has been described as feeling like being struck by a lightning bolt, and some victims dread it more than a shark bite. This sting has been responsible for 2 reported deaths." "The tentacles are filled with stinging cells that carry a venom roughly 75 percent as potent as a cobra's." Hundreds of animals on the endangered species list thanks to us, and these little fuckers are still around? (6 Comments |Comment on this)
terrencechan	5:01p	Hawaii: Day 2-3 I woke up naturally on Saturday morning around 6 AM -- travel does some strange things to the sleep schedule -- got some breakfast and headed out to Hanauma Bay. I'd read a lot that parking is scarce and the lot fills up *fast*, so I was happy to be up and at them at such an hour. (Indeed, when I left, the lot was completely full and they were turning people away.) Before you're free to head down to the bay, you have to sit through a video presentation basically about not stepping on the sea creatures. That made me pretty apprehensive once I actually got in the water since I was constantly worried about stopping to take a breath because I was worried I was going to kill something, or get caught standing where I shouldn't be standing. So after a fairly quick tour through the water with my snorkel I left before 10 AM. Went back to the hotel and napped a little bit before heading out to watch UFC 108 at Giovanni Pastrami which a lot of people on the Sherdog forums suggested as one of the better places to watch. Despite Hawaii's great fight culture, watching UFC here was not much different than watching it in any other sports bar in any other state -- people are loud and dumb. :) Would be curious to know what it's like when B.J. is fighting, though (other than harder to get a seat). Went to bed at 10 PM as I had a surf lesson booked for 7 AM. Woke up at 5:30 AM and had to wait an hour before the hotel breakfast started serving. Contrast with Sydney where I had to set my alarm and drag my ass downstairs through the casino to catch the last 10 minutes of the breakfast buffet. Was really excited for the surf lesson. I made an attempt to surf once, about ten years ago, with no real instruction. Paddled a lot randomly, fell off a lot. Didn't enjoy it. Read some positive reviews of Hawaiian Fire, so thought I'd give it a try. They drove us a half hour to a very secluded beach with beginner-friendly waves, then gave us a lot of instructions. I was excited because the whole process of getting from lying down to jumping up on the board is a lot like MMA sprawling in reverse, and at least on land I was doing it a lot better than the other people. :) I was called out to the water third and paddled out to the buoys the instructors had set up. Just as the first person went and rode his first wave, I stuck my hand into the water to paddle and felt a sharp stab. I looked at my hand but didn't see anything there. Then I realized what the pain was -- I'd been stung! I hollered over to the other boarder, who'd gone out before me: "Hey, I think I just got stung. You think I should tell them?" He responded in the affirmative and someone started coming over. Now, just a few seconds later, the pain started getting very, very intense. It really felt like someone had stabbed my ring finger. I started paddling to shore but the pain started becoming so overwhelming I couldn't think of anything. One of the instructors finally caught up to me and just told me to hold on to his board's leash, and I just grabbed it with my good hand, put my head down and waited for him to drag me to shore. This thing hurt like a motherfucker. Once ashore he pried the tentacles off my fingers, poured some vinegar on it and gave me an ice pack. He asked me if I was allergic, to which I responded, "I have no idea, I've never been stung before!" I was worried that any moment I would start going into convulsions or anaphylactic shock or spontaneous vomiting, but none of that happened. The most concerning thing was that I started feeling a lot of pain in my armpit, but someone else explained that was just the poison travelling to my lymph nodes (oh, that's all, I feel much better). I was really surprised at how long and how intense the pain lasted. 30 minutes later it hurt just as much as in the seconds after I'd been stung. An hour later, it still felt the same. 90 minutes later, it still hurt exactly as much as it did when I'd first been stung. And it was a mind-blowing pain, that level of pain where you really can't think of anything else other than how much this fucking hurts. I didn't want to do anything so I just sat down and bent over and bit down on my beach towel. It absolutely sucked. I had to sit there for an hour while everyone was having fun and laughing and catching their first waves and I sat there grabbing my wrist and breathing deeply. And I didn't even get to ride one single wave for my troubles. :( As for Hawaiian Fire, they were nice enough to offer me a freebie for the next time I'm in town. Eventually the lesson ended. Hours later my hand was still feeling incredible pain, though the armpit pain went away. I got home and started researching and figured out it was most likely a Portuguese Man-O-War, rather than a jellyfish, which bit me. I came to this conclusion based on what I responded and didn't respond to. (Apparently vinegar is bad for PMOW bites, but very hot water is good.) Popped some ibuprofen and soaked the fingers repeatedly and now seven hours later I can finally type well enough. The pain is now maybe 3% of what it was in the first two hours after the start, a sort of annoying and persistent but obviously very manageable pain. So basically, I'm fucking sick of water sports right now. I'm going to go eat some food, then tomorrow maybe I'll go hike Diamond Head and go see Pearl Harbor before my flight to Nassau. But I'm staying the fuck out of the water. My new philosophy for sea animals is I have no interest in them beyond eating them. (11 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, January 2nd, 2010
terrencechan	7:09a	Hawaii: Day 1 That is all. (9 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, January 1st, 2010
terrencechan	11:10p	Tokyo: Day 3-5 Day 3 wasn't much of anything, I wandered around a bit, saw a few different neighbourhoods, but I was pretty exhausted from the running around and sensory overload of Day 2. My Day 2 covered almost all the touristy stuff I really really wanted to do while in Tokyo anyway. Day 4, of course, was Dynamite!! (Technically, "K-1 Dynamite!! Power of Courage 2009" -- gotta love auto-translate.) The Dynamite!! New Year's Eve events are always huge in Japan. It gathered a 16.7% television rating in Japan over its time slot (which would have been about 3 PM-11 PM). I got to the arena around 11 AM and already the pre-fight spectacle was on. Here's a partial shot of the lineup TO BUY EVENT MERCHANDISE. Seriously, Japan? Some thoughts on attending live MMA shows My seats were great. For my 30000 yen ($322), I was in the 20th row of "Royal Ringside Seating", which is the second section behind "VIP". The VIP section was only about five rows deep though, so you can consider me around the 25th row or so. However, I'm starting to come around to the idea that if you cannot get really supremely awesome kick-ass tickets (in most venues, the first 10-15 rows or so), it might be better to watch at home. This was an exception since I might not get another chance to attend a Japanese MMA show live, but at MMA events if you're not really close, you end up watching a lot of action on the television screens. MMA is also a sport where necessarily the action is always happening in one place. Unlike most team sports, there is never a play developing "behind the scenes". There is never a bigger picture, as it were. There are only two guys to watch and they are always facing one another and always within a few feet of one another. I'm convinced that with the exception of venues that use a really highly elevated platform, the closer you are, the better. This is not necessarily the case, of course, in many team sports. This is the third time I have attended an MMA show where my tickets were worth solid triple digits. However the best experience I have ever had at an MMA show was a show that was held basically in a warehouse in Costa Rica, but I was sitting right beside one of the ringposts. I could see action standing, on the ground, and get a great sense of the violence that was occurring. When you attend an MMA show and sit way back, everything seems kind of abstract as the smallish figures in the ring are punching and kicking each other. And forget about watching the ground game without the help of television monitors. So if you've never attended an MMA show and want to, don't just try to save money and get yourself in the building. Wait for an event you really want to go to, and buy some excellent seats. And it's probably better to go to a small local show where maybe you haven't heard of anyone, but you can get great seats without breaking the bank. Despite this, going to Dynamite!! was a fantastic experience and I would do it again in a heartbeat. The longest New Year's Day I realized today that I am probably in like the 99.999th percentile in the world for time spent on January 1st, 2010. I boarded my flight out of Narita at 7 PM and landed in Honolulu at 6:45 AM. So including being in the air, that is about 42 hours in which it was January 1st for me. This is cool in theory but I would not do this part again. Reason being is that Tokyo is incredibly dead on New Year's Day! Remember crazy, congested, busy, packed Tokyo? Here's a subway station at 1 PM on the 1st: Shops and restaurants everywhere were closed. New Year's Day is apparently a family day in Japan, so after all the craziness of the 31st, there is little to do other than recover from hangovers. Honolulu was much the same story today, though not nearly to the extent of Tokyo. Another thing that was lame about a flight leaving Tokyo at 7 PM and arriving in Honolulu at 7 AM is that a) it was too early in Tokyo time for me to fall asleep on the plane and b) once I got to Honolulu and was actually tired, it was too early to check into the room. So a useful note for anyone else planning to make that trip: book something that departs in the early morning, if you have the option. Also, taking the first available flight after celebrating New Year's Eve in the East and arriving in time for a second New Year's Eve in the West? Now that would be pretty awesome. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
nono_forever	7:15p	Happy New Year!! . . Happy New Year everyone! And I'm so very optimistic on 2010. I have great classes waiting for me for next semester, a new set of song from HALCALI coming out, and just got promoted to Admin on www.wgspectacle.com so I am feelin' pretty good. ( Lots of good stuff happened in 2009 too! ) ...and as big a loser as it makes me feel, I'm really excited to continue my DJing and my fanfic writing in 2010.  I had said that I would never write another fic again, but here I am writing a novel sized epic.  And I love every minute of it.  It is definitely my escape from the pressures of med school.  Well Happy 2010 everyone!  Remember that the future is now! . . Current Music: Glee - bust a move (Comment on this)
terrencechan	10:54a	Happy New Year from Tokyo Got lazy, video blogged instead of writing for NYE. :) Besides, there are probably like 10 of you who care about my in-depth thoughts on Japanese MMA anyway, so a lengthy write-up would just be mental masturbation. (12 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 30th, 2009
terrencechan	1:22a	Tokyo: Day 2 Day 2 is in the books, and I have to say I fuckin' love this city. Recency bias be damned; it's definitely making the top three of places that I've visited, and the "places I've visited" list is getting decently long. I have a hard time pointing to anything specific today to say why today was awesome. It's really more just the whole experience of being in Tokyo. It's everything everyone claims it is: busy, full of energy, technologically modern, pretty, culturally distinct, cosmopolitan, full of great food and things to do, but to merely list those things seems to sell the city short; the whole is clearly greater than the sum of its parts. I woke up early to go to the Tsukiji fish market. Access has been somewhat restricted for the next couple of weeks because tourists keep getting in the way and making things a pain in the ass for the workers, but you can still wander around quite a bit and watch people do their thing. While you can no longer witness the fresh fish auction unless you're on official business, I imagine most people just want to eat the product anyway. As evidence, when I got there -- at just before 8 AM -- there were lineups for all the restaurants. Obviously, I selected my restaurant by choosing the largest line. Then I was informed that I was not in the line. I needed to get to the line to get in the line. It was a common mistake; other people kept doing this as well and got sent to the (ever-growing) line behind me. I noticed that in no case did anyone respond with a haughty "fuck that noise, there's no way I'm waiting in line for that". They just dutifully shuffled over to the new line and waited. You order in the second of the lines, and as such your food is pretty much there the minute you get seated. And yes, it's very fresh, and yes, it's fantastic and better than home. Especially for the price. Because of the pre-order system, the experience is over very quickly; I was in the line for 90 minutes only to have what turned out to be about a 5-minute meal. The ratio reminded me of being at a rollercoaster at Disneyland. Lots of waiting, lots of anticipation and it's great while it lasts, but it doesn't last long. And when you're done, you want to do it again right away! Tried to get into the Edo Museum, but it was closed for the holidays. So too, apparently, is the Meiji Shrine. Seems like a lot of stuff is closed around this time of year, but no biggie. I thought a bit about how to encapsulate my tourist "style" and I settled on something like: I'll plan out destinations, but I'll be happy if I'm distracted along the way. After a nap back at the hotel, I walked from my hotel to Harajuku and Shibuya, the district where all the teenaged girls buy (and show off) their bleached hair, Hello Kitty earrings, gaudy boots, fishnet stockings and all other manner of fashionable absurdity. In Shibuya, I also experienced first-hand how North American women get body-image complexes when they get to Japan. I had never, ever in my adult life ever not bought an item of clothing because I was too fat for it. I'm 5'7", 135 lbs, 28-inch waist, and have been pretty much my whole adult life. And indeed, I could barely get the button done on the first pair of jeans I pulled off the rack. I ended up buying a kind of absurdly expensive pair of jeans mostly because I felt guilty about leaving the really nice sales dude empty-handed after struggling so hard to help me in English (I'm very aware I'm a sucker; the polite thing to do would be not to point it out). The highlight of the day was unquestionably the Ooedo Onsen Monogatari. An onsen is a geothermically heated hot tub, or rather, a collection of them. OOM is one of the biggest and has a traditional theme, at least once you get past the plaza of restaurants (16 of them), shops and even carnival games. I am a massive fan of hot tubs and especially outdoor natural hot tubs. It was a bitter 9 degrees by nightfall in Tokyo tonight, and I was cold walking around the city with my cashmere coat and fleece sweater, but being naked in the outdoors submerged in a 45-degree tub was fucking heaven. My only regret was that I could not stay longer (they're open until like 8 AM or something, but my heart actually can't handle hot tubs for very long). My only complaint was that there were just too many penises and male asses everywhere. Yeah, yeah, I know, product of my Western prudishness, but it's annoying to have a bunch of penises and male asses in your line of sight all the time. You try to avert, but it's like being told not to look at the purple elephant in the room. I eventually resolved it by sitting in the corner of the tub, facing away from everyone else, and trying to stare up at the moon. I expected the onsen trip to rejuvenate me, but it just made me more sleepy. By that time it was about 10:30, and given that the trains stop some time between midnight and 1am and I was still an hour away from the hotel, it seemed reasonable to head back anyway. I don't know if I've ever been out by myself for 10 hours in a day just touristing, but that should be enough to say how much I've enjoyed my time here. Tomorrow though, I plan to take it relatively easy, and on the 31st pretty much my whole day will be in Saitama Super Arena. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, December 28th, 2009
terrencechan	11:08p	Tokyo: Day 1 I spent way too much time on trains today. Way too much. But it was still awesome, and I am ending the day very happy. Here's why! I'd spent the last few days fretting about getting tickets for the K-1 Dynamite!! (yes, the two exclamation marks are part of the official name) show. The websites, of course, are all in Japanese. I searched some fight forums and the only post of substance said he bought his through a travel agency, but the Hong Kong branch of the agency in question said they wouldn't help me. Then I got what I thought was a brilliant idea to get the Visa Infinite Concierge Service to do it, but after many many e-mails it became clear that wouldn't work out. (Their claim was that the ticket sites wouldn't allow the use of a non-Japanese credit card.) After researching some more it seemed clear that it was way too difficult to buy them from outside of Japan, but I found a few posts saying where to buy them in Japan. And better still, both outlets had locations at Narita Airport. I went to the first, and they told me they were sold out. Then I went to the Lawson convenience store where they have these ticket machines that supposedly sell all the show tickets in Japan. But then their system said sold out as well, and that's when I started to seriously worry, because everyone online said Lawson is the way to go, and if their large interconnected system said sold out, well, shit, I was probably SOL. But I decided that hell, this is the one thing I really want to do if I'm here -- even if I think it's a longshot (which I did), I might as well make a trip all the way out to Saitama Super Arena (a two-hour trip from the airport) and try. The story has a happy ending, I got the tickets! I think I got extremely luckily. Although I could understand nearly nothing the woman at the desk told me, when she asked "how many?" and I responded "One," she brought out exactly two tickets and asked me which one of them I wanted. They were adjacent seats. These literally might have been the last two seats in the entire section, like they were refunded or something. Run good! I was starving, so I celebrated with a quick meal with what I *think* was an izakaya. I ordered gyoza and some kind of fried chicken, using the "point and pantomime and say 'arigato' a lot system". The gyoza was gyoza, but the fried chicken was awesomeness. Phil Lau said I will love Tokyo because the food in pretty much every establishment is awesome. I am starting to believe that I will not be able to have a bad meal in my time here. After just a few hours, I am amazed at the differences between here and Hong Kong. Both are ultra-modern, heavily populated, crowded Asian cities -- and that's where the similarities end. People seem to be so much more couth here. I'd heard stories about pushing and shoving on the subways, and one guy did hip check me trying to make his train, but people are largely so well-behaved. Everyone is very orderly and stands on the right (actually left) side of the escalator. Many seats on the train are left open, whereas in Hong Kong the subway is like a game of musical chairs where the music is never going. A guy apologized for running into me even though I'm sure it was my fault since I was looking around confusedly for the correct transfer. There is a whole incredible culture of deference to others. Absolutely no one got upset at each other, with one exception -- a British woman who got all haughty because someone hit her bag. While I'd heard that Japanese people are incredibly honest and that it's a basically crime-free nation, I was really blown away by the extent to which people trust their fellow man. Everywhere, bicycles are just left unattended at night because their owners just know that no one will steal them. When I was at the airport convenience store, people just left their luggage unattended outside rather than bring them into the store. It is mind-blowing to consider a culture where no one ever steals from anyone else. It is so hard to wrap my head around the idea of a whole society where no person will ever steal from another. The implications are pretty amazing. Imagine if everywhere were like this? To-do list: - Wake up early to do a sushi breakfast at Tsukiji Fish Market - Find and relax in an onsen - Learn (and remember) how to say, "thanks but no thanks" in a polite but firm way so I can walk around Kabukicho. I'm not sure whether they're hustling me to go into hostess bars, strip clubs, brothels, but whatever they are, they're awfully persistent about it. - Go to Shibuya to find a pair of jeans that fit (this is very hard to do in most of the world when you're an adult male with a 28-inch waist). - Finally, watch Shinya Aoki, Tatsuya Kawajiri, Masato, Kid Yamamoto, Mizuto Hirota, Ikuhisa Minowa, Akihiro Gono, Hayato Sakurai, Hidehiko Yoshida and Satoshi Iishi do their thaaaaaaaang on New Year's Eve! asljdflsdajf;ldsjfjsalf! (2 Comments |Comment on this)