Dubnjoy000

Leaving for the Vipassana retreat right now ; be well y’all, talk in 2 weeks. Peace

A Crashing Realm Buenos Aires, Argentina, January of 2020. I have just barely arrived in this lovely place that things are already lining up neatly for me : I have met a pretty lovely woman with whom the connection was STRONG AS FUCK, am heading towards the meditation centre to do a couple of weeks of service and everything just seems to fall in place. Peachy. Within the happy natural flow of things. gangsta style yo 😎. On March 23rd of 2020, the country completely shut down. Like totally. Signs of "quedate en tu casa" (stay at home) were spread across all highways as well as all major boulevards. The cops were monitoring the streets, surveying all non-essential movements. The parks were locked/fenced up. Health workers were passing door per door, inquiring about potential symptoms and recent whereabouts. The streets were deserted. All it took was one glance to realize that if we did not shake up this little virus known as COVID 19, the economy was going to ineluctably crash. 36.1% was the inflation for that year, which seemed low in comparison to the damage that was inflicted to businesses being forced to keep their doors shuts. When I met my gf, she had a comfortable middle-class salary working as an accountant in a hospital firm. Not rich by any means, but she got to live in a comfortable and well located apartment, got to indulge in yearly vacations across Argentina, eat out (occasionally) in fancy restaurant and, most importantly, not worry about being short at the end of the month ; in a third world economy, this is luxury. Living well. Breathing freely 😌. In 2021, the inflation in Argentina hit 50.9%. Shit was just getting worse. Businesses were being replaced regularly. Families were feeling squeezed together. Yet this country wasn't a stranger to financial downswings and had always risen from the ashes in the past, so there was still a sense of hopefulness subsisting within all this doom-and-gloom, a (dim) light far-FAR away at the end of a (fabricated and perhaps non-existent) tunnel... At first, the economical downfall was not an abrupt one. Nope. Nah. Much more lugubrious in fact, as we all saw it coming. Slowly. Progressively. Inevitably and cruelly. Middle-class folks had to cut down on the vacations and restaurant fees, and, well, outside of depriving oneself of agreeable social outlets, one still managed, right, as they still had food, the security of their apartment... But then many folks saw the need to move away from their hip neighborhoods, where they had alas been comfortably living for years/decades, for more affordable districts of Buenos Aires. Others were losing their jobs when their employers decided to back-stabb them with cheaper alternatives. Rich corporations were flooding out of Argentina. Cars were lining up at the Brazilian and Chilean borders to get the fuck out of the country. Tourists and expats alike were leaving by the thousands. As far we were concerned in our little nest, we were still living a comfortable upper middle-class life, but I had taken on the sole responsibility of the expenses and, well, we were not of course sheltered from the constant palpable tension of the outside world... In 2022, 94.8% was the damage caused by the inflation. Homelessness was flooding the streets. Petty crimes were EXPONENTIALLY rising across the country. Supermarkets were being raided during the twilight hours. Tension and long faces were painted on the majority of passerby. Murders and violent crimes were piling up. And restlessness was building up politically. It was in March of 2023 that, driving back from a 6000kms road trip vacation across Pantagonia, we came back to the desolated scene of our house having been burglarized : my gf bursted into tears, her teenage son ran outside to punch his frustration into my boxing bag while I stood there, soaking it all in, contemplating on how to amend this whole affair... This was of course more critical than my 2 mountain bikes that had been recently stolen, the 3 phones that had been snatched away from my gf's son and even the theft of my gf's motorbike... Yup, it was HEAVY. That sentiment of no longer feeling secure within the 4 walls of your own God damn house!!! Of having numerous OCD moments henceforth when every time you leave your home you ask yourself "did I lock the door???" , "was the window left open???", "will the house be ok while we go out for this brief dinner!?!" . And just an overall and generalized paranoia. Nonetheless, it was still pale in comparison to when, a couple of weeks later, my gf's son was threatened to get shot in the face if he did not hand over his mountain bike and phone. In 2023, inflation levels skyrocketed to 211.4% : the once dimmed (somewhat) perceived light at the tunnel had all but vanished 🥺. Argentinos had lost all illusion of eventually making it out of this financial calamity ; acceptance was thus not sought out externally but internally : Argentina was indeed imploding, but at least it was not exploding like other countries exposed to barbaric wars... One might be left out in the streets in a short notice, but still had enough food on his plate for today, God permit. This country has toughened me the fuck up. I learned that one must battle for every inch of space. And literally fight if the occasion arises and the thieves happened not to be carrying. In fact, the Dubnjoy of yesteryears would of never fathomed on taking on a MMA training (and be passionate about it). Nor would he of thought that SCREAMING THE LIVING SHIT OUT OF HIS LUNGS would become a thing.... When I go back o Canada in July-September , perhaps the friendliness of Canadians as well as the cozy security levels of the country might convince me to stay permanently... And yet Argentina with all its melodrama and whatnot, has somehow lured me in, even if it left me with a certain amount of PTSD... Peace A labyrinth designed in honor of the writer Jorge Luis Borges and located in San Luis, Mendoza. It is all fun and games during the first few minutes and the initial twists and turns, but then becomes an emotionally distressing mind game the deeper you engage and realize that you can no longer find your fucking way out!!!

Hey friend. I mean meaningful life projects. As to use concrete examples : I set out in the past 4 years to learn Spanish (done), play/take courses of tennis 3 times weekly (done), practice MMA for a min of 2 years (done), write a novel (partly done, might get back to it...), learn how to sail (pending...), lose at least 5-10kgs (done). The thing is, as opposed to in my 20s when I was scattered and was setting a myriad of goals (the Grand majority unmet) just to impose myself some sort of (illusionary) life direction, the maturity of my 40s has seen me with much less time (at least when I had a family) and thus much more focussed upon setting realistic goals and achieving them. I think it is both a product of meditating heaps in my life (12k hours) and having the maturity to realize there is very little time left to lose moving forward and one most plan accordingly 😎 Thx for following!!!

That Ambitious Rainbow beyond the Horizon... Goal settings (and meeting them) has been a progressive linear trajectory thus far in my life ; if at first I had NUMEROUS various goals in my early 20's and would meet some targets, most of them would remain fleeting and untouched - in a dreamy state, you know 😉 Fortunately, my mature years have transformed me in a determined realist in the sense that I now fulfill north of 80-85% of my projects yo 😎. Any lower than this threshold puts one in the undesirable category of being a dreamer, while a much higher percentage that would approximate 100% would most likely make you an unambitious fellow. So the perfect ratio resides in the 70-90% region, imho, where one sets out to accomplish the good majority of his ventures while having a sufficient amount of ideas left pending as to eventually conquer the world, you know 😉 When I first showed up in Argentina in early 2020, the hiatus of the world during the pandemic gave me the opportunity (and extra time) to learn a new language (Spanish), get back into physical shape and learn how to defend myself/fight 😎. These were henceforth integrated into my routine, to the extent that I would train 3h weekly and use Castellano verbally 95% of the time (or at least when not in Canada). Great. Super! (Self) tap on the back! But what happens when a (personal) black swan comes along and shatters the well oiled and established routine... Shit hits the fan, of course 🙃 I have been skipping my MMA classes way too often. It does help that I have weights in my house, a boxing bag in the back yard and thus manage to get an hour+ weekly of maintaining physical form/fighting skills, but it is still WAY below what a 2h+ course guided by an experienced teacher provides. I have also been drinking and smoking (little cigars) more than I should. Not to concerning levels, mind you, but enough to warrant cutting back. But, you know, that numbing effect of that extra beer/glass of wine is just that more desired presently, as is wasting those 10 minutes puffing on a little cigar in the evening while staring into the dead emptiness of the twilight... Speaking of wasting time, moments of being unproductive have also been accumulating themselves. To the extent that this week I had to (innerly) scream out "enough is enough!!!". And lo and behold : I came back to good productive habits yo 😎 I will be assisting my meditate retreat in 5 days, but beforehand, I am still aiming to have a lovely date tomorrow evening... More on this later 😉 Be well all ❤️ Rio de Janeiro during the KSOP in February ; spending hours in the hammock listening to the sound of the crashing waves from the balcony-view, was elite as can be 😎

Question Phlo, given that you are using the Sonoma OS : did you get any freezes where the client completely stops responding to any actions and you were forced to manually shut it down and reboot it!?!?!

Yup, Phlo23 is correct, the backspace does indeed delete 2 characters as opposed to 1. On the subject of typos, darn my English hasn't been used much in the past 4 years, so I am afraid that along with typos, I make syntax errors, grammar mishaps, general linguistic structural damage and an incalculable amount of mistakes not even known to the English language yet 🙃

Yeah, understood and thx. Stubbe! It is fairly unfrequent (so hard to reproduce) and such a bummer that I cannot get a crash log for it 😕

Yup, totally agree Stubbe! I believe it is all about running your equity and just adding it up in the process by firing more attempts ; the only thing that I would add to the above equation, would be the emotional dejection of any potential rejection and how this would affect my overall Happiness EV. But in my case, it is just about nil, thankfully! And thx friend, a pair of queens it will be 🤪 😉 Thx for chiming in friend 😎 Yup, I totally agree with your assessment and if I was to seek out a LTR right now, I would definitely be searching within the Vipassana meditation community at large, but given that I am just recently removed from a 4 year relationship (and an INTENSE AS FUCK breakup), that I will be on the road for a good chunk of the reminder of 2024, I will be indulging more so in short term relationships/friendships for the time being. About communities : I also am of the opinion that they act as the best sources for making solid friendships as well, especially in this day and age that when one goes to a new place and knows nobody (which I have done an insane amount of time over the past 3 decadees/almost 4 decades), he can easily seek out online activities and communities to partake in ; easy game yo 😎 Now, I am a fellow that has an heterodox mix of activities that I indulge in - such as MMA, poker and meditation/ayahuasca, for example -, and while I am open minded and tend to get along with most peeps as well as not being particurly tribalistic (especially when it comes to politics), I nonetheless tend to prefer spiritual communities to make friends/a gf. So anyhow, a brief update : my massage lady did get back to me, has agreed to meet up on a date but did, alas, specify that she is not interested in anything beyond friendship!!! Odd, I tell you, as she was the one making advances in the past, but... you know, women 😉🙃 Tomorrow I will be moving on to plan B and C. Peace

To Conquer the (Dating) World Yo 😎 Well only 8 days to go before the Vipassana meditation retreat. Quite ironic that I feel so stoke about the upcoming experience though, as I know that there will be quite a TITANIC amount of pain accompanied by various mental and physical challenges, and this despite having undertaken the deep (10-20 day) dive close to 40 times!!! But such is the inner work of meditation, as without suffering, one does not evolve, unfortunately. My buddy will be leaving tomorrow morning, thus leaving my two story house a bit vacant. I will of course occupy my time with da pokerz - more volume is needed, as the 2 weeks play-through bonus have been a hard task to fulfill over the past couple of months -, but will also need to get the fuck away from all these imprisoning white walls, right!?! So here's the plan : firstly to message my (previous) spiritual, pretty and classy massage lady friend. While she has made me a couple of undeniable romantic advances in the (distant) past (when I was still with my ex) and initially accepted to accompany me on a date a few weeks ago, I did fail to get back to her in a respectable timeframe, hence her not responding to my latest whatsapp message, sigh!!! But fear not folks : at the risk of appearing insistent and hence (potentially) smashing my head into a thick wall of rejection, it is still worth the pursue, right!?! I mean she is hot, has a pair of generous boobs the size of the ANDES, is smart, determined as fuck and is incredibly open minded and kind!!! Plan B will be to walk into the office of another lovely lady that I have been interacting with weekly for a year+ ; now this demands a bit more audacity and to defy the sensation of those battling butterflies in one's tummy, you know, but is also fun as hell and well worth the trouble, no!?! The third option would be to ask the lady from the nearby grocery store out for a drink ; this will also have to be done in person and during her working hours, but she is always by her self, is very laid back and works in a less official setting. The fourth and final option is the server from the nearby sushi place ; a bit hippyish and a little too wild for me, but still worth the engagement, me thinks. Now I will must likely accomplish two of the above, and perhaps three, but all four would come as a surprise, tbh. In other (more poker related) news, I will have a handful of different group friends coming along to the WSOP. Which is pretty darn cool! I only play MTT series sparsely (and more recently in Latin America), so I never really got a permanent group of buddies tagging along to every stop. I mean I was traveling somewhat the tournament circuit in 2019-20 just prior to the pandemic, do know how to shuffle adequately chips without making a complete arse of myself, you know 😉, am social at the table and whatnot, but I nonetheless never created a click of poker friends along the journey through different continents (despite making multiple friendly acquaintances). So anyhow, I will have a group of Alaskan friends tagging along, a few Yukon (rec) friends and a couple of full-time live Canadian MTT pros, amongst others 😎. Good stuff, I tell you, good stuff! Be well folks 😎 La Boca, Buenos Aires, near the port and a couple of blocks away from the stadium of the famous futbol team

And it just happened again, roughly 30 minutes after the previous freeze.

The freeze just happened again ; fortunately, it had not happened since I posted this thread, so in roughly 15-20h of play 😎 Unfortunately, it was costly this time around, as I was involved in a few small pots as well as lost a few bbs on my Hexapro 😬 My Mac system also did not create a crash log for this manual shutdown of the client.

A Day in a (newly) Bachelor's Life So I had a special guest show up at my door this morning : the cleaning lady!!! Let me explain : even after my ex gf had packed her bags - and much more, sigh and a thousand times sigh!!! 🥺 -, and deserted the place, I did not expect my house to transform itself into a sort of frat/poker house... but it did!!! Now of course I anticipated that a bit of dust would accumulate itself and that the dirty dishes would be somewhat left unattended, but somehow my buddy and I managed to mess up the living shit out of this 2 bedroom/2 story household in the span of a few days 🙃. So it was with great delight that I greeted the maid, kissed her on the left cheek and opened up the door WIDE OPEN to her in order to tidy the living/grinding quarters back into form, you know 😬 Proper sleep has been an issue lately. As has been mustering enough motivation and brain power for the grind - or at least to put in decent volume. But thankfully I have a powerful tool at my disposal : vipassana meditation yo 😎. If the past two decades+ has seen me meditate 2h daily, I am now required to meditate for 3-4h per sun cycle. Yup. That much. As it has been necessary. To clear the mind for the grind. And to chase away that sticking sadness, of course. Thankfully though, it is now the WE and the games are juicy as fuck, so one needs little motivation to click away at the mouse when there is THAT MUCH action on the virtual felt yo 😎. On the MTT live front, I had planned to go to Rosario for an 8 days long midstakes series at the end of May, but given that there is a FULL-ON-BLOWN-GANG-DRUG-WAR exploding recently in those parts, I had to forego the idea when factoring in my recent life run bad... It kind of sucks as I love live tournament series and Rosario offers an elite venue, but considering that this city is already known as the drug capital of Argentina and given that the last time I grinded there and was HANDILY the chip leader at the table in the ME which happened to annoy the living shit out of my left (gangsta) neighbor, to the extent that he felt the need to mention (and repeat) of that time when he killed someone and left his body dry on the highway!!! Moreover, the fellow was probably carrying given the lack of security in the casino, so I think I will pass this time around... In other news, I have reengaged the dating scene. The irony is that when you are in the midst of a LTR relationship and make love to the same sexual partner every night - or gradually down to a couple of times a week over the years... -, you find yourself fantasizing about a new woman, you know, a new fresh body to explore... until you become single again and find out that those handily available opportunities of yesteryears are just that much harder to come about when you actively seek them!!! And a time crutching burden, might I add... But anyhow, enough complaining : my first date was with a classy Belarusian lady. We sipped on wine by her Airbnb rooftop poolside, had a lovely dinner in a Peruvian joint, walked hand-in-hand back to her flat, only for me to be left HIGH-n-DRY after a couple of benign French kisses!!! Sigh!!! Of course, it was a nice distraction, the girl was hot as fuck and I always knew she was a tease, so... The second one was a Tinder date with a Colombian lady ; sure she was sexy, the evening lovely, but I should of paid more attention to her Tinder profile that mentioned that she was seeking a "LTR" while mine is distinctly not 🙃. So moving forward, I might leave aside for a while the dating apps and focus more on that appealing Argentina lady that works in a nearby office... Besides, I suck at creating an appealing profile and in-person romantic advances simply work better in Argentina where the local culture happens to be as direct as can be!!! Well, that is all for now. Be well folks 😎 A painting by a famous Argentina immigrant artist

Haha, I will take the latter as a (strong) compliment!!! But in all seriousness, I think all of us believe in the Unibet community, no!?! And in terms of community, I am not referring strictly to this page, but more so the poker site at large where we all believe in the mission of Unibet to please equally to the recs and regs and making poker fun again - God when I think back to sites like Stars, 888 and Party and their egoistical short term vision 😬-, or in the Unibet Open events that was an ELITE af series where strangers from numerous cultures got to befriend and whatnot, and in the direct communication that one can have with the poker management ; GOAT site, I say 😎 Hey, thx for the kind words friend 😎 Yes, of course, I think all of us have the best interest of others at heart (or at least should...) and equally for you friend, all the best 😎

Keep Da Mind On Da Grind (an Intro) Here's the thing : after playing professionally for 13 years, we kind of go through the (daily) motions. Of clicking buttons online while grinding 7-8 tables of PLO, NLHE and Hexapro - on Unibet, of course 😉. Of meditating for a couple hours daily to clear the mind before rinse-repeating the grind. Of going to your MMA class to strike away the tilt on boxing bags like a mama-fracker (if not directly into the faces of fellow MMA colleagues). Of taking the dog to the park or by the riverside to catch fresh air and for her, well... to poop and see if she can engage in a fight, of course!!!. Of preparing a lovely dinner for the gf as you have done so for the past 4 years (and a more fast-food one for her son). Of going out on weekends for lovely romantic dinners, more casual ones when her son tags along (as well as the dog), or of simply chilling together sipping on coffee on the sunny afternoon grass, you know ❤️... until it all vanishes away 😮. The gf, her son, the dog... The lovely weekends, gone in a flash! The cosy routine, a forgotten page tucked into the book of faded memories! All that remains is the grind, that eternal grind of pouncing on the mouse with that familiar omniscient Unibet fracking beeping sound when the PLO 400 tables are SWINGING up and down like an uncontrollable manic madman while simultaneously ending up HU at several NLHE tables against that oh-TOO-familiar-obnoxious-villainous-foe and also witnessing that failed attempt of binking a 10x Hexapro on the last table 😡🙃😉. Frack, FRACK and a thousand times frack 😡😡😡 Yup, all gone. Vanished into ether. Nonetheless, in the midst of all this vast emptiness, at the horizon a breach has opened itself into a never ending sense of freedom yo 😎 On the road ahead awaits a 3 weeks layover in Las Vegas for the WSOP. The main targets will be the Millionaire Maker, the 10k PLO Championship, The Colossus and the Main Event, of course. EPT Prague will also be awaiting in December - no fracking way I am going back to Bahamas this year 😡 -, while several small series in Montreal, Punta del Este and Brazil might require a stop... But one cannot simply engage in such an MTT live itinerary without prior inner healing, right, as lest not forget that we are just recently being exposed to the tribulations of a 4 year relationship separation, so I will be going to a 10 day Vipassana meditation retreat in a couple of weeks (in Buenos Aires) before hopping over to Peru for an Ayahuasca ceremony in the Sacred Valley. Yup, poker has granted me with an uncountable amounts of privileges over the past decade+, yet that 100k+ live MTT score still remains elusive... We got this yo 😎

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