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whew! i’m back. it took two weeks, but i feel like i really got a sense of what australia (specifically new south wales and queensland) has to offer. some things i learned about or while in australia::: sydney is most definitely a beautiful and mature international city. the harbor is gorgeous. it’s clean and crisp and sophisticated. really unlike any harbor or wharf that i’ve ever seen in a big city. the opera house really is one of those architectural marvels that you need to see for yourself. the streets are bustling at waking hours, but strangely quiet on crisp sunday mornings. a coworker described it a few weeks ago as “a cleaner san francisco, fused with los angeles beach culture.” i think that’s very accurate, though i don’t think it has the vibrancy and diversity of san francisco. it’s casual and formal at the same time. oh, and the food is fantastic, as one would expect from such a modern city surrounded by eclectic nations of diverse tastes. some quick photos:

:: australians, despite their insistence on being part of a “great beer-drinking nation,” have no idea what good beer is. i tried nearly every australian beer that i could get my hands on, playing havoc on my weight (more on that later), and i found only two that were even worth thinking about drinking again. unlike other enthusiastic beer-consuming countries (belgium, ireland, germany…), australia’s beers taste like ass. my theory is that australians adopt the american attitude of, “i’m gonna drink a lot of it, so might as well make sure it goes down easy.” when i got to the country, i laughed about how no one there actually drank foster’s. by the time i left i was wishing that i could find a foster’s.

:: i always thought lists like “the world’s top 10 beaches” were stupid. i mean, what could be so spectacular? then i went to whitehaven beach in the whitsunday islands. i’ll give you a few pictures, but suffice it to say that i will no longer doubt the worth of such lists (which mostly seem to include whitehaven). spectacular? incredible? a dream? the sand was supposedly silica, but it felt more like soft flour spread over 6 kilometers where the jungle met water. absolutely insane:

:: i was reminded on this trip how loved and incredible of a city san francisco is. yeah, you read that right. EVERY australian who mentioned visiting the united states raved about how much he/she loved our own city by the bay. even our b&b owners in port douglas, who talked about how unimpressed they were by america (“i don’t think people who live in new york are tough, i think they’re stupid to live in a place so beastly,” and “america’s so BORING. except for little pockets, it all looks the same”), praised san francisco top to bottom. i don’t know if they were correct, but they were certainly objective compared to americans. if nothing else: australians love san francisco.

:: the great barrier reef sounds so cliche, but you’re a fool if you don’t go see it for yourself. i’ve never snorkeled before, but moments after overcoming the initial panic of “holy shit, i’m in the middle of the fucking ocean and these waves are enormous,” i was able to calm down and take a look around. when you cross the water level, it’s like dipping into a whole different world of brilliant colors and plentiful marine life. i’m hoping some of my underwater camera pictures come out, but i have a feeling that my wounded duck swimming technique might have left something to be desired. we’ll see. but whether or not the photos come out, just know that it was one of the most remarkable sights of my life. go see it, you won’t be disappointed.

:: and lastly, i was reminded of how good it can actually feel to come home. yes my (new) room still looks like a disaster area, but it’s slowly coming together and it’s good to be in my own place. i’m not, by nature, a traveler. at some level, i find myself needing to emerge from my comfort zone just to immerse myself in a new and different place. my travel shyness means that i’m always a little relieved to come home to comfort, but it also means that i forever appreciate even short jaunts to new worlds. i’m lucky to have the means to travel.

like our rain forest guide said on wednesday, “when you’re heading home all you can think about is how nice it will be. but once you get home all you can think about is where to go to next.”

so where to next? i’m open for ideas

so i had some interesting little tidbits to share from my trip so far, but they were all overshadowed by this story:ivy and i were sitting in this old pub in The Rocks here in sydney. i decided to order another pint of guinness and, as i was finishing up the drink, i saw a couple of pretty big guys walking in on the other side of the bar. as i put my drink down, i couldn’t help noticing that the one facing me had one of those cool Ricky Bobby Wonderbread hats on. “cool,” i thought. “i wonder how he got one of those.” then i slowly realized that the guy looked a LOT like the real ricky bobby himself. as i blinked a few times and looked again, i tapped ivy on the shoulder and said, “hey, doesn’t that guy look a lot like will ferrell?” as we both looked back at him, his friend turned around and we knew that, yes, it was in fact will ferrell because the other guy was very clearly john c. reilly!

the tagline for sydney tourism should be: “Sydney, where Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly can go to have a beer without people bothering them.” we did score a sweet picture of the four of us though. awesome…

are there many things more exciting than sitting in an airport bar waiting to board your flight for a two-week international adventure?

i’m excited because tomorrow i’m jumping on a long-ass plane flight Down Under. i don’t really plan on having absurd adventures while i’m down there, but hey, you never know.i think that when i’m at work and in the grind, i tend to lose focus on some of the more important aspects of being 24 with some financial freedom. for instance, i feel like seeing as much of the world as i can before i have real responsibilities is probably a really fantastic idea. when i think about it, there will be decades to work on a career, and only years to pack up and fly away to random places for indeterminate amounts of time. i need to remember to make that a priority more often.so in the theme of “tell better stories,” i think that someday i’ll remember spending two weeks in australia much more than i’ll remember sitting in a cubicle plugging on my keyboard to earn some extra cash. i think. and for that i’m willing to invest: time, money, and my life.

9/15: fly out of sfo to sydney
9/22: fly out of sydney to cairns
9/29: fly back to sfo

there are lots of things in the middle there, but we’ll start with that and fill in the details later.

i’ve been using the yahoo! launchcast radio while i’m powering through stuff at work. the application creates a “radio station” for you based on your musical preferences. everytime you hear a song, you rate it and the system is supposed to come up with some new stuff for you to listen to (yes, i know, there are better services out there for this).anyhow, i was listening along, plugging away when a song came on.

(in my head) “wait. who is that? is that who i think it is?”

yes, folks. yahoo!’s musical algorithm told me that i should be a kevin federline fan. i think launchcast just made fun of me… web 2.0 sucks.

pandora time…

five years ago today, i was a 19-year old college student still reeling (perhaps alcohol-induced) from my freshman year of college. i was in kotzebue building some websites for maniilaq association and a few other organizations in the rural alaskan town. in other words, i was pretty much as far away (both in distance and culture) from new york city as i could be within the united states. i remember the summer well, spent with the johns (lincoln and stoops) doing various ridiculous things that could only make sense to 19-year old college kids or residents of kotzebue.on the morning of september 11, i was fast asleep in the bottom bunk of john lincoln’s room at his family’s house. there was a family room with a tv just a step outside the door. stoops was sleeping on the top bunk and lincoln across the room in his bed. i can remember somewhat groggily listening to mrs. lincoln burst into the room, frantically talking about twin towers and airplanes and crashes. as i came to consciousness and mrs. lincoln left the room, lincoln muttered the words, “wait, they CRASHED into the buildings?” i think, even today, that’s a perfectly succinct way to phrase the immediate response of most anyone. the three of us stumbled out of our beds and stood watching the television coverage. i was planted there completely shocked for a good 20 minutes, staring at the craziest television images i had ever seen, mouthing words like “oh my god…”, and clothed by just a pair of boxer shorts. i remember it all vividly, like a painting seared into my brain…it was, of course, the singular “where were you when…” moment of our generation. it’s obviously not important, but i wonder whether 9/11 will come to replace president kennedy’s assassination as the event standard by which all “where were you when…” moments are compared.

i took ivy to the airport last night, as she headed out to sydney and then adelaide. as i watched her slowly make her way through the careful security process, i couldn’t help but think about how different airplane travel is today because of this day five years ago. and who can even count the other things that have changed…

so where were you when you heard, five years ago today?

chuck klosterman’s team usa proposal is not only entertaining, but also (honestly) pretty damn intriguing as a real option for our national basketball team. what i see when i watch our guys out on the court (in the world championships or anywhere else) is a group of players that are playing scared to fail. if dwyane wade, lebron, and company go off and win the olympics, the collective response from americans will be, “about damn time! sheesh, when were those greedy players ever going to get off their asses to not embarrass us?” if they lose at the olympics, the collective response from americans will be, “again? when will those greedy players ever get off their asses to not embarrass us?” in case you’ve never played sports, this is what we call a “no-win situation”=========main event chips fiasco: somehow, at the main event of the world series of poker this year, two million random chips were thrown into the prize pool at some point. let me repeat that: two million random chips showed up between day one and the end of the tournament. i’m glad that the writers figured out where those came from. now we just have to figure out how harrah’s can stop screwing things up. of course television has been integral in the poker boom, but just as important were the rise of honest card rooms, tournaments, and internet sites that let people play the game without feeling like they might get cheated…

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businessweek wrote an article on the best places to launch a career and i almost puked on myself (even though my new employer made the list, though since i didn’t start my career there i’m completely screwed). lists like this are so absurd that i can’t don’t even want to start getting into the utter uselessness of them. how exactly do you judge the best places to launch a career? here are the criteria, in their words:

With this ranking, BusinessWeek has put together a guide to the employers that really shine. Unlike other such rankings, BusinessWeek‘s incorporates feedback from three different sources. First we surveyed directors of undergraduate career services to find out which employers were creating buzz on campus. Next we asked those finalists to complete a questionnaire about pay, benefits, retention, and training programs, which we then compared with other employers in the same industry. Finally we asked Universum Communications to supply data from its survey of more than 37,000 U.S. undergrads about the finalists at the top of their list of most desirable employers.

great. so 2/3 of your feedback is going to come from people who are students (who haven’t even started a career), from people who listen to what those students tell them, and from the companies themselves. shouldn’t they rename the article to “places that college students most want to work at”? i guess that wouldn’t have the same ring…

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honestly, i think we’d be better off getting life and career advice from people like gene weingarten at the washington post. i especially like number five, about how using the bathroom will eventually become more satisfying for me than using the bedroom. great. looking forward to it…

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you’re crazy if you thought i wasn’t going to at least MENTION opening weekend of the nfl season. the niners looked ok which, believe me, is an enormous step up from the vomit that built up every time i thought about them last year. one of these years, i’m going to actually fulfill a life dream of finding some way to watch every single nfl game in real-time on the first day of the season. it’ll be a complicated plan that will involve getting all of my friends to bring over their own tv’s while i configure an intricate wiring scheme to turn the directv signal into ten separate games, all at the same time. hopefully my niners’ll be winning again by then…

a few months ago, i wrote a post entitled Short stack is power? in which i discussed a theory that i had involving the power of a short stack (i.e. 40-50x the big blind) in a no limit hold’em cash game. in my experience up to that point, playing with a short stack in a no limit cash game had been profitable and i concluded that having a short stack in a no limit cash game, where blinds are non-escalating and create no additional pressure on the players, is the optimal way to play.interestingly enough, over the past few months as i’ve built greater discipline and self-reflection in my poker game, i’ve come to realize that the short stack approach is, in fact, not always optimal. like everything in poker, there are situations at the table where starting with a substantial stack is truly beneficial for cash game play. let’s take a quick example hand from my week-long vegas trip in july.

i was playing in a $5-$10 no limit game and was sitting with around my starting stack at the table. i had bought in for $400 and had lost a small pot to leave me with $370. certainly 37 big blinds fell well within my range of ‘small stack cash game play’, so i was fine.

in late position, i picked up AcJs behind an extremely loose player who had raised to $30. he had me covered by a lot and i felt that i had a good read on his style of play. i called in position and the big blind called as well. the flop came down Jc-3d-4h. a great flop with me, with no flush draw and no real straight draws. after the big blind checked, the loose player put out a bet of $90. i was certain that i had the best hand given the player’s style and figured that i was looking at a J with a worse kicker. the big blind looked as though he was ready to fold.

in thinking over the situation, i debated between calling his bet of $90 (leaving me with $250 behind) or raising him immediately. i elected to call, wanting to make sure that i got all my money in against his probable 2- or 3-outter. this is, in fact, the small stack approach: find places to double through other players at the table. when the turn came with a blank and he stuck a bet of $150, i moved in for $100 more and he quickly called. he did, in fact, have J9 and i doubled up. hooray, right?

a couple of weeks later, as i thought about the play of the hand, i started to realize where the ‘small stack cash game’ approach fails. in the hand described above, i had a great read on the player and the amount of money that i won was capped only by the size of my stack. if i had started the hand with $500, i probably would also have been able to double through him. in fact, even if i had started the hand with $800, i might have been able to double through him. my edge over him was substantial, but i had handcuffed myself by limiting my own value in the hand by having a small stack.

at the same time, the opposite is also true. if my opponent had held a hand like QQ, leaving my stack size at $350 would have limited my loss in the hand. but when you have great positive EV in a game or against a player, why would you be interested in limiting the magnitude of your wins?

as i thought back on my no limit cash game play from the week, the first things i remembered were the horrific bad beats. but as i reviewed the play further, i came to realize that the size of those bad beats were huge because i didn’t always get full value out of other hands where i was certain to be a huge favorite. poker’s a difficult game with lots of ambiguity. in the cases where you know and like where you stand, wouldn’t it make sense to get as much of your money out there as possible?

playing with a large stack takes careful understanding of the intricacies of hands. it’s substantially more difficult than playing a small stack in a cash game. but if you’re comfortable with your standing in the game, buying in for a substantial stack can make more sense because of the added value from your winning hands. at the end of the day, it depends. the size of your buy-in for a cash game is contingent upon not just the size of the blinds, but on your playing style, your edge in the game, and your ability to skirt past tricky hands. there are many factors to consider and i was wrong: a short stack is not always power…

i’ll occasionally link to my friends’ blogs, but i almost never outright TELL people, “go read this stuff.” i think will’s new blog is probably worth your time though, so you should go take a look. it’s not really a blog, as much as it will be insightful glimpses into his trek through south america.the short background is that, having finished two years teaching in the new york public school system, will decided to take, oh, at least a half year to travel all of those countries to the south, accompanied by his backpack. i’m excited for him and proud that he has the balls to go travel in such a way. he’s much braver than i am, in countless ways.so far, he’s taken a 30-hour bus ride from atlanta, georgia to el paso, texas, before jumping (not literally) the border into mexico. so set your bookmarks, rss readers, or whatever. it should be at least interesting. oh yeah, and he doesn’t know spanish.

be safe, will. and write often.