Thursday, July 27th: Nomad Life

I have moved roughly 10 times in the past 6 years. I don't mean only within the same city, but rather I've packed up everything I own on an annual basis and hauled it up and down the East Coast without the aid of any movers. From what I can figure, I've gone from Canada to Rhode Island, 4 different addresses within RI, to Queens, NY, to Manhattan NY, back to Canada, down to Philadelphia, and now on to Australia.

And while moving sucks a ton, I find it strangely therapeutic to be able to purge myself of all the useless crap I've accumulated, freeing myself of all the miscellaneous odds and ends that serve no real purpose other than to act as a sort of perverse measuring stick of one's progress in life. I don't even want to think about how many days of my life have been lost to the thought process along the lines of "hmmm...I don't THINK I'll need this incandescent floor lamp shaped like David Hasselhoff's left testicle that I bought from that hobo last year for a can of soup......but what if I meet some wicked Baywatch fans in Philadelphia, then I'll really wish I had it...yeah, I better bring it along."

This last move to Australia was a real doozie, though, since there was a fixed limit to how much they'd let me bring, so every one of my possessions either went into one of my 2 duffel bags, or into the trash -- my twin 20-inch monitors sadly were a casualty of the process, although I was able to sell them to a 2+2'er.

It feels good to throw stuff out, albeit a little wasteful, and I still can't bring myself to chuck some things whose utility in my future I am 99% sure will be negligible. I must have thrown out a few thousand dollars worth of useful stuff in this move, but it felt like a weight off my shoulders -- a mix of regret, nostalgia, yet satisfaction that I've reached a stage in life where I can afford to dispose of belongings that I had once paid good money for.

My first reaction to Australia: everybody here is Asian. Seriously. It is also the dead of winter here (although that simply means that the temperature is in the mid-50's.) Nonetheless, any visions I had of bronze-bodied Australian surfgirls servicing me while I hunt kangaroos with poison-tipped boomerangs were quickly dispelled. The coolest poker-related thing about being here? Probably that with the time change being EST + 14 hrs, peak poker-playing hours are between 8am and 3pm local time...why is that good? Because the hardest thing about getting in enough hours on the East Coast of the USA was that playing at peak times nearly always came at the expense of going out with friends, etc. -- here, on the other hand, I can wake up and play from 9am to noon, for example, then call it a day and simply enjoy myself the rest of the day/night without "missing" any peak poker hours when I go out.

I signed for a nice little studio on the beach -- Not much of a view from the apartment itself, but I walk outside and am greeted by this:




I still can't believe that I live here! There's also a really nice little 9-hole golf course quite literally 5 minutes down the road, only costs $15 / 9 holes, and since it's low tourist season here, I'm looking forward to playing a few rounds / week to improve my game. The first week was a little lonely, when it started to sink in that I didn't know anyone in this entire city, let alone this hemisphere, but I've actually made a few decent friends here now, so hopefully all will be well on the social front going forward. Biggest regret is that my travel down here has precluded me from playing in this year's WSOP in Vegas...oh well, maybe next year.