A short video of myself in the first six (maybe six and a half) months after starting Parkour. Pretty happy with it, overall. Coming from a not-very-active, indoors-y background, it’s been a huge improvement in fitness and co-ordination.

I think it’s always important to frequently set short-term progression goals to commit to, so here’s mine for the next two months:

lots of love,
pjchow

The poker has been intermittent, and I’ve been getting a real good ROI. I haven’t compiled any stats for the last year, but it’s pretty much all been live poker, and about 80% of my sessions have been winning sessions (with the profits in each winning session averaging to be pretty similar to my losses on the losing sessions). There was a week where I played two sessions and decided to donate all the winnings in them to the Christchurch Earthquake Appeal. The sessions resulted in a $200 profit and a $1355 profit (respectively), which was also matched by my employer Orion Health.

One of the biggest things that I’ve been getting into in the last 5 months is Parkour. It’s kind of hard to explain exactly what it is, because it means different things to different people. But maybe a video of somebody else doing it will explain it better than I can:

Eppur si muove from Glovaschi Cristian Marius on Vimeo.

It’s a lot of fun, and the general result for me is I’m feeling a lot fitter, stronger, and aware of my own body. I’ve also met some people who I’m very happy to have as friends. If any of you in NZ are interested, check out the NZPA Website for more information.

Lots of love,
-pjchow

Now that the finals are over, we can host the video online. Here it is!

Had a lot of fun scripting it, and working with such a talented team.

Apparently the video with the most views wins a bunch of iPhones, so feel very free to spread that link around.

Will post another blog soon. Promise.

-PChow

Moving flats was quite an effort. Me and Paul took a Friday off work, and pretty much spent the Friday, Saturday and Sunday carrying boxes, desks, and other various heavy things around. Angus helped on Saturday night, which was very much appreciated.

Even after moving, we had to deal with flat exit cleaning (we used JC Cleaning Services, which I would recommend) costing a hefty $650 (our apartment was pretty big).

At least we’ve finally moved into the new flat. I like my new room, and the nighttime view is gorgeous (though, during the day, I’d still prefer the harbour view from our old apartment). I have a fairly spacious room, and an extremely comfortable King sized bed.

We still have stacks of boxes to unpack, which we really should get to soon. Also, something seemed to go wrong with our Internet set up, which led to us being internet-less at home for a week (for me and Paul, this is pretty upsetting).

Poker

Being internet-less, and unable to really go out since I was on-call for work, I spent a lot of time last week playing poker at SkyCity, which is just around the corner from what I now call home.

This week went really well for me. The Lee Nelson Deepstack series was on, and as a result, the cash tables were filled with few solid regulars, and several tournament bustos (om nom nom). This made for a nice combination of easy money, and a few interesting pots.

My 5 sessions at the casino in the last week went (approximately) +$650, +$250, +$50, -$200, +$250, which ended with me up roughly $1k (these are all approximates, and it was probably a bit less than 1k).

I was pretty proud of a laydown I made. Aaron (who was a rock I was semi-familiar with) at UTG+1 raised to $13, Brett (fairly loose) called, and I (playing pretty tight at this point) raised to $39. I noticed Aaron quietly counting more chips as the rest of the table folded. Aaron eventually 4-bet to $92. UTG+2 folded. After noticing Aaron only had $80 behind, and there was no set-farm value, I quickly folded QQ face up. Aaron looked pretty shocked, and, like a gentleman, showed his KK. This sparked a pretty interesting discussion between me and Aaron on the merits of flat-calling a 3-bet with KK vs 4-betting it.

Life

The new flat is pretty good, and should be even better after we unpack everything. I have enjoyed the apartment building’s gym a couple of times late at night when nobody else was around.

Although poker in the last week has been interesting (and profitable!), I’m feeling mentally exhausted from it (as you can probably tell from the rambling nature of this post). It always takes more concentration and mental stamina to play several hour sessions than I expect. Now that I’m finally not on call, I’m looking forward to spending a few nights out to waste my profit, or a few nights in for some music practice I’ve been lacking in the last couple of weeks.

-pchow

Concerts

- I went to the Backstreet Boys concert last Thursday with Alicia. (I can justify going with a girl by saying she “dragged” me there.) It was the most excited crowd I’ve ever seen at a concert. I’m guessing that the Boys have never been to NZ before, so their Kiwi-teenage-girl-fanbase must have had ten-plus years of pent-up hormonal frustration to unleash.
- I went to the Lady Gaga concert last Saturday with Mary (this was a really teenybopper week for me). Again, going with a girl justifies my presence there. It was quite a spectacle; lots of elaborate dance sequences, costume changes, exciting stage props, and many memorable performances by Gaga and her troupe. The only downside was the glam rock metal band that opened for her.
- I am very keen to go to the Massive Attack concert, but don’t know anybody else who is keen as well. I also haven’t listened to their latest album yet (which I assume this concert is attempting to promote).
- I am planning to go to the John Mayer concert next month. I’d better get tickets soon!

Moving flats

I must sadly say goodbye to the Prince’s Wharf penthouse I have called “home” for the last 18 months. duF is rerolling his life in Santa Monica, so Paul and myself have decided to move into one of the H47 apartments on Hobson St.

The new place is actually pretty good, and quite spacious compared to most boxes in the CBD. I’m sure I’ll spend a week or so experimenting with various arrangements for the stuff in my room.

Poker

I’ve been watching High Stakes Poker lately, and this season’s line up looks very good. The first few episodes were kind of quiet, but the most recent episode had a lot of action.

I haven’t played too much, but I’ve had a pretty good run in the last couple of months. In the last 2 months, I’ve had three winning live sessions (+$600, +$300 and +$400) and two losing sessions (-$250, -$250). It was pretty suprising to notice that I was playing pots with over $700 in them, and not really caring at all (a year ago, $100+ pots were still a somewhat scary notion for me). Being desensitized to money is probably a good attribute for a poker player, but I sometimes wonder if I’m now lacking some healthy respect for money.

I’ve played a few online sessions in the last couple of weeks, which were roughly +$60, -$80, +$100, -$50 respectively. As you can see, I’ve found online poker to be a much tougher field to get money from.

In one particularly crazy pot in a live game, I had raised pre-flop, c-bet the flop, and check-raised all-in on the turn. I had flopped trips, and my opponent had insta-called the check-raise all-in with AK (no pair, no draw). I was pretty worried by the insta-call, but it’s interesting to see how light some people will call a “sneaky Asian” like me.

Other things

- Work has given me an iPhone recently, and I don’t ever remember having been as obsessed about a gadget since my Nintendo Gameboy.
- There’s unofficial talk of work sending me back to Santa Monica in some weeks. Should be exciting!
- I’ve been playing a lot of card/board games with the Burns-Prestidge’s lately. I have gotten a lot of appreciation for card/board games, as there are usually more interesting tactics/strategies involved than in a lot of PC/console games.

That’s all I can think of right now. Will attempt to blog more frequently in future.

-pchow

I haven’t been writing much lately, primarily because I usually can’t be bothered fleshing out an entire post about anything I’d want to post about. Henceforth, all sub-140-character updates will be posted via Twitter. I’ve updated the blog to include a list of my most recent 8 tweets and the 4 most recently listened to tracks that last.fm knows of, although I haven’t actually used the scrobbler since January (if I had, my most recently listened to tracks would primarily consist of Kings of Leon). I probably should use the scrobbler more often, just for last.fm’s datamining purposes.

-pchow

$2,500 No Limit Deuce to Seven Draw
Blinds 5,000/10,000
Monette (SB): 604,000
Ivey (BB): 506,000

John Monnette raised to 30,000 and Phil Ivey called. Ivey drew two and Monnette took one. Ivey checked and Monnette fired 45,000. Ivey counted out some chips and studied Monnette with his eyes darting and mouth wide open — the famous Ivey pose. Ivey then called and Monnette nodded as Ivey showed an ace low for the best hand.

Very sick soul read.

-pchow

The previous team I’ve worked with in the 48 hours film competition couldn’t participate in it this year, since the camera and lighting guys had work commitments for that weekend. Eager to be involved in a team, I posted on the 48 Hours forums to see if any team needed a musician/scorer. In included a clip of some music I did last year.

I got a few e-mails, but the one that seemed the most interesting was from a guy named AJ. He sent me some links to what his team did previously, and also Blair’s (his director’s) website, which included some music videos Blair had worked on. He seemed to have a lot of resources available (production-wise) so it was the most appealing for me.

We drew the genre “Parallel World”. Not completely sure on the exact definition, but I think it’s an umbrella genre which includes films like Wizard of Oz (dream), The Matrix (alternate reality), Army of Darkness (alternate time travel) or even Sliding Doors (two parallel timelines). A character was “Alex Puddle”, an exaggerator. The mandatory prop was “rock”, and we had to fit in a line “It doesn’t fit”.

Friday night started off with a few hours of brainstorming what storylines/styles we could go for. A lot of these people were film buffs, and referenced a lot of film/television work I’d never seen (I’m very unlearned when it comes to movies/tv).

After the team bounced around several ideas, the writers/actors fleshed a script out. It involved a guy named Alex Puddle going through several disconnected scenes, not knowing why he’s there, and eventually saving the life a love interest. The story/flow still doesn’t really parse for me, but it seems to be one of those things that you have to be a film geek get.

After reading the script, and admitting I was quite confused about the plot and what style they were going for, I went along with them on Saturday to where they shot a bar scene to try and understand what kind of vibe they were going for. I also briefly watched them shoot a dinner table scene, and then got a vague idea. I started playing around with some casual sounding background music for a couple of scenes, some “spook” textures (generally involving some light percusion being echoed really quickly) and some menacing sounding ambience, and assembled a rough palette to work with.

Editting/filming took longer than scheduled, and I ended up getting a master copy about 1 hour and 15 minutes before the deadline. This was really rough on time, since they wanted to leave 45 minutes before the deadline, so I had roughly half an hour to score, export and deliver a soundtrack to the editor. When they tried to compress the film into a DVD format, it took way longer than expected, and we ended up 5 minutes too late to qualify.

We worked on polishing it further (since DQ’d submissions are accepted until a few hours after the deadline and can still get a showing at the heats), so I managed to smooth it out some more. The final work (which is in the video above) seems very pretty, and, minus a few rough edges, quite well polished. I would definitely like to work with the same team again. After watching our heat, I think it was definitely the most well-produced/best-acted film.

The scoring for this was a bit minimalistic (which saves on time). There is one part of the scoring that I actually like a lot: In the first bar scene (0:06 – 1:30), there’s some very non-distinctive generic bar music playing in the background. Eventually, something weird in the plot happens from 1:30 – 1:42. During this, the acoustic pop-rock background music switches to an Em-A7sus4 progression (tension!) with some strings riff which ends on holding a note (trying to emulate some generic pop ballad). While the accompaniment fades out, that note still holds and ends up sounding like cheesey-tension-strings. Background music becomes meta-music! As the mood gets “scarier”, I bring in some of those “spook” textures I had ready. I also added some tremelo to the strings, which quickly alternates it playing from left to right, for a bit of a psychedelic effect as the first scene transition occurs. It’s just a small part of the score, but I thought it was a pretty clever way to handle that scene transition using the existing background music.

Anyway, have a watch. The lighting and camera work is very cool. If you don’t get the story, don’t worry; you are not alone.

-pchow!

P.S.

I still have soundbytes of the bartender saying “Run, Dickhead!” which I want to sample in some techo/dance song. Will post later.

I read this news story about a house in New York getting robbed by two guys in police uniforms.

Authorities believe the gunmen made off with about $2,000 from that victim.

Investigators said that poker games might have been going on at the house. Tables were set up in the house when deputies arrived, but no cards or money were present.

Security camera footage shows that 2 black males entered, and left with another person. It looks like this was one of those secret games and the robbery was an inside job.

Once the door flew open, one of the robbers screamed, ‘This is a robbery.’ One of the patrons said, ‘No, it’s not,’ and they started exchanging gunfire.

Fucking epic.