For Ory
I don’t know why it’s so hard for me to consistently write in this tumblr. Come to think of it, I don’t know if I’m consistent with anything. When it comes to things that are neutral or positive, we use words like “consistency,” “routine,” “habitual,” etc. But when it’s a negative thing, its suddenly an “addiction” or a “recurring problem”… definitely not a fan of these words.
Ory really thinks my gambling has become a “serious problem.” My other peers say I have an “addictive” personality. I hate that these words exist in other people’s descriptions of me. First of all, yes I do have quite a number of problems, but I do not have an addictive personality.
MY DEFENSE:
1. I get way too emotional with small wins and losses. Meaning, I get very upset when I lose a couple bills and so I stop. Which brings me to #2…
2. I STOP.
3. I play with a bankroll. This does not mean I am rich. Rather, that I play with my previous winnings. It’s a hobby that supports itself (for the most part). I’m sure I may be down overall, but it’s not even close to a significant amount. I do not mean to sound snobby. I am fully aware that $100 can go a long way for starving children across the world- which brings me to #4…
4. I’m pretty sure I invest more money, effort, and time into helping people who need it. I do not mean to sound like a saint. Obviously, I’m not. If I had $100 to gamble or share, I’d donate it to Japan. (Or I’d gamble, triple it and donate more! Haha, joking.)
5. It is not my life, it is just a hobby. As far as I’m concerned I have a life outside of gambling, and I do it for fun.
6. I have never gambled away important money (like rent money or car payments). When I am broke and tight on money, I don’t gamble!
7. I don’t have to do it.
Ok, now that my little rant is finished, I hope to have convinced Ory (who this post is lovingly dedicated to) and myself that I do not have a problem.
How about some slot on slot action? Oh yea~
It’s all set. I will be spending Halloween weekend at Vegas, and my costume:
A slot machine.
And if you look closely, you can see that this costume is covered with 7’s. The jackpot is three triple 7’s in a row! I mean, apparel just doesn’t get any luckier than that. I will be a slot machine playing slot machines.
It is on, Vegas, it is ON.
My grandmother was gorgeous.
There is only one black and white photo to prove this- a portrait of her when she was 19. I was shocked when I first saw this photo because by the time I first met my grandmother, she was already concealed with old age. But in the photo, she looks like a Korean barbie.
Because she was a looker, she was chosen for marriage by the richest man in her town at an early age. My grandmother was only 16 when she married my grandfather, but from what I’m told, she was very happy in her early married life. In the next 17 years, she had 8 children with him, the eighth child being my father. He remained her favored child until she died.
One month after my father was born, my grandfather was murdered. My father was born in 1950, when Korea was in war. Several North Korean soldiers invaded my grandparents’ home, held guns to my grandfather’s head, and forced him to feed them and house them for the night. As a South Korean, he was not to do this, but he had no choice. He was targeted because he was rich and owned a big home. When the news spread to the South Korean generals, they called my family traitors. They labeled them as North Koreans, lined my grandfather up alongside his brothers and shot them one by one in front of their families.
My grandmother watched with a crying baby in her arms as a fellow South Korean shot her husband.
She never remarried, or even looked at another man for the next 60 years. She just raised her 8 children and died at the old age of 93. My cousin says her body looked and felt like an old tree, her dark skin hardened over her small bones. Although her body was decaying, her mind was still sharp up to the moment of her death. She recognized everyone and asked about a lot of people. The person she asked about the most, though was my father- the only one of her 8 kids who had moved to America to raise his family.
Out of all my cousins, I’ve probably seen her the least. Although she has made a few visits here and I’ve also visited her in Korea several times, my memories of her are vague. So, I don’t know why I am so deeply affected by her death, but I am. Maybe because she was the last real grandparent I had left.
………………………………………………………………………….
My parents got back from Korea last week. My father told us how all of our cousins are doing, well the successful ones anyway, and my mother told us of all the drama and shit talking that went on amongst the families. And it’s my brother’s birthday, so we all went out to a nice dinner today. (There’s been a lot of money coming in from friends since the funeral.) My mom had on a newly purchased outfit, and my brother received a rather big envelope.
My father got drunk and talked on and on about my grandmother- how pretty she was, how strong she was, and how so many people came to her funeral. And since my brother and I were the only ones from our relatives who weren’t at the funeral, he said we’d have to go next year for the anniversary. He didn’t have it in him to tell everyone that we are both unemployed and couldn’t afford plane tickets, so he came up with his own reasons as to why we couldn’t make it. My brother was tied down at this prestigious government job he’s had since he graduated, and the college I teach at was unable to find a substitute for me on such short notice. So, he gave us a one year deadline to make something of ourselves.
After dinner, we went to my parent’s place and played a mini poker tournament. $20 buy in, one re-buy. With 4 players, that’s still a pretty big pot. My father and I got out quick, bought back in, and got out again (which is funny because we’re the ones who actually play poker all the time). My brother was chip leader, but not by a lot. My mom had a King, 10 and my brother had pocket Aces. 2 Kings came out on the flop, my mom went all in, and my brother called. Turn- 5, River- …………… A.
With sheer luck, the birthday boy won all the money. Hopefully, a good start to a good year. But if nothing else, it was a good end to a family night out; beacuse no matter how distant my family becomes, things like deaths and gambling can always bring us back together.
It was Korean Thanksgiving this past Thursday. I brought rice cakes, a traditional food eaten on Korean holidays, to my parents’ house for our family dinner.
It’s been a while since the four of us got together for a meal, so immediately my father brought out the soju and my brother a half empty bottle of Jack. My mom made a feast and my father talked, talked, talked. We decided over dinner to do a Vegas trip this weekend, another family tradition we haven’t done in a while. My mom had a dream about Obama eating her leftovers, and my father thought this as a sign of good fortune so he booked a suite for the weekend at Bellagio.
We finished eating and my mom brought out the rice cakes, delicately arranged on a tray. The phone rang and we let it go because it’s usually some credit card company calling to hassle my parents over late payments. But the ringing didn’t stop. My mom quickly grabbed a green rice cake and went to pick up the phone. It was my aunt, calling from Korea. My father’s older sister. Crying, she demanded to speak to my father.
My father hung up and sat on the couch. He was staring at some spot between the TV and the fish tank, taking quick heavy breaths. Then he started crying.
“Grandma died,” he said.
As the youngest of eight, he was always his mother’s favorite. No one said a word. No one even moved. My brother took another shot, then sat still again.
Then suddenly my father snapped up, told me to book the next flight to Korea for two, and told my mom to pack. I jumped to the computer as quickly as my mom pulled out the suitcase.
We all stayed up that night, my mom over packing, and my father repeatedly telling us everything we are to take care of while they are gone. I took them to the airport in the morning and came back to see the rice cakes, all but one untouched and hardened on the table.
Featured Article Today on Yahoo
How to Get Lucky
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By Richard Wiseman
Scientific proof that you make your own breaks.
For centuries, people have recognized the power of luck and have done whatever they could to try seizing it. Take knocking on wood, thought to date back to pagan rituals aimed at eliciting help from powerful tree gods. We still do it today, though few, if any, of us worship tree gods. So why do we pass this and other superstitions down from generation to generation? The answer lies in the power of luck.
Live a Charmed Life
To investigate scientifically why some people are consistently lucky and others aren’t, I advertised in national periodicals for volunteers of both varieties. Four hundred men and women from all walks of life — ages 18 to 84 — responded.
Over a ten-year period, I interviewed these volunteers, asked them to complete diaries, personality questionnaires and IQ tests, and invited them to my laboratory for experiments. Lucky people, I found, get that way via some basic principles — seizing chance opportunities; creating self-fulfilling prophecies through positive expectations; and adopting a resilient attitude that turns bad luck around.
PLUS: 8 Old Wives’ Tales: Which Should You Believe
Open Your Mind
Consider chance opportunities: Lucky people regularly have them; unlucky people don’t. To determine why, I gave lucky and unlucky people a newspaper, and asked them to tell me how many photos were inside. On average, unlucky people spent about two minutes on this exercise; lucky people spent seconds. Why? Because on the paper’s second page — in big type — was the message “Stop counting: There are 43 photographs in this newspaper.” Lucky people tended to spot the message. Unlucky ones didn’t. I put a second one halfway through the paper: “Stop counting, tell the experimenter you have seen this and win $250.” Again, the unlucky people missed it.
The lesson: Unlucky people miss chance opportunities because they’re too busy looking for something else. Lucky people see what is there rather than just what they’re looking for.
This is only part of the story. Many of my lucky participants tried hard to add variety to their lives. Before making important decisions, one altered his route to work. Another described a way of meeting people. He noticed that at parties he usually talked to the same type of person. To change this, he thought of a color and then spoke only to guests wearing that color — women in red, say, or men in black.
Does this technique work? Well, imagine living in the center of an apple orchard. Each day you must collect a basket of apples. At first, it won’t matter where you look. The entire orchard will have apples. Gradually, it becomes harder to find apples in places you’ve visited before. If you go to new parts of the orchard each time, the odds of finding apples will increase dramatically. It is exactly the same with luck.
PLUS: The Beginner’s Guide to Being Cheap
Relish the Upside
Another important principle revolved around the way in which lucky and unlucky people deal with misfortune. Imagine representing your country in the Olympics. You compete, do well, and win a bronze medal. Now imagine a second Olympics. This time you do even better and win a silver medal. How happy do you think you’d feel? Most of us think we’d be happier after winning the silver medal.
But research suggests athletes who win bronze medals are actually happier. This is because silver medalists think that if they’d performed slightly better, they might have won a gold medal. In contrast, bronze medalists focus on how if they’d performed slightly worse, they wouldn’t have won anything. Psychologists call this ability to imagine what might have happened, rather than what actually happened, “counter-factual” thinking.
To find out if lucky people use counter-factual thinking to ease the impact of misfortune, I asked my subjects to imagine being in a bank. Suddenly, an armed robber enters and fires a shot that hits them in the arms. Unlucky people tended to say this would be their bad luck to be in the bank during the robbery. Lucky people said it could have been worse: “You could have been shot in the head.” This kind of thinking makes people feel better about themselves, keeps expectations high, and increases the likelihood of continuing to live a lucky life.
PLUS: 7 Tips to Raise Financially Savvy Kids
Learn to Be Lucky
Finally, I created a series of experiments examining whether thought and behavior can enhance good fortune.
First came one-on-one meetings, during which participants completed questionnaires that measured their luck and their satisfaction with six key areas of their lives. I then outlined the main principles of luck, and described techniques designed to help participants react like lucky people. For instance, they were taught how to be more open to opportunities around them, how to break routines, and how to deal with bad luck by imagining things being worse. They were asked to carry out specific exercises for a month and then report back to me.
The results were dramatic: 80 percent were happier and more satisfied with their lives — and luckier. One unlucky subject said that after adjusting her attitude — expecting good fortune, not dwelling on the negative — her bad luck had vanished. One day, she went shopping and found a dress she liked. But she didn’t buy it, and when she returned to the store in a week, it was gone. Instead of slinking away disappointed, she looked around and found a better dress — for less. Events like this made her a much happier person.
Her experience shows how thoughts and behavior affect the good and bad fortune we encounter. It proves that the most elusive of holy grails — an effective way of taking advantage of the power of luck — is available to us all.
On 9/7 I got inked! I wanted artwork on my body, and as beautiful as it is, I’m not sure it was worth the pain. There are 7 seven flowers going down my side, each one is the flower of a country I’ve been to and have been deeply impacted by.
I went in thinking I was a lot more gangster than I really am. He only started coloring in the petals, when I made him stop because it felt like he was slowly sawing my body into pieces- the electric needle grinding over and over into my bone. I kept thinking, how do so many people get tats, especially the full body ones? They must have some secret, like Vicodin!
The problem is, I have to go back to finish it… someday.
Was I ready for such a permanent commitment? I mean, what if one day I get pregnant and my skin stretches and my flowers are all wilted? My friend suggested I get it on my back, but I needed it completely on my side as much as I needed all 7 flowers.
Man, what have I done, what have I done…
The day a man in a short beard and a rugged cap took my jackpot
I think that I am more or less even this year. With gambling that is. Maybe up or down a few hundred, but it’s hard to remember from January. Plus, a good rule of thumb is to never string along your previous wins and losses or it just becomes a headache. So then why waste so much time, gas, energy, etc. on gambling? Well for one, it’s fun. And two, I’m still waiting for that jackpot.
This past weekend I was in Palm Springs for a friend’s birthday. Normally I’m not too fond of the casinos at PS, but this time they were pretty generous to all of us. Since I have been legitimately broke these days, I dabble with little money, hoping for a quick win. With $20, I made $300. This was good enough for me so I stopped. I got a free trip and on our way back to LA, we stopped by Morongo. I have a lot of fond memories at this casino as a lot of my college nights were spent here (I went to UC Riverside).
While the others went into the buffet I went into the high limit slots. Gamblers know you don’t get hungry when you’re in a casino. As I mentioned before, I really believe high limit slots pay out more. And most people don’t know that there are still $1 slots in there. So I sat down at one. I got a feeling that it was about to pay out. I told myself, however, that I would only play $50 and I would stop. I played $51. It didn’t give me shit. So I stood up. Then a Hispanic man with a short beard and a rugged cap sat down after me, put in $100, then on the first spin he got a little jackpot. How wonderful.
Did I mention that it was his first spin? I was enraged. All I could think was, ‘That’s my money! He jacked me!’ Then, I was on mad tilt. I sat at every which machine and just pressed the button again and again until I used every dollar that was in my wallet. (Another good rule is to never keep all your money with you on the casino floor).
I’ve never won a jackpot, small or big, and that’s closest I’ve been (that I know of anyway). Why did I have to stay there to see him win? The unluckiest part of this whole thing was how I witnessed the man win right after me. Why can’t I just be happy for him? He might have needed it more than I did (though he didn’t show the slightest bit of enthusiasm). It didn’t matter.
I just created a new rule: Always turn around and get the hell out of there once you stand up from a machine.
A true testament to why you should never judge a book by it’s cover, or title in this case. Doyle Brunson, you are nothing short of a mastermind.
To my 7th follower
Thank you, Paris. I now finally have 7 followers on tumblr. I hated, Hated that for the past 10 months, I had 6. I don’t even think 7 people really follow me (seeing as how I sporadically and rarely update), and I have no idea how you found me dear 7th. But regardless, merci beaucop! (Yes, I had to google that.)
Gambling Gene pt. 3: “Date Night at Commerce?”
Ory: Happy Anniversary honey, I’m coming over after work.
Me (originally planned to go to Commerce at 5pm): Happy Anniversary, what time do you think you’ll get off today?
Ory: I’m going to leave at 4. Probably with traffic, I’ll be there 4:45 ish.
Me: Oh. Hm. What do you want to do?
Ory: I don’t know, what were you thinking?
Me: Want to go to Commerce?
Ory: Hell NO.
Me: Why not?
Ory: Hell no babe, why would we go there?
Me: It’s so fun and I’m really good. I’m good. I’m short this month on bills, I can make it tonight!
Ory: No, and I don’t want you ever going there.
Me: Why?!
Ory: Have you seen the people who go there? Sorry, no. Promise me you won’t go back. You have an addictive personality.
Me: It’s a hobby and I don’t have a fucking job.
Ory: I don’t want a girlfriend who frequents Commerce.
