Tao of Pauly

It's Tuesday Here and Monday There

By Pauly
Melbourne, Australia

I always get confused when I'm in Australia. When I work on my laptop, it's set up for ET, so I always know what time it is in NYC since it's the center of the universe. Poker sites base their events on US ET. As do all sporting events (which I may or may not bet on).

I also rig the clock on my laptop so I know the time to make sure I meet specific deadlines. So I'm looking at it and it says 7:25pm on Monday but it's 11:25am on Tuesday in Australia. I know. I know... just add 8 hours and subtract a day to figure out what time it is in NYC.

I preferred living/working in Europe because we were ahead of the US by five or six hours. I could actually make phone calls at 3am because friends were still up back in the States.

My new friend has been this site... World Clock. Some of my clients are based out of Las Vegas. One is based out of Sweden another in the UK, and then I also do work for an Australian based company. My friends are scattered about the US in various time zones, my girlfriend lives on the West Coast, and my brother is in NYC.

Yes, it gets confusing sometimes, but the World Clock instantly tells me what time it is in that particular city, so I know that my emails will get answered during business hours in that particular time zone or if it's too late or too early to call someone. Without it I'm lost. For some reason I always fuck up making time calculations when jumping the international dateline.

Anyway...

My vivid and bizarre dreams have returned. For some odd reason, I recall more of my dreams in Australia. This is my third trip inside of 13 months and that's been the one theme that has been common among all he trips. Nicky experienced the vividness during her last trip and she's experiencing the same thing on this trip. Conversely, when my friend Ali (who's from Sydney) travels to America, she has extremely vivid dreams. I think it's some sort of dream exchange program with Aussies and Americans.

Then again, I also think that working inside a casino messes up your head. I logged 16 hours the first day, 12 hours on the second day, and 14 plus hours yesterday. 40+ hours of work in three days. Fun. Fun. Fun.

I have been getting some sleep, mostly because my body is tired by the time I crawl back up to my room. But the beds are comfy. The Crown Casino has two different hotels... a nice one and a swanky one. In my previous two trips I stayed at the Promenade. It's one of the better hotels that I stayed in over the last few years. It's not quite the Bellagio in Vegas or Le Meridien in Monte Carlo or the Princess in Barcelona, but it's close. However, I'm staying in the swanky "Towers" on this trip which compares to those other places.

The room at the Towers is a few notches up with a fat ass Plasma screen. There's a very comfortable reading chair where I have been sitting and thumbing through my New Zealand guide book every morning. We also have an actual "changing room" with a big closest and space for multiple sets of luggage. That's also where the safe is located, just in case you wanna break into my room and steal my iPod and bankroll.

Ah, you can tell the opulence of a hotel by the size and detail of the bathroom. The Towers has an amazing bathroom set up. It's spacious and bigger than some bedrooms I've lived in during my life, with marble floors and a jacuzzi/bathtub. There's a "private" shitter inside the bathroom with a glass door, along with a separate shower which is as big as some NYC studio apartments. I mean our entire bathroom from our apartment in Barcelona could fit inside the shower here.

We also have a scale. It lists weights in Stone and Kilos. It's slightly off, but according to the scale, I lost almost a 1/2 a stone since I arrived.

Our friend Jules played in the tournament that I covered on Monday. She busted out shortly before the dinner break, but it seemed like she had fun. I got to snap a cool pic of her. Sometimes you get lucky and can capture someone's personality with a picture. I managed to do that yesterday.

In the first three events in the Aussie Millions, an 18-year old kid from Canada who wore braces took second place in Event #1; a local famous fashion designer won event #2; and 20-year old internet pro from Illinois won Event #3. Yeah, that's poker.

I have the late shift tonight, which means I have the next seven hours to kill. That's perfect time for me to catch up on some work and figure out plans for New Zealand. We have flights to and from... but no accommodations just yet. That's #1 on my to do list.

Unlike Otis (who's working a tournament in the Bahamas), I might actually get to eat two meals today... a proper lunch and an actual sit down dinner since I don't work until 7pm.

Ah, I forgot to mention that at any given time, either cricket or The Simpsons is on the TV in my hotel room. There's was a controversial match the other day between Australia and India which seems to be making headlines down under. I'm still a cricket novice but I'm slowly learning how to gamble on it. It's the beginning of the end for me.

On the NFL playoffs, I went 2-2 yet managed to turn a slight profit although I'm not betting the insane amounts that I did in 2007. I have a softer and milder approach to sports betting this year, in hopes to curtail my degenerate behavior.

That's it for now, my time is up. Go read this post on Tao of Poker called Art and Masturbation.