Bonus Time

Just a quick & small update. At Optus, along with the close of the financial year, its the time when the company hands out bonuses to its loyal employees. This includes me. on 15th June at 3:48am I received my bonus payment in full, and while I am not going to publicly disclose how much I received, I was very thankful for what I did get.

I gave some to the relatives. Got rid of the credit card (the debt, not the actual card, that things too convenient!) Bought a gift (or two), paid some annoying bills .. I wasn't able to splurge any of the money, which in some ways was a little disapointing, but I have cleared the necessities in life and am able to use the money to move forward.

Excellent!

Thanks for reading.


Ricky.
rick26j@gmail.com

We are the Champions!

The title says it all, really. This publication is a little delayed, but it's in writing all the same; last Sunday, my basketball team - The White Wolves - won our grand final basketball game. This marks the second time in three seasons that the squad has won the final game. It's a good acheivement for our core (the guys that have been together since the teams inception, brothers James & Aaron, and mate Olx). It shows how far as a team we've come, from barely being able to win, to a decent team, and now to the best in the competiton.

The Grand Finale itself was a close, intense game. Our opponents, the Los Amigos are a bit older and less athletic than we are, they play a slow game, which focuses on excellent passing and ball movement to wear down their defenders, and also taking high percentage shots. Our team, the Wolves were younger, and so we tried to run as often as we could, and use our youth to advantage in tiring our opponents.

The game was close from start to finish, with our opponents making their first three 3 point attempts, and we trailed as a team 24 - 19 at halftime. During the intermission we decided as a team to attack them on defense. We would guard the Amigos for the complete length of the court from start to finish, as opposed to our normal strategy where we guard them from half-court onward. The defense paid off, as we took them out of there rhythim and they fought for every point from there onward.

I personally didn't have my best game, but with less than two minutes remaining, I made a 3 pointer which gave our team the lead for good at 49 - 47. From that point onward, we did not look back.

The photo above is of our team, from left to right: James, Aaron, myself, Bobby, Marty and Olx.

Bring on the next season!

Ricky.
rick26j@gmail.com

Gambling Hand

So lately James has been getting me into this Poker thing. I flirted with the game a little in '06. I went to some friends places, hosted a Poker evening, even went to a couple of tournaments, but I never really played seriously. I never played for money. And, James being James was probably the most likely person I know to actually back the game up with his finances. He's been playing pretty consistently over the past month or so. How successful he is, I am not too sure. I know he's definitely had his good streaks and he's definitely had his cold ones.

This weekend was a little different. I had a few loose dollars in an old savings account which I hadn't touched for a solid six months. I decided that it was just sitting there, and, while I wasn't keen on loosing it, I wanted to see what I could make of it. So, James and I sat down in front of the computer, two beers each and $150 (of my money) to lose.

Because you're smart, you've probably realised that had I not gone so well I probably wouldn't be publicly admitting to you all about how foolish I was to throw away my money. So yes, you're right. I won. In about two hours the $150 had jumped to $410 ($260 winnings!) Having taken a few nerve-wracking (not to mention fortunate) hands, I decided the last thing I wanted was to lose what I had. So I asked James to withdraw our winnings, which we would split, and we played on with $150 remaining. Within an hour, we had lost that amount.


Despite wanting to win some more money, I decided to call it a day as I didn't want to lay my secured winnings on the line. So that was that. I held onto my initial $150, and James and I split the surplas two-ways. We could have done better, we could have done worse. It is what it is. Overall, I earned more than a day's honest wages in three hours total. Not too shabby.

Anyway, it's getting late in the afternoon now. Johanna's coming over and we're going to a Filipino Restaurant in Sydney's West. We haven't been there for a while, so it should be a good one.

Thanks for reading.


Ricky.
rick26j@gmail.com