After not posting for a while i figured it's about time.
My time in Brazil comes to an end and on saturday I'm going to move to Buenos Aires for another month in lovly South America.
Poker is being quite good atm but moar about this later. I was staying at a big mansion close to Praia Mole Beach the last 5 weeks living with alot of different poker related people. All in all was a good time, after carnival i needed some break from all the parties and drinking which result was working a shitload aka > 200 hours and > 200.000 Hands of Texas Holdem and only going out once on the weekend.
Living close to the beach had it's advantages and disadvantages. Being able to walk down to the shore in 3 minutes is kinda cool but on the other side there's not much else around here and especially since we returned our rental car mid march it kinda sucked for me mainly bc of the lack of restaurants. Yes, there were a couple of them at the beach but eating chicken nuggets each day is not really a good solution. The brightside with the current place was the private gym at our condo which i could use 24/7 so I managed to put in some good sessions and stay in shape for european summer which will be there soon.
Concerning Brazil overall it was a nice time for sure but I'm not really sure if I'll come back (at least for longer than a short trip) because if you don't speak portugese as already mentioned it is kinda tough. Obviously you can learn a language but this takes alot of time and effort and for sure you cannot learn to be fluent in 2 months... I definitely plan to learn a new language after seeing how important it really is but figure atm that spanish will have alot more value for me so i prolly try to focus on this.
I never would've expected it's that bad language wise here but it is. From what i've experienced i would say that roughly between 5-10% of Brazilians who are living here speaking english and Florianopolis is one of the rich tourist cities so I can only assume how bad it will be somewhere else. While I'm not expecting that a cashier at a supermarket or a guy who cleans the closet is speaking english I was shocked by the amount of people in my age who don't speak a single word english. I don't blame them, they don't really need it here but for me it obviously sucked. So with 80% of girls or boys in a nightclub you have no chance to communicate, slim chances you get directions on the street from anybody, no chance to call a restaurant to order food, big deal to rent a car if the one guy who speaks couple of words in english has his day off, etc. If you are here for a week that's not such a big deal but if you are here for 8 weeks and more like me it's getting annoying and kind of frustrating after a while.
Another big part as mentioned before are prices. I'm making good money atm so i couldn't care less but i still don't understand how people who having a normal job here manage to survive with their salaries... Entrance to a nightclub is always 30Euro++ for guys, in almost every restaurant i've been i paid at least 25euros for my meal and that can easily go up to 50 or 60euro and i'm not talking about baller places.
The brightside of my stay definitely were the people with whom i spent the time here. I cannot remember having an argument with anybody, we always had fun, made alot of party, spent alot of money, had a good time. If it wasn't for poker i wouldn't even know a single one of those kids :)
Tbh I'm kinda happy to leave now to spent some time in a big city, have restaurants around the corner, do some shopping and still maintain a good work schedule. So far i heard alot of positive stuff about Buenos Aires so I assume I'll gonna have a decent time there. Even if I travel there alone i know a bunch of other poker players who live in there so i will have some locals with me which should make life alot easier. Orginally i had planned to go to Rio for my last month in South America but after seeing the real estate prices there (i got one quote for a decent but non-baller 90m² 2bedroom apartment in Ipanema from 1april-22april for 7500EURO!!!) and a short conversation with a fellow poker mate from BA i decided that prices in BA suits my lifestyle alot better and on the other hand i get the chance to visit another country. Without too much hesitation i booked a nice loft in a very good and recommended neighbourhood for a decent price (at least
compared to Rio).
Already booked my flight back to Germany as well so i hope i don't like BA too much that i want to stay longer. Date for flight is 27th of april and for the first time in my life i booked business class for this 21 hour trip (mainly bc of the fact that it was only like 400Euro moar compared to the economy). Will arrive in Frankfurt on the 28th to catch up with some of my mates who doing something like a real job for a living. Looking forward to these meetings as well but first BA...
Prolly staying around a week in good old Germany, trying to schedule a visit with my parents as well and then it's time to return to my beloved home in Malta where my beloved Corvette is waiting eagerly to go for a spin...
Pokerwise as mentioned I'm having a good month. After a pretty rough start things going well. Games atm are insanely good from what I see and I have alot of fun playing and putting in alot of time atm for some sick reasons i don't understand. Like 2 weeks ago ZOOM poker got introduced, a new sort of game where once you folded you get directly moved to another table with different players and you directly getting
a new hand. I played 20-30k hands at NL100 here, because there is nothing higher atm (it's not even 100% confirmed that there ever will be) and i made decent profit there but in the end of the day it is NL100 and after basically playing 3 years only 200 and above i'm not really able to take it too serious and made alot of light calldowns or bluffs which were unnecessary... In the beginning of the month i moved 600 out of my filter because i wasn't to confident there but lately i feel alot better in this case so 600 is back being one of my regular games. I also have kind of a heater at 400 where I won over 6k alone this month in not too many hands. Not much more too say here besides just to show the garph. Month is not finished yet so i hope i can add teh one or teh other 100$ to it... Goal is obviously to have that long due 20.000US$ month but therefore I'll need to make 5k$ the next two days which is not an easy task...
