Service

Tony Soprano : You're looking good. Looking better.
Uncle Junior: Tony, if you're gonna lie to me, tell me there's a broad in the car waiting to tongue my balls.
Tony Soprano: Hey, You want that, it's a phone call away.

"The Sopranos"

Happy New Year! To one and all, and welcome back to the third year of Poker On Film.

2006 proved to be a very successful one for this here blog, about which I will go further into detail in my next instalment as I haven't had a chance to compile all my online results as yet. Offline, I was up on the year around the 1100BB mark. More on that later also.

This holiday period has been very slow and restful, and very welcomed even if I had no choice in the matter. Christmas at the in-laws was nearly as painful as predicted, and the cricket has been good if not a little one sided. In my time off (which ahs sadly now ended) I have managed to renew my video game obsession and spend quite a few hours watching Sopranos DVD's with the Distraction. Watching these on TV is nearly impossible in Australia, with the scheduling being all over the place when the show is in production, and at terrible hours to boot. DVD is the only way to watch TV these days.

I also spent some time watching season 1 of F-Troop, which was a Christmas present to someone other than myself this year. What a top show that was, can't wait for the rest to make it onto DVD for future consumption. I might even indulge later on in a bit of fantasy casting, if they were to remake this old show like they have so many others in the past few years.

I have not played online poker in what seems like a month or more, but I did manage to sneak out for a live game that Friday night. It was a game of two halves for me. Half the time I played poorly, and the other half I got unlucky. I doubled up on the second hand of the night, and it was downhill from there. In the end I was getting desperate and betting my draws, none of which came, but I kept betting them.

The game did have a sour note, with a few players leaving and vowing not to return. I don't think I can say anything positive about that so I'll leave it there. It was a real shame for the host.

Had a most peculiar incident at a restaurant on the weekend. We were at Darling Harbour for a friends birthday with a large group of people – for those not familiar with Sydney, Darling Harbour has heaps of restaurants and is on the left side of the Harbour Bridge that has the Opera House on the right, more or less. Anyway, there are lots of restaurants in this area, and most are quite pricy and you'd expect their standard of food to be the same – which it was, but just some terrible service ruined the night. The majority of the staff don't speak English, which can cause a bit of a problem. After making a few minor mistakes that were not worth worrying about, they neglected to serve one meal, to the host and birthday girl no less (27 years, so not a child). Not only did they refuse to correct the mistake, they argued with one member and another of the party at length – the owner this is – about why he should not have to supply the meal because his wait staff did not understand English properly and that caused the mistake. The stupidity of it was the restaurant was packed, we had a large group with a total bill over $800. You reckon he would have better things to worry about than the one missing dish. And now he has sent our entire party out who will now steer clear, and advise others to do the same. And the food was good too! Such a shame for them, but I guess that is their loss.

When it comes to service, I am pretty lax about it. When my main was brought out as an entrée instead, I didn't worry about it. No big deal. But forgetting the hosts meal, and then blaming us for not allowing mistakes from his non-English speaking staff, well that just got a bit ridiculous. But oh well, what can you do?