Nat Arem's Blog

I’ve been back from Costa Rica for a few days now. I spent 8 days there mainly for work stuff but I also went out to Manuel Antonio with yellowsub86. We went to the same place as last January and once again it was a lot of fun. Maybe a bit too short because we had less than 48 hours out at the beach but it was still a good time. P5er Nickc011 and his wife also joined us on the trip so that was fun. As per usual, the sunset there was incredible:

ahh_snap and his girlfriend were thinking about flying down but unfortunately they couldn’t make it down. Too bad for them but hopefully next time.

The night before we went out to the beach was our company’s Christmas party in San Jose, Costa Rica. It was at a Hilton hotel kind of near the Juan Santamaria airport (the big airport in San Jose) and it was a great time. There were probably about 100 people there and, after dinner, we had a freeroll for anyone who wanted to play. Something like 70 people played (Nickc011 ended up winning) and I think I finished around 15th or so but I’m not totally sure. Considering most of the people there barely knew the rules of poker it was obviously a total donkfest but I guess that isn’t a bad thing. I had a ton of fun playing in it and I’m already looking forward to next year. Here’s a picture of me at the company party with our customer service manager, sub and his girlfriend.

I spent this past week in our offices in Escazu, Costa Rica (kind of a suburb of San Jose). We’re making some huge changes to PocketFives and I spent quite a bit of time working on that. The whole site is being rewritten into PHP and we’re moving it to different forum software so obviously that is quite a project. We’re also redesigning it and changing around some things while trying to keep it unique and retain the P5s feel. Not only that, we’re reworking a lot of stuff about how we actually program the site to make a lot of things more efficient and used correctly. If you think about it, no other poker website has as much information about it’s users and, if we apply that knowledge to the site, we can offer a ridiculously customized and useful interface. It will take a long time to get most of my key ideas implemented but needless to say I am happy that I’m running P5s and able to make the decisions on how to make it much better than it has been historically. Look for a new P5s in 2010 and expect a bunch of posts from me about it along the way.

Another cool thing I did was go to the PokerStars Christmas party. It was a huge party with probably 500 plus people. PokerStars apparently has these sorts of parties at their offices all over the world but the Costa Rica one is quite large because they have a lot of support employees there. I was invited by a friend of mine who is a senior-level employee there and I was happy to tag along (to be fair, he mentioned the party earlier in the day and I was like “so how do I get in??” — thereby basically inviting myself). I met a bunch of PokerStars employees and it was generally a great time. Here’s a video of some employees dunking their boss in a reverse dunk tank sort of thing (throw a ball at a paddle, lots of water falls on someone):

The employees bid for the right to throw the ball at the paddle and all of the money went to charity. They paid nearly $200 (105,000 colones) for the right to get that guy soaking wet. Something like 10 managers got water dumped on them. Here’s what the crowd looked like just as someone was about to get water dumped on them:

Here’s a picture of me at the party with two guys who are quite a big deal but I am sure they don’t want me to say their full names or positions so I will hold off on that:

I would have posted a different pic but I don’t really have a better one of me from the party. I spent more time talking than taking pictures which is probably something I should do more often.

During my extensive travels over the last few years, I’ve officially concluded that Costa Ricans (or, at least, people who go to Costa Rica) are huge airplane travel donks. On pretty much every flight among my last 10 trips in and out of Costa Rica they’ve had to admonish people over the PA system over and over for not following the rules. For instance, on my last two flights in and out, both times people were standing up and opening overhead compartments while the plane was still taxing to the gate after landing. In one of them the person actually refused multiple requests over the PA in spanish and english and the flight attendant actually had to go down the aisle to force her to sit down. Another example is when my MIA-SJO flight was boarding last week, they did the usual “we would like to pre-board passengers needing special assistance” and immediately like 50 people jumped into line and crowded around the gate while refusing to get out of the way as people said “excuse me” and such to get onto the plane. They actually had to make a second announcement to ask people to sit down and wait for their zone number and even then probably only half of the crowd dissipated. But that was enough to let people onto the plane so I guess the gate attendants let it slide. Normally I would write this off as a weird coincidence or maybe something that just happens all the time but that isn’t the case. I’ve been on plenty of flights this year that didn’t involve Costa Rica. I was on flights like Johannesburg, South Africa to Maun, Botswana, Philadelphia to San Diego, Grand Cayman to Charlotte, Miami to Atlanta, Las Vegas to Houston, etc and there was nothing like the problems that are always present on Costa Rica flights (at LEAST the last 10 I’ve been on, if not more). I think they need to give people traveling to and from Costa Rica pamphlets on how to handle themselves because clearly they have no idea what they’re supposed to be doing when they fly.

Also, since I just put up some pictures of myself up there, I might as well talk about the weight thing. I’ve been on a healthy eating and general health binge pretty much since May of this year. In that time period I’ve lost about 50 lbs and I’m down to 180 lbs right now (I’m 6’0″ tall). This is BY FAR the lowest I’ve been in a very long time. I think I was around 200 lbs when I graduated high school and I haven’t been lower since then. I am pretty sure I haven’t been 180 lbs since like sophomore year of high school although I can’t really remember my weights and ages so it’s hard to say for sure. All I know is that pretty much everyone who sees me now after a few months of not seeing me says I pretty much look like a different person. This goes for my lifelong friends who I saw over Thanksgiving to my friends in Costa Rica who I just saw last week. That wasn’t my primary goal but it is nice to hear because it’s affirmation that what I’m trying to do has been working.

Overall, it’s been very rewarding to see the weight come off as I change my lifestyle. It has really reinforced for me the idea that this sort of thing really just comes down to how much you want it and that you need real willpower to get it done. Almost everyone who says they want to lose weight but can’t is just lying to themselves and they just don’t want it badly enough. They want an easy way out and they don’t have any desire to really change how they eat and how they exercise. Admittedly I haven’t always had that desire but something clicked for me earlier this year and I can’t imagine eat/living any other way at this point. I feel like I really understand both sides of the coin because I have been in both camps at some point in my recent life. No one who’s fat can say to me “you don’t know what it’s like” because, after all, I was once nearly 260 lbs in 2007. I do know exactly what it’s like. If you let it, food can be quite addicting and it can control your life. I have a pretty good recollection of what it feels like when you feel like you literally cannot turn down bad food. Or that one more bad meal or bad dish won’t make a big difference. Trust me, I’ve made every excuse in the book at some point. It really just comes down to desire and willpower. You either have it or you don’t and you won’t get anywhere substantial and long-lasting until you figure out how to keep yourself in line. That took me a number of years but I think I have it figured out this time.

If you’re struggling with weight, I would recommend thinking long and hard about why you have a problem and why you want to weigh less. Once you’ve really understood the problem and issues it becomes a lot easier to fix the problem. Randomly attacking it with fad diets and such doesn’t work because it doesn’t address the root problem. Previously, I would eat less and/or exercise more and, sure, I would lose weight. But I never really addressed the problem of overall diet composition and how to cut out my cravings for bad food. Once I fixed the underlying issues it has become quite easy to lose weight and get healthier. I expect to lose a decent amount more weight in the coming months and hopefully put on some muscle even as I’m dropping more fat.

Happy holidays to everyone. Have a safe, happy and healthy holiday season.