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The calm after the storm

Posted on December 4, 2012 by Kaibobble

Well, all I need to do is post this picture and they say a picture says a thousand words. This is the goddamn life. I can’t think of a word that expresses the tranquillity of this place.

I don’t think I could have picked a more perfect location if I searched the ends of the earth. I have absolutely fallen in love with this area and already feels like home.

Don’t get me wrong it’s not always a bed of roses like people think. “Ah MBN sat in Spain in the sun and sipping Sangria”. It’s most definitely not a holiday, it’s pretty much work as usual.

The weather has been pretty horrendous, massive winds up to 80km which kept blowing my playing cards all around the garden. I keep finding jokers under the shrubs to this day. Also pretty heavy rain, the pool nearly flooded and the plastic duck nearly got away.

To get anything done here you need an NIE/NIF number, seriously to do anything!!! Couldn’t even top up my phone credit online without it. To get this it’s a bit of a ballache, so anyone coming over I would advise to get this done before you come. There are plenty of people that will do it online for a small fee. Otherwise you need about 3 trips to Benidorm if you need to get it quick, and when I say quickly, I mean Spanish quick which is a week. Mañana MY ASS!!!

You have to go to the police station, get a form, and go get it signed and stamped by a bank for a small fee. Go back to the police station with the form and then go back after a week to get the number.

Doesn’t sound too bad, but when Spain is only alive about 2 hours a day and they seem to have a bank holiday one day a week, it can get goddamn frustrating.

So I needed this NIE number to get a car, and to get the NIE number I needed a car. Oh that’s a sticky situation. It meant I had to hire cars at €160 a week.

Finally got it all sorted and bought a little run around, it’s quite an old car but low mileage. If it lasts 6 months I’m happy. I’ve named it Tulisa (I watch too much XFactor!!!)

I have also learned a few dodgy car dealers (or flaglettes as apparently the Germans call them) round here, so please msg me if you’re looking to buy a car in this area.

Hopefully will be able to afford a cool car next year if have some nice poker wins. I thought best to start cheap until I get used to driving on the wrong side. I’m bound to have a bump or two.

Flew back to the UK to play the Genting Poker Series in Sheffield, I was really looking forward to this weekend. Had a mishap where the airport bus didn’t show up and cost me €127 in taxi fare. This is still in dispute and won’t be lying down without a fight.

The weekend was a good one, pretty unusually quiet for a poker weekend. No mad benders for a change. Even Darren Craven was drinking tea!!!!

Had some nice meals in the restaurant with Paul Jackson and the gang, had 3 steaks (not all in one sitting), he does look after me bless him. Had to share one of the steaks with Zimbler as it was so big. In fact it was probably bigger than both of us put together.

Poker was the usual. The main was standard, happy with my play. But was chipped up in the side event and blew it in absolute epic fashion. So mad at myself!!!

I knew my head wasn’t in it; this has been an exhausting rollercoaster. I’ve since come back and got my head into gear.

I was glad to get out of there to be honest; I’m starting to really see from a clear window view all the negative dark colours.

I felt such joy to land back and see the big Costa Blanca rock.

Charlie is away in Prague all this month dealing at the GSOP and WPT. It feels weird being here without her. I think we definitely a good mix of people, we both very similar in a lot of ways (apart from she is crazy) both intelligent logical people, and throw in the fact we have some severe differences in political viewpoint, it leads to some great debates. I think we are very equally matched, and about 1000 games of Gin have proved that.

She also an amazing cook, been eating really good here. I think we have an arrangement that she cooks and I clean up after.

I’m planning on heading back to Blackpool for Xmas and also a few days in Notts maybe. No way can I stay here a whole month and then through Xmas on my own. I would actually lose my marbles.

Although my social life is picking up already, I have 2 friends called George, one English and one German. Out for lunch Saturday with my Cousin and I’m off for drinks tomorrow with my neighbour’s daughter Lelia, she looks like a cool girl and she speaks Spanish, English and German. That’s seems to be bloody standard here.

I had an awkward situation closed in this old French woman’s house trying to ask her about a car for sale, we both didn’t speak much Spanish so was trying to point at things in my phrase book. FML!!!

So from now to Xmas, I’m going to get my head down, learning my Spanish, playing my poker, doing my work and just relax.

I hope the sun comes out a bit before now and Xmas so I can come back to the UK with a bit of colour. Bored of the white jokes already.

Peace out people, I hope you come to Spain soon 😀

Mission Accomplished

Posted on October 28, 2012 by Kaibobble

Well I’ve done it!!!!! I’m finally here and so far best decision I have ever made.

So to continue where I left off….

Got back from the 10 day trip to Spain after we found our new home. With complete excitement now I knew where I was moving to, it made me more motivated to get everything sorted.

Every day for 2 weeks I allocated 2-3 hours a night to pack and sort things. It was a case of just having a load of boxes and distributing things for storage, Spain, the tip, my friends and the charity shop.

I think it taught me a great lesson on never to hoard stuff I don’t use or need in future, I was finding all sorts of crap that I had kept for 10-15 years, never seen, never used and was thinking “Why on earth did I keep this”.

Had a slight embarrassing moment when I took some bags to the tip and the tip men stumbled upon my “female toys” and decided to wave them about while I was stood right in front of them all. FML!!!!

I think the secret to calmly achieving a huge move like this is just to break down the tasks and not look at the whole picture.

I remember an episode of friends where Chandler is about to marry Monica and he gets cold feet and runs off. Ross goes to find him in his office to try and lure him home. In an attempt to calm him down he says to try and just take it a step at a time.

“Y’know, okay. You’re right. It is huge. So why don’t we take it just a little bit at a time? Okay? Umm, forget getting married for a sec; just forget about it. Can you just come home and take a shower?”

All you have to do is write lists of what needs to be achieved and by when. “Pack box and take to the tip by Wednesday”….that doesn’t seem too hard or scary does it.

A little bit at a time and this is the end result

storage

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The weekend I actually moved out was quite a mix of emotions. I was sad to move out of my house, I was sad to sell my car, I was sad to say goodbye to all my friends…but overall just so excited about my new adventure to come.

I stayed at Math, Penny and Nick’s house in Long Eaton for the weekend as my flight wasn’t until Monday and had to move out my house by the Saturday.

They very kindly drove me to the airport, which I really appreciated. Said goodbye and headed on the plane

So arrived Monday night and stayed in a hotel in Alicante. Went to the train station the next day to hire a car and head to the Villa. Everything went swimmingly. Managed to find the place again and get all settled in.

Went to the supermarket to stock up and did an entire shop for €29…bargain!!!

Here are a few random pictures around my new house.

Spain House

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I was a bit worried as Charlie left for a job the day I got there so was going to be on my own for 2 weeks. But I was brave and ventured out to the local restaurant to find some friends.

Luckily I spotted a car rental place on the way which I met my first friend Joerg. He’s a nice helpful German chap (that also speaks in 4 languages).

Unfortunately my shipment got delivered on the Friday and it looked like they had dropped my computer tower from a great height…. OMG!!!!

Out of everything that was the one thing I needed to get there safe. Everything else is replaceable. Thankfully I had taken out the main hard drive to carry as hand luggage so I didn’t lose all my files.

Joerg has kindly found me a new case for my computer as I wouldn’t have even known where to go. Things are very different here and will be a huge learning curve.

So on the Saturday I wandered down to the car rental place and we ended up going to a little beach bar for the afternoon. Apparently I was very smiley…. I just feel so relaxed and happy here.

Had a really nice day and then headed to the casino at night. It was a real ballache drive so don’t think I will be doing that too often.

I ended up sat next to a guy from Blackpool that moved here 2 months ago with his GF and plays quite a bit of poker.

Poker didn’t go to well, I shouldn’t play Holdem cash… I’m just so bad at it and then somehow managed to get a little lost driving home which was annoying.

So that brings us up to date. Next week I have plans with Joerg, he’s going to take me to a German beer festival a few towns over. Have a feeling that could get messy, I always try to keep up with the big boys and end up on the floor.

I’m also going to nip over and see my Cousin Helen who lives in the next town.

This move has just been the best feeing ever. You can get too caught up in your own little life bubble where things seem so important and you end up stressing over the smallest things. When really there is so much more out in the world to see and new people to meet, if you are generally unhappy with things then don’t sit about and moan…make changes for the better.

I’m so happy right now :DDDDDD

Mi Casa Españolas

Posted on September 20, 2012 by Kaibobble

Well, I wish I had kept up with the blogging more often as now have too much to talk about and I have forgotten most of it.

So, going back to the last blog entry of trying to sort my stuff out and arranging our Amsterdam trip. Amsterdam was amazing as it always is. I love the fact there is always so many people yet always such a quiet peaceful place.

We booked in the Plaza across from the Train Station, where as it was a nice hotel, I think I would rather go back to my usual haunts. They kept locking us out the room for various annoying reasons which wouldn’t have been that much of an inconvenience, however our room was about 10 mins walk from the reception each time. Which is annoying when you’re knackered and just want to climb into bed.

So we had a chilled out time and just got all our plans sorted for Spain, flights booked, estate agents set up, accommodation sorted.

The weather was gorgeous so had a wander round in the sunshine. There are always weird and wonderful people in the Dam, including the infamous guy that dances with a flower pot on his head and Charlie took a shine to this guy and his didgeridoo.

The man and his pipe

So our flights to Spain were booked for the 10^th Sept, we had only planned on staying in Alicante for 3 nights and then to move up the coast to experience different areas. It was all a little alien to me not having the whole trip planned, hadn’t even booked a return flight, however with Charlie being a crazy travelling gypsy she was used to travelling about, she even stayed in Amsterdam an extra week after I left… just because she could. I kind of envy that quality in a person.

So we got to Alicante late on the Monday and popped out for some food, not realising what a crazy adventure was yet to come.

We quite quickly realised that Alicante wasn’t the place for us, where as it was nice and was near the Casino and Airport, it was more a place you went on holiday and not to live. So we arranged some viewings further up the coast in Moraira, Benitachell and Javea. This meant it was over an hour drive each way.

We set off day one and went to hire a car, luckily they didn’t have any of the lower band cars available so were bumped up to a little white Beetle (we named her Thelma) I was so nervous as never driven on the wrong side of the road before and didn’t even really understand the way of the Spanish roads.

On exiting the car rental, I nearly ran someone over, stalled and then crashed into a bollard at the first toll booth (luckily no damage). After the first day I got the hang of it, thankfully the roads were quite chilled out and people seemed to have a lot of patience.

All in all we drove nearly 800 miles and for people who know me I DID IT ALL WITHOUT A SAT NAV!!!! Couldn’t believe how awesome we did, I tend to still get lost in Nottingham and lived here over 4 years.

Thelma

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So we would set off around 10am in the morning dropping in estate agents that we found trying to arrange viewings. It was very stressful as the Spanish work at half pace and then they also go for a siesta around 2pm till about 4pm. So sometimes we were still viewing houses at 7pm, drive back to the hotel, grab some food and it would be about 11pm and ready for bed.

We then booked a hotel in Calpe which was much nearer the places we wanted to view. We managed to find the place on day 4. It was NOTHING like it said on the internet. It was in fact a dingy little hostel with no parking or anything it said it had on the website.

Problem is when you get away from the main cities, English becomes sparser and with Charlie and me only being able to speak a few words it was quite difficult at times.

We managed to get an English person on the phone and told them no way were we paying what they expected to stay here and we managed to cancel the booking.

EEEEEEP now no place to stay!!!! Thankfully my half cousin lives in Benitachell. I think I have only met her a few times so was a bit nervous ringing her and asking if we could crash for the night.

She hasn’t lived here herself for too long, she moved with her husband into a beautiful villa. Unfortunately he passed away suddenly a few months back and she is now living on her own.

We ended up staying 2 nights, which saved us a bucket and she is a lovely lady, will definitely keep in touch more when I move over. I’m sure I will be able to help her out with things.

So back to bobbing round looking at Villas, sounds good but I promise it was quite stressful. It was trying to find something that was a good price, near shops and amenities and had everything we needed.

As it happened we ended up settling on one that we saw on the first day. Charlie really liked it but I wasn’t so sure. We went back to have a second look and it was 10 times better than the first time we looked (maybe as we had now seen what else we could get for different costs).

Check out our new home!!!!!

Spanish Home

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Its a few minutes from Moraira centre with only 10 minute drive to Benitachell and Javea.

The bottom part of the house is self contained apartment with bedroom, living room and kitchen, perfect for my office.

Then upstairs is 2 double bedrooms, the living room is the circular bit top left, kitchen and the top right is outside dining area.

Outside, private pool and BBQ area and garage for parking.

All for €750 a month!!!!!

Now we had our house sorted we thought we could relax a little, however it didn’t quite transpire that way.

We decided to drive to Valencia and stay there for a night. We got up on the Sunday and everything was closed so decided to head to Barcelona which should have been a 4 hour drive. We did stop once for food and then hit major traffic jam which added an hour on to the journey. Once we got into Barcelona we got slightly lost forgetting how big it was.

We had basically been navigating using bits of maps we picked up (that weren’t very helpful) and saving screenshots of google maps on our laptops (as we couldn’t always find Wifi spots…and loved going round asking the Spanish for it as they pronounce it weefee). However the laptop died before we found the place we were staying in. So it ended up a 9 hour trip!!!!! Yawn!!!! And the drivers round Barcelona were less chilled out and it got a little scary.

The rest of the trip we did a bit of sightseeing and wandering round before heading back from Barcelona to East Midlands.

Spain Adventure

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I’m definitely more motivated to get my stuff sorted now as I just want to get over there. It’s such a cool place and our house is gorgeous.

I think my adventure/blog is working as planned by inspiring other people to also travel and highlight that it’s not too much of a crazy idea. Since my plans about 6 of my friends have or are planning to travel/move countries.

Hopefully people will come and visit me in Spain. If anything the thing I will miss most is my friends. <3

Insurance Claim….?

Posted on August 7, 2012 by Kaibobble

Ah man, I’m just too damn lazy to move house. I keep looking at my mountains of stuff and I just feel like starting a bonfire in my garden.

I finally took the majority of my clothes to the hospice today, it just showed the essence of good karma as I bought a nice handbag for £1.50 and also nearly bagged a date with a charming gentleman with dreadlocks that swooped in and offered to help me bring the bags from my car.

I start packing up some of my DVD’s when I stop for a facebook check, as you do every 5 minutes, and find a very intriguing message. Charlie: “Heading to Amsterdam, wanna join and plan our trip”…. I mean how do you turn that down?….really!!!!

So now the plan is, go to Amsterdam, to plan our Holiday to Spain, which is to organise the move there. Life is pretty good!!!

Busy times coming up, planning on visiting Blackpool to see all my friends back home, down to Portsmouth with some other friends. Can’t seem to sit still for five minutes.

Had the weekend in Stoke for the Genting Poker Series event. Brilliant weekend, I love catching up with everyone, the Bankroll Supply lot are all mint. Poker didn’t quite go my way but made up for it with Vodka redbulls at the bar till 4am two nights running. Was definitely ready for home by the Sunday, I’m too old for that shit.

Actually got sad that I wouldn’t see everyone for ages, so I think I have decided I might fly back over for the Sheffield one in November. It will cost about £100 for flights and same for hotel. Have to see how things go.

Had a birthday few weeks back. Also leaving party for two of my friends, Cherry gone off to Thailand teaching English, and Liz gone to Newcastle to teach at a new school. Been missing them already and wish them well in their adventures. <3

Ugh just in between all this NEED TO SORT STUFF!!!!

I just wish I could click my fingers and all my belongings would be in a house in Spain. It really does suck having to sell almost everything.

Keep telling myself that it’s all stuff that I don’t even use anymore, CDs I don’t listen to, books I don’t read. Just clutter that I keep lugging from house to house that sits and collects dust.

I’m tempted to drop the lot off to a charity, super charge my good karma into a new start.

Oh My Sunny Days!!!!

Posted on June 23, 2012 by Kaibobble

The continued attempt to be less geeky has failed again…. “Yes, another self absorbed blogger”… I hear you say.

I found an old number of Blog posts on MySpace that I used to update about 4 years ago; I remember packing it in as it always felt like homework. I used to go to a poker event and then come home and then ramble about my weekend, similar to being back at school in English class.

This time however I have a different reason for starting a blog, I don’t want to bore the world with bad beat stories and idle poker chit chat, I’m sure there is more in this world than that….and I’m going to find out.

My plan is to go off travelling for a year, starting (hopefully) in Barcelona come this October. I have already informed a lot of my close friends, family and work clients and noticed the most common reaction to the news was “WOW, always wanted to do something like that, so Jealous!!!!”… So my aims are to try and blog about the whole process and maybe even inspire others to take the leap and go and experience the world.

Two of my inspirations for doing this are Cos and Amatay who went on a fun filled trip to Thailand. Reading through their blog posts every other week and seeing what an amazing time they had really made me realise that there is so much more to see, rather than being sat behind a computer screen 14 hours a day. (If you want to read their antics click here)

So to bring you up to speed, here is what I have done and planned so far:

My biggest worry was my business, I have been struggling to manage everything recently as sometimes things get a bit crazy and I essentially try to work within 3 job roles, Developer, Support, General Admin. It’s not easy having all that on your shoulders for one tiny person.

So I have managed to get onboard a nice young developer chap that will be taking over the majority of the development work and I can take on a more manager role and deal with the admin side of things. The good thing about my job is I can work from anywhere as long as I’m plugged in.

I believe this could be a good step forward for my business; I just could never work enough hours to generate 2 incomes and be able to afford to take on a second person. This way I will have much lower living costs than I do in the UK and also would like to get a few odd jobs away from the computer, so hopefully will be able to build things up over the next year and have a proper functional business with employees and everything HOW GROWD UP AM I!!!!

I also have a few online sites that generate some income, namely Poker Satellite Centre, make sure you all sign up so you can keep me fed while I’m away

So this is the stage I am at currently, training up the newbie. Drawing up contracts and getting everything sorted.

Then the next bit is the one I’m not looking forward to, selling and sorting all my stuff out. I slowly wandered around my house the other week analysing my personal belongings. What a lot of crap we build up over the years. When I said to myself “What would I actually NEED to take with me” it’s actually very little. Why do we hoard all this pointless material rubbish?!?!

So yeah, it will be car boot sales, ebay etc etc. I plan to put my bigger/expensive items in storage and take any high value items to my mums. Sadly I realised that my Hard Drive is probably the one thing I would be distraught over if I lost, not only from a business work perspective but the years of pictures, videos and a bucket load of music I have collected.

A lot of things such as bookcases, coffee tables etc, I may just get rid of. It works out cheaper paying £60 for new ones when I get back than storing such big items for a year.

I’m also planning to sell my car, funnily enough I worked out that I would finishing paying off the car loan in October. Definitely a sign!!!! So that should give me some extra start up money.

Once I have all my stuff sorted, then the planning of where I’m going and what I’m doing. FINALLY THE FUN BIT!!!!!

I have a couple of friends that are interested in doing the same thing. So hopefully it will work out that we do this together, however if that falls through I will still be doing it on my own. Even started to learn Spanish but I’m pretty rubbish. I can say about 3 things and I can’t roll my “R”s. Not to worry, I downloaded a speech translator on my iPod.

Don’t really want to make too many plans for the actual trip, although I really would like to travel about a bit and live in a few different European Countries, I figure if I like somewhere I don’t want to have to move on for the sake of it. Or if I meet some crazy hippies that are going over to Australia or somewhere I may just hop along on their happy bus.

There are definitely things I’m going to miss, especially my friends. I’m lucky in that I have some amazing mates but hopefully they will come and visit me abroad, I’m sure they will as it’s a cheap holiday… bloody freeloaders lol :p

I’m also going to really miss Nottingham. I will have lived here for 4 years by the time I go and it felt like home the moment I landed. So much cool stuff here such as DTD Poker club and has great restaurants/nightlife. Again I have made some amazing friends and would most likely move back here (if I do move back).

One thing I’m not going to miss is Poker. I might still play on occasion while I’m away to keep my game up, probably more live than online as the Spanish Poker laws changed this year and there are no longer many sites that allow Spanish players. Although I have always done well at poker and again met some really cool people along the way, I do think it can be a very toxic environment for many reasons. I have made some very naive mistakes the last year in trusting the wrong people which has come and bit me in the ass. But lessons learned I hope, silver lining I do think it has more impact when you learn from your own mistakes. Fool me once, shame on you…. fool me twice, shame on me.

The main thing is that there always seems to be a severe lack of justice, and at the end of the day I don’t want to live in a world like that. I don’t want to always have to watch my own back and worrying about the people I can trust. I know the world in general can be like that but unfortunately in the Poker scene, probably because of its nature it can attract the lowest of characters, it seems to be quite an evil place at times.

Anyway, this is turning out to be quite a ramble and apologies for such a text based first post, but I’m sure there will be lots of cool pictures and videos to come for the people that can’t process reading the English language very well.

All in all, exciting times ahead

I will miss everyone loads but hopefully keep in touch on FB.

Peace out folks!!!!