My Mexican Cruise (Dec 16-24)

I have to say I didn't expect a cruise to be as much fun as this one was. My buddy Dipak is a working stiff and only gets like 3 weeks vacation a year and so we decided to take a cruise together and NO we are Not Gay!

-Amtrak's are Dope!-

We took the Amtrak train down to San Diego and it was a cool as experience. I had never been on the Amtrak and I made sure to bring some good reading materials which i didn't even pick up. We started early and met some cool ass people and drank a shit load of beers on the train ride over. Everyone was heading to a San Diego Chargers game cause the train drop them off very close to the Stadium. Great for Angels games too cause it actually stops right in front of the Anaheim Stadium. Wet the coolest Old couple on the train. Dick and Mary I believe was there names and they had been married for over 50 years and so so liberal and not stuffy at all. The old man has Parkinson's and is a bit slow on the outside but full of live and laughter inside. His wife was a riot and we were joking with her as if she were our age. Train ride was great and the rest of the trip just got better.

The Cruise we took was an 8 Day one heading for Acapulco, Zihuatinaho/Ixtapa, and Manzanillo. We arrive at the port and checked in and went straight to the bar for some celebratory Cruise drinks and we were drunk every night thereafter. We had no idea how cruises worked and for dinner we finally found our table and luckily had 5 cool ass single people at it. There was Adrian(aka smoky) and Ben(aka bunz) from the dirty south, Danielle and Michelle(cousins), Moises(aka CHE) and Dipak and I. We checked on a grip of alcohol and had our own lil bar in the room so you know we were drinking hard!!

The first night I was a wimp and very jetlagged as I had just returned from Europe the day before the cruise so I crashed out early. The nest day I woke to find Dipak rambling on about how much fun he had the night before(don't you hate it when you miss fun shit I sure do).
I played a crapshoot of a poker tournament in the morning and ran around drinking and met the coolest old dude alive Ron(aka Ronslezzy). Ron had crazy stories of how he hooked up with a 19 year old 8 months ago and gave her head(lol, old dudes call going down on a girl that i guess) and some other stories of banging Supreme Court Justices . He was instantly one of the boys and so we invited him to eat with us as our table wasn't full. Also on the 2nd day I met the hottest Mom on the Boat Michelle(aka Milfy) and her 19 year old daughter Vanessa(aka dmv). So almost every night we had the ultimate crew eating with us and hungout doing all kinds of fun shit together.

-Acapulco-

All of the boat's excursion trips were overpriced and seemed a bit lame so when we were at port we mostly just took the local sites in and walked around. We did take advantage of the Day at the Beach excursion with all of the boyz in Acapulco. Open bar at a very nice beach and boy did we drink. Shot after shot after Corona and Sol...it was great!!

I went parasailing for the first time there too for $30 after tipping and paying for pictures it came out o $60 but well worth it. I had just gotten a Beer before i went up to the guy to inquire about the Price of parasailing and he said he could take me up right then so of course couldn't leave my beer behind and I asked if I could take it with me. It was great being 100 feet up overlooking the shoreline and sipping my Corona very relaxing.

-Zihuatinaho/ Ixtapa-

Typical mexican cities here but we found a cool taxi driver and had him show us arounf the city for 1 1/2 hour and took some good photographs and ate some good Ceviche. The Ceviche place he took us to was just an old ass drunk parked under a tree with its bed filled with grub and drinks. Tons of local people were chilling on lawn chairs and leaning against trees. Now to me this is as authentic as it gets. I can't stand going to foreign places and just hanging with tourists doing tourist crap. It tripped me out because the guy was using Orange Fanta to make the Ceviche, maybe it's normal but i had no idea. After seeing some alligators and iguanas and other local shit we headed back to the boat.

-Manzanillo-

Reminded me of TJ and was a pretty ugly city but we found a cool Taco spot and ate a shitload of 50 cent Tacos and drank $1 beers. That's about it there...

-Boat's NightLife-
After dinner and even before we would all congregate at one of our rooms to get our drink on and some got their Smoke on too.
At night time on the boat all there really was to do was go to the One Disco/Club they had and drink and dance. All the people we met really made the trip awesome and we all partied like Rock Stars the entire time. Yes there were a few hookups on the boat but I don't like airing stuff like that on my Blog. I left out a lot of names of cool people we met but the trip was amazing and I highly recommend a cruise if you haven't done one yet.

-Return Amtrak Trip-
Again it was just a crazy ride, we drank a lot of beer from the drinking cart downstairs and met some really cool people. We had the Hot Mexican chick who was taken but was a fun person, the Crazy Black dude from NY who was funny as shit but kept talking shit to random people walking by and made us all a bit uncomfortable. Also another little cutie from UCSB came and sat with us and of course she was taken too but it was still a blast. I think that I am going to get like 40 of my closest friends and just take a trip down to an Angels or Chargers game on the Amtrak and pack a minibar in our backpacks very soon!!

Keeping it Real,
-William John Raitt

Poker Gone Bad

A few days back I played in the lowest NL Holdem Cash game they had going here at the PokerStars EPT Ballroom which is aprox $6 Small Blind and $6 Big Blind min buy in was 5k crown which is like $300 US, no Max. This is a pretty big game for me to be in as I am used to playing in a $2-5 $100/$200 max buy in game. I gave it a shot and bought in for like $500 US.

I was doing ok minus one Donkey Ass who called my all in 2 pair with a Gut shot and hit(i want that kind of action though, +EV) but I still had some chips and managed to build my roll to just under a 1k. I was 2nd to act preflop with pocket aces and I know you've heard this a million times but I need to vent. Under the Gun (UTG) raises to $60 which was a normally preflop raise at this game so I pumped it to aprox $140 and the guy right behind me calls and so does the original raiser. Flop comes 772 rainbow and the og raiser checks and so there is aprox 430 or so in the Pot and I have like $750 behind. I don't think twice and I'm calling any bet here anyways so I push hoping to scoop the pot right there or have some dude with kk, QQ or whatever call which they would. Guy behind me folded and the OG preflop raiser calls. I just bought this fucker a beer too and was chatting it up so it hurt a little more than usual and this is also the biggest pot I've ever been in so that sucked too. He shows 7,10 for trips and of course no ace came:( I hear the worlds tiniest violin playing..don't you)

Keeping it Real,
-William John Raitt

Prague Trip (Dec 8-14)

My buddy Bill hired his friend Ricky who made it to a final table a few years back in a WPT event to do some work for him on a few projects he has going on. They both decided that they wanted to play the Big PokerStars EPT Prague event and I agreed to tag along. I booked the flights for the 3 of us and last minute Bill decides he isn't gonna fly with us because he has a few things to do and will meet up with us. Bill never showed up and his Buddy busted out in the first 15 minutes with Aces cracked. To Make a long story short and to keep private things private Bill's friends bounces town.

I am now here at the Hilton all alone so sad ..........NOT!

Bill's friend had the smelliest feet of any one alive and I was sharing a room with him. The room is prepaid through a Poker Stars package and it includes, breakfast, gym and Spa access which I'm about to go and use before i checkout in like 6 hours and mad cash games to play. The rooms are very nice too but the internet is $30 a day which sucks ass.

I usually travel alone anyways because it's a headache to dispute about where to go, eat etc.
I have been getting a lot done for my projects and catching up on some good reading time and blogging too.

I did/visited the following things/places on this trip:
-Drank a knock off Budweiser brand that thy have here, wiki it cuz it's funny stuff
-Got more pages in my passport as I completely ran out on this trip
-Visited the Prague Castle(amazing stained glass windows and beautiful grounds)
-The Charles Bridge and Tower
-St Nicholas Church on Lesser Town(beautiful frescoes and a shrine to St Barbara in it which is the same St that my School and town is named after).
-The National Museum ( Narodni Muzeum) this place is like a real life "Night at the Museum" feel to it and is great fun for kids. It has thousands of stuffed creatures and birds and cool interactive Installations for kids to learn. It's like a great big Children's museum but Not if that makes any sense.
-Found a couple cool shopping malls and nice places to hangout and read a book.
-Gyro's here too, I love it yummmy:)

Over all Fun Trip only bad thing for me is that not very many people speak English. Lots of younger people do but good luck trying to make any sense of what the older locals are saying and vis versa.

Time to hit the Gym, Steam Room and Spa.

Keeping it Real,
-William John Raitt

Amsterdam Trip (Nov 29-Dec 8th)

So I just got back from my worst losing Vegas trip ever and one of my best friends Bill IM'd me and said "Get your ass to Amsterdam i'll Pay, it'll be good for me to bounce ideas off you etc...". He has been living there for a couple months and has a really sick place that he is renting for way too much but that's my opinion. I am not one to pass up a free trip to Europe so I go.

My pockets are a bit low but he has wireless and I would be doing the exact same thing I already was doing but in another Country. I totally didn't take into account that it is the middle of Winter and it was Cold as hell. I am SoCal born and raised so I can't even stand 50 degree weather for very long. Also I found out that The Heineken Factory which is world famous is closed for renovations. I traveled Europe backpacking in 1999 with my bro and had very fond memories of The Heineken Factory:(

It was a great trip none the less and I visited/did the following places/things:

-Tons of Crazy Brainstorming sessions in Coffee Shops (i don't smoke but I had some good times in them though)
-Cool Ass Pub Crawl and met some great people
-Van Gogh museum( over 200 works by him and he is my favorite artist so very cool 4 me)
-Rijks museum( tons of Rembrandt's like the Night Watchmen and other cool artists' works)
-Wandering around getting lost eating mad Gyro's and Shoarmas
-Spending time with my old college Roommate Bill

Keeping it Real,
-William John Raitt

McDonald's Abroad

I think it's pretty horrible that so many Mcdonald's Restaurants are everywhere. I have been to over 20 Countries and I would say at least 16 of those had McDonald's everywhere. What really bugs me is that they put these in historic areas where Mom and Pops type establishments have been thriving for 100's if not thousands of years. The worst is the one right across the street from the Pantheon in Rome. That is just soo tacky, I mean you can't even really get a good photo of the Structure that inspired greats like Brunelleschi, Leonardo Di Vinci and tons of others without seeing that fucking McDonald's.

I should be one to speak as I am very guilty of eating there when I travel. You see I am a very budget traveler and a $1 sandwich sounds mighty reasonable when the Euro is as strong as it is. They also have different sandwiches geared toward each country it seems too. I had a Samurai Pork Burger and Rice Buger in Thailand. Holland has a Crochet Burger which is basically a gravy injected fried patty on a bun. Czech Republic has a McCountry sandwich which tastes like a sausage morning sandwich with big mac type fixings.

Keeping it Real,

-William John Raitt

My New Diet (16 lbs and going)

I started this crazy diet based on "The 4-Hour Work Week" Tim Ferris' website just over a month ago now. I have lost 16 lbs thus far and have only 4 more to go before I switch to a different diet and build muscle. I am 6 foot tall exactly and now weigh 179 lbs, when I started this diet I weighed 195. Your probably thinking 180 is a good weight for being 6ft but I have very little muscle, my goal right now is to drop as much as I can and then pack on some muscle mass. I would love to weigh 195 and have some solid muscle and in fact that's my over goal but I had the wrong kind of weight on and need to drop this fat first.


My diet consists of the following 3 meals repeated over and over again.

BREAKFAST(1 meal)
-Egg White Omelet with one whole egg for flavor(aprox 4 total eggs)
-No cheese just about 2 slices of ordinary 99% fat free Sandwich meat chopped up inside

LUNCH, Mid day lunch, early dinner, dinner(4-5 meals small portions)

STIR FRY made early in the week and put in containers, consisting of the following,
-Lintels from Trader Joes
-Ground Turkey(99% fat free)
-Asian fresh veggies(carrots, Asian beans, broccoli, Onions, bell peppers)
-A little bit of Asian Stir Fry seasoning from Ralphs


I basically eat every time I feel a little hungry and only fill about 3/4 of a coffee mug of food.
I drink a lot of water and allow myself 2 cups of coffee a day with nonfat creamer, no sugary drinks on this diet but the occasional glass or two of Red Wine is fine.

When I workout which right now is not that often(1-2 times a week)I load up on calories after my workout by eating a coffee cup full of Potato Medley from Trader Joes (high in sodium but it's only twice a week).

I give myself one Cheat Day a week where I will eat a couple Chicken sandwiches from a fast food spot and maybe a Vanilla Latte which I was drinking like 2 of a day b4 my diet. My wallet thanks me too.

My understanding is that this diet works by keeping the caloric intake very low and from eating and repeating the same meals so often it speeds up your metabolism. If I am not mistaken the cheat day also helps(not really sure how it helps exactly but I read online that it does).

I have Tons of energy and I am not experiencing any heart burn or chest pains like I used to as well. To read more about where I got my diet from cut the text below and paste in your browser,

http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/04/06/how-to-lose-20-lbs-of-fat-in-30-days-without-doing-any-exercise/

Keeping it Real,
-William John Raitt