Introduction

Hey guys, it's been a while. The past weeks have been really busy for me and I haven't been able to do a lot of activities concerning poker. This was mostly because of two 'trips' I made and having to finish school. I attended the Pinkpop festival for the third year in a row actually which was a lot of fun. The weekend after that I went to Paris which was supposed to be a meeting with ToT (my team from Starcraft) but it ended up being just Eleo (for the starcraft guys, Eleo is Mondragon's girlfriend) and me. I don't think I'm going to do a write-up on Paris because it's honestly not that interesting. I saw a lot of cool stuff in Paris but all I did was see the city basically and honestly this blogpost is simply going to be too long.

So basically this is going to be long anyway with a lot of pictures. Hope not too long because I don't want to write this for no reason because you only read like half of it :D

Graduation

First things first: I graduated on 16 June for my bachelor's degree in civil engineering. I was actually 1 year late because of me being a lazy bum but I finally finished which is of course awesome news and I'm superhappy about it. Now I can finally move forward with my life. More about that later. First I want to write about the festival.

Pinkpop

This year we had a group of 7 people in total. A little less than last year but that's probably better at a festival because otherwise the difference in interest will just become a hassle. The usual people were there at least with 2 newcomers :). As usual, I would go by car and bring the bags and camping stuff and the others would take the train while bringing the tents.

I already posted the lineup/schedule in my last blog item but here it is again:



I'll just continue this 'trip report' by day.

Saturday

I left home at 08:00 or so to pick up my friend who was gonna be my co-driver. He doesn't have a driver's license but it's nice to have someone with you for the long trip and to make out the correct driving route and stuff. We picked up bread at the bakery for the next 4 days and we were on our way. The trip would last us around 3,5 hours normally but it ended up being 6 hours because of all the traffic jams around the town where the festival was held. Doh, 50.000 campers :(. Good thing our friends had the tents.. they were already there at around 10:30 and picked a nice spot to the tents up so that was good. Anyway the parking spot we got assigned was really far away from the camping site so we had to walk like 30 minutes with all our bags and stuff. At least it was downhill which helped a lot.


Signposts which mean: 'faster than you think' and 'chance of a traffic jam', we had a healthy laugh about those while actually being in a traffic jam for 1,5 hours

We only got to the festival terrain at 17:30 so we missed the first few bands. Nothing we REALLY wanted to see though. First thing we did was get another pink hat to support Amnesty International (they cost like 6 euro's and they are pink, you won't wear them anywhere else but whatever! Because of driving for 6 hours though I was pretty tired. At the first 'famous' band which was the Killers (with their terrible song 'Human' - side note: it's weird though because the rest of their repertoire is pretty awesome) I decided to just lie down on the grass and just listen relaxingly. Good thing the weather was awesome all 3 days.

Bruce Springsteen was really good actually. He had a lot of songs that I didn't know at all but it was fun anyway. The famous songs were obviously most fun to listen to though. We watched it from a pretty large distance but that was okay.


Random picture from the Bruce Springsteen concert

Part of Born To Run

We were back at the tents at around midnight and I immediately went sleeping because I was supertired because of the long day and I still had two awesome days to go. Thank god for earplugs...

Sunday

Sunday I woke up because I literally burned out of my tent at around 10:00. It was really hot outside already. Had some breakfast from the bread we took with us and basically just chilled out because the festival would begin at 13:00 so we had all the time in the world. During the day it was a lot of chilling because the weather was simply too hot to do much. Listening to some fun music in the meanwhile.


Chillin', pink hat obviously and a beard from 1,5 days. Wasn't that bad yet, 2 days later it was way worse believe me

Anyway Maria Mena was relaxing, her voice is beautiful. It's kinda emo music but I like it. Madness I saw a little bit of but apparently the crowd was ecstatic about their performance. A bunch of cocky old dudes having the time of their lives on the main stage :].

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Maria Mena <3<3

After that we went to see a little bit of James Morrison who sounds extremely dull on radio. His performance however was really surprising because live he was a lot better than he is on the radio. Nothing too exciting though. Oh I almost forgot. The bad news about the festival was that the lead singer of Depeche Mode had some kind of illness which is why the band couldn't perform. Being one of the headliners, this was of course a real bummer for us and for almost everyone attending the festival that day. There were actually a lot of people who only bought a day ticket *just* for Depeche mode. They got replaced by Krezip which is a Dutch band who mostly sings simple pop songs that sound catchy. They were okay. They didn't get the headliner though. Placebo got bumped up to be headliner for the Sunday which turned out to be a good decision. I enjoyed the concert. The singer Brian Molko has this really unusual sound which actually makes it pretty fun to listen to.


Placebo

Placebo - Every You and Every Me

After that we went to see a movie in the out-door cinema. Basically a REALLY big screen with a large projector so the quality is pretty bad but because of the crowd you're watching it with, it's a lot of fun. We watched Taken and everytime Liam Neeson killed someone the entire crowd cheered and clapped their hands, lol good times. Little side note here: if you haven't seen Taken yet, go kill yourself. We went to sleep at around 02:30. Thank god again for ear plugs.

Monday

Monday was going to be the longest day simply because the festival was starting at 12:00 that day. We only got there at 12:45 though because the line at the entrance was humongous. That was okay though, we watched some fun bands like The All American Rejects, Mando Diao and Amy Macdonald was good for relaxing on the grass. After that I went to see the Script. Lucky I did because they were pretty good and Billy Talent was supposed to be pretty bad according to the critics. Just a lot of noise but that was about it. Franz Ferdinand was another good band to be relaxing to on the grass. After that I wanted to see Katy Perry and take some pictures for Byrnesam but I couldn't get close enough =[. All I got is this:



After that we jumped around some on Anouk and got some funny stares from people around us and we were gearing up towards the last concert of the festival: Snow Patrol. I kind of like their music and because it was the festival ender I really wanted to be at the front for that so we missed the Kooks and the Ting Tings to wait. Good decision because Snow Patrol was really good, better than expected. Most of their stuff is pretty mellow but they have some up beat songs as well. It was a really beautiful concert though and I enjoyed it a lot.


Snow Patrol

Snow Patrol - Run
How beautiful is that?

After that concert we chilled out a bit until we got kicked off the festival terrain. We sang random songs and got people to join us so that was fun. Thank god for earplugs again when I went sleepin' otherwise I'd be dead the following day since I still had to drive home for 3,5 hours. We packed up our stuff, used the remainder of our food/drink tickets on expensive fruit cocktails and stuff and stuffed all the stuff in my car. Left at around 11:15 and got home at around 15:00. First thing I did was take a huge dump, shave and shower. Hadn't showered in 3 days wowzers.


Ants

Plans

I'm planning on becoming a bit more active in poker again seeing as I have finished my education. Plan on making more videos again to satisfy you gents.

I also plan on going on vacation a few times as well in the summer although I haven't figured out where I want to go yet. Jamie (MidiaN) invited me to come to Korea so I might just do that for a few weeks?! Might be fun to finally go there. Other than that I have nothing exciting planned for now. Small window that I might still fly to Vegas but I doubt it.

I'll keep this short. I'll be playing on 5betpoker some more. I have a small roll there so I'll be playing some 200NL and 400NL to get things going again and then I'll just build up my roll there. It's fun to play with euros instead of dollars though. Makes it seem more real haha. Anyway this has been long and I applaud you if you are still reading. I hope it was interesting enough!

See you chaps later when I report on my latest endeavors :).

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