APPT Sydney TR Part 1, Swingers from Bond18. 30 November 2008, 8:08.

I leave Cade’s house in Hawaii at around 6am, heading towards the airport. When I arrive there’s already a line at the Qantas desk and I’m worried the flight will be completely packed with my getting some terrible middle seat. I haven’t slept all night hoping I’ll be able to crash for the majority of my 10 ½ hour flight. When I get to the desk I make small talk with the guy and he asks me if a window seat will be okay
”Uh sure, unless you guys got like an aisle of three open or something like that. I haven’t done the whole sleeping thing yet tonight.”
”Actually it’s rows of a two with a row of four in the middle. Let me check something for you…yep I got a whole row of four I can block off for you so you can lay down.”
”Oh sweet man! Thanks so much you’re a total life saver.”
”Yea, the flights not too booked so this shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll be over at the gate and make sure this gets sorted out in case there’s any issues.”
”Cool, well if anyone tries to take the seat you and I will just throw them off the plane.”
”Exactly.”
Since when did airline employees become so cool?

On the flight I have the entire row to myself and lay out on the wide leather seats. I wind up sleeping for over nine hours of the flight (it still wasn’t very good quality) and spend the rest of it reading Bill Bryson’s ‘A short history of nearly everything.’ Did you know our universe is constantly expanding outwards from us? You didn’t? Well Einstein did you ****ing retard.

When I arrive in Sydney I check into my hotel, grab a shower, then head down to the poker room to try and watch Lee Nelson’s final table in the first event. I get there just a few minutes after he’s busted out and go up to his hotel room to meet him and his wife Pen for dinner. We discuss whether we should play the tournament the next day and what affect it will have if we end up final tabling and have to miss a portion of the seminar (as it is a two day tournament.) We decide we’ll figure it out later in the night.

We go to what is apparently Sydney’s best Japanese restaurant, Yoshi’s. It’s a fairly small place but the food is outstanding. My course dinner comes with a glass of wine with each round of food, and by the fourth glass of wine I know the evening is not going to end subtly. The whole of the dinner winds up being worth around seven drinks and I’m already flying high when we leave the restaurant.

We grab a cab back to the casino and find Eric Assadourian on the casino floor. He’s signed on to do the seminar with us to replace Dennis Waterman and Tyson Streib who couldn’t come out for this event. He tells us he wants to meet to do further preparation tomorrow so Lee tells me I probably shouldn’t play. Around the same time I run into Jonno AKA ‘Monster_Dong’ and he tells me everyone is going out and I should come. With no need to get up for the event and already half way to wasted, I quickly agree.

Our party group includes Jonno, Andy McLeod, Julian Powell, DelaneyKid, Jarred Dale, Matt Kirk (he reminds me of Stiffler) and myself. The group is the perfect concoction of youth, alcohol, enthusiasm and dispensable income. We walk over to a huge club in Darling Harbour and pay the ridiculous $70 entry fee. The place is gigantic and has several floors of partying going on. We walk over to the bar, order a round of drinks, and we’re off and running. We’re on the second floor of the club overlooking the dance floor which leads up to a large stage with girls dancing. Someone makes a comment about the hot girls on the stage
“Man I’m about to run up there and dance with them myself” I say
“Heh yea sure you will” says Julian
”No seriously, I’d do it wanna bet?”
”I’d throw down $100 that” says Jarred.
”Yea I’ll take $200 too” say both Andy McLeod and Matt.
“Alright dudes, watch this.”
I turn straight around and start walking downstairs like a man on a mission. I walk stiffly through the crowd and squeeze my way up to the front. There’s a bouncer guarding the entrance to the stage. I lean in to his ear
”Hey man. I’ll give you $100 if I can go up on stage and dance around and **** for like 20 seconds. I’m not drunk or on drugs, I just got a bet going.”
The bouncer at first seems hesitant, then asks me to reiterate that I’d pay him $100 (in retrospect, I vastly overshot on the bribe but **** it.)
He leans into me
“Alright mate, $100 for me and $100 for my friend here and you got yourself a deal. I’ll come drag you off stage after a little bit.”
”You got a deal.”
I hand both bouncers $100 and wait for him to give me the signal. He nods his head and I go around the back then sprint up onto the stage which is now empty. There’s a crowd of 100’s staring at me and I just start yelling
“WOOOOOOOOOOOOO! YEEEEEEEA MOTHER ****ERS!!!” and dancing around like a moron then hip thrusting into the air. I lift up my drink and pour it all over my head, yelling the whole time, then start high-fiving everyone in the front row of the crowd. At some point the bouncer comes up from behind, throws his arm around me, and drags me off stage while I yell “NOOOOOOOO!” then say to him calmly as he gets me back stage “Hey man thanks a lot for this.”

I walk back upstairs and everyone is in stitches. They pay me off the bet but I agree to a small deduction because I was supposed to dance with the girls, who were no longer on the stage. There is a group of ‘Jagermeister’ promotional girls standing around in uniforms near us and at some point our group starts chatting to them and McLeod and I are hitting on some blond one (I no longer have any idea how this or many of my conversations that night started.) At some point one of her friends whips out a Polaroid camera and takes numerous pictures of us standing around then making ridiculous faces (they will be posted and soon as I get to a scanner.) They also put temporary tattoos all over our forearms (my partially washed off one is staring at me as I write this.) The blonde girl suggests we drink jagerbombs (****in jagerbombs!) and she, Andy and I walk over to the bar with her and she asks
“So boys are we ordering two drinks or three?”
”Bull****! I’m on to your scam. You can buy me a drink.”
“But I don’t have any money on me.”
“Sucks for us then.”
I don’t order her any drink and continue attempting to hit on her. At some point I need to get back to my friends and should give her a call some time.
“I actually have a boyfriend.”
”Well I don’t want to call your boyfriend, I want to call you.”
”You should call him, that’d be funny” she says sarcastically.
“Yea that’d be fun” I say then walk off without another word.

The group of us heads up to the outdoor third floor area where people are smoking. There is some cute brown haired girl smoking a cigarette and she looks kind of drunk. I walk up to her and say
”You know you shouldn’t smoke, but not for the reasons you think though.”
”Huh?” she asks me somewhat intrigued.
”First of all you have great skin and you’ll ruin it. Second some very strange ass **** can happen when you smoke. Give me your cigarette for a second and I’ll show you something cool.”
She suspiciously hands over her cigarette and I start puffing on it without inhaling.
”Now hold out your hands with your palms down.”
She accommodates
“No no, clinch them into balls so I can’t get in there.”
She does.
“You’re sure it’s tight. Sure I can’t get in there? Alright, watch this.”
I ash the cigarette onto the top of my left hand, lean over towards it and blow at her right hand.
“Now open that hand I blew at.”
She does and there’s a large black smear of ash in her hand.
“OH MY GOD! How did you do that!?”
”Maybe I’ll tell you if you’re nice to me.”
I start chatting to her and she tells me she’s Maltese. I tell her I have a friend in Malta who tells me it’s nice. She tells me I’m lying and trying to impress her. I proceed to tell her all about Assassinato (hi Alex!) She seems pretty interested and we’re flirting back and forth when I turn around for a moment to talk to one of my friends and some random guy friend of hers swoops in and cockblocks me (I really don’t remember how the transition of this happened.)

McLeod and I team up and start going around the floor chatting to various women. We talk to a couple of blonde girls from Sweeden and things go well enough that the one McLeod was talking to tells him to add her on Facebook.

I go up to a girl outside and attempt the cigarette trick on her. When I take the cigarette she looks at me like a ****ing maniac and tells me “Keep it.”
“Your loss” I tell her then walk away back to my friends cigarette in hand
“Why the **** did I take this? I don’t even smoke!” I tell my group. Someone calls me an idiot while Matt tries to pick up some girl. Throughout the night people keep handing me drinks and I’m never without a beverage in my hand (I never even got to buy a round and now feel like a cheap ass, next time boys.) I go over to another girl who is cool with my doing the cigarette trick but I somehow manage to screw up the ending and her hand has nothing on it.
”****!” I yell upon seeing her hand then walk off without another word.

McLeod and I go talk to some girl in red out on the porch. She’s from Wales and tells me she doesn’t like American accents.
“Well I can pull off a convincing Canadian then. I’m from….Toronto perhaps?”
She laughs and the conversation starts getting weird. She tells me she likes being aggressive with men and I say
“You’re going to try and rape me aren’t you?” (I don’t really remember her reaction to this, but she kept chatting to us and seemed to be having fun.)
Things are going fairly well with her and at some point she says she’s going over to the dance floor.
“Can I come with you” I ask. She walks off without another word to me and I stand there momentarily wondering what went wrong.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” asks McLeod.
“What? What do you mean?”
”She said you can come if you want. What are you doing?”
”What!? ****! I didn’t even hear here. It’s too God damn loud in here!”
”Well let’s go to the dance floor and see if we see her.”
We check over in another room but the club is much too big and we fail to locate her. At some point McLeod and I realize we’re getting quite drunk and we should be calling it a night as he intends to play the next day. We tell the other guys we’re going to head back and maneuver our way through the crowd out the door. We make the 10 minute walk over to the casino and upon arriving realize it’s only 1:30am and that we should see what’s happening at the casino bar.

Andy and I start talking to some woman in green at the bar and she responds to my humor pretty well. I have to keep discreetly asking McLeod for his cell phone mid conversation with women so I can try to get their number because mine is out of batteries and I didn’t bring my charger. I ask her for her number and she tells me if I see her again that night she’ll give it to me. She walks away and McLeod laughs at me. We do not see her again.

We go sit down at a table with our drinks, which are at this point water in an attempt to keep the night from spiraling even more out of control than it’s already got and having a horrible hangover. We start talking to some woman at the table next to us. Her response was mediocre (but good enough that I would later write McLeod’s number on a napkin, walk over to her table with her friends, smash it down, and walk away.)

McLeod and I hit the casino floor and talk to a pair of hot Asian chicks. They tell us they’re here to support their boyfriends. We back off. We approach a couple of hot Mediterranean looking women. They tell us we’re very sweet but they’re here with their husbands. When did everybody get married God damn it!?

McLeod and I decide to call it a night and try and chug water up in the hotel room. We turn on the TV and find that the WPT is on. We watch as Jim ‘KrazyKanuck’ worth open raises AK 4 handed with about 30 BB’s effective, gets 3 bet out by a somewhat young Asian guy in the SB then goes into the tank.
“What’s he tanking for?” asks McLeod.
”I don’t know dude. Pretty sure the other guy has to call when he crams. He’s practically slowrolling here.”
”He’s not thinking of folding is he?”
Worth continues to tank, then lifts up his cards and mucks them. McLeod and I both go completely berserk. We start talking about some time McLeod tiny 4 bet me early in the 109 6 max on Full Tilt and I wound up folding queens (either pre or on the flop.) He tells me he probably had air. I tell him he’s a bastard and we eventually pass out.

Authors post note: I woke up the following morning thinking I’d totally struck out and McLeod was the only one who got any real contact information out of a girl. DelanyKid told me he later made out with two chicks that night. Matt told me he thinks we should start going to places that don’t have a $70 entry because it’s mostly chicks boyfriends who pay it and not enough girls there were single. If Julian’s girlfriend is reading this, he totally behaved himself. Everyone showed up in time for the event today and Jarred wound up final tabling it, with Chris Evans as well. Much later in the day McLeod messages Jarred and tells him that he has the number for a girl named Kay in his phone which I apparently got. I remember talking to a Kay but no longer have any idea what she looks like. I guess that just adds more gamble to it.