I’m addicted to dim sum. Little parcels of grease. Tasty. Every Sunday, Chris, Rachel and I head down to Soho. We park up at Haymarket and walk down to London Jade Garden Restuarant. If you know your Soho, it’s next to 1997 (With a portrait of Mao and his buddies hanging up) and Crispy duck.

We get a lil 10% discount and are ushered past the line to get into the restuarant. Rachel’s uncle owns the place. We feel special. Some how, every week they bump into people they know.

I particularly like the part where Chris comes up with a new masterplan to conquer the world. This week it was to get sponsorship to travel the world and make a reality TV show. Last week it was winning a poker tournament. So on and so forth.

After stuffing ourselves silly with food we head over to a local arcade and jackpot a machine. It pays for our dim sum. We’ve jackpotted it 9 times and failed 2 times. Not bad seeing as the jackpot is £50. The two pictures above were taken on seperate occassions.

It’s such a mundane thing to do, but I love it. It’s something to look forward to each week.

Our lovely office. Work has become a lil too much. We can’t cope on our own.

It’s Frith next to the plant and Chloe on the wooden desk. They’re working on tiny Asus EeePCs. <geek>I went up to the good ol’ TCR and bought them a couple of days after they were launched. Mine’s running Ubuntu 8.04.1 while Graham’s just got his stock Xandros Linux.</geek>

They’re lovely girls, although Chloe is trouble. I promise you we’ve cleaned up. It’s spotless now.

I find it really bizzarre how we have an office atmosphere now. We even have company nights out.

One Saturday we noticed two heavy cast iron radiators outside the school we’re at. The caretaker said we could have them. I got a teacher to drive them somewhere so we could flog them. Any takers?

My two favourite drinks. A double G & T and a double espresso. I ended the night with 7 G&T’s, 2 double espressos.

I have a soft spot for girls with piercings and tattoos. She was cute. http://suicidegirls.com/ . Go on, you mite like it.

I’ve been to quite a few Casino resorts; Macau and Mocbai. Between them i’ve visited half a dozen casinos.

Yesterday I actually played in one. Chris Leslie Evernden aka “Concept” the rapper, had a clever little scheme that was sure to make money. Off we went; Rachel, Chris, Graham and I in his mini. We put some gangsta rap on and went posing down to Edgeware Road.

The scam was this; 4 people play on the same table. We all play like tight assholes, only playing pairs and premium hands. It’s not really a scam – just tedious. It’s all legit, but the fact that you can make money is dubious to say the least.

We went to the Grosvenor Casino on Edgeware Rd. It’s one of the safest places to stay if an all out terrorist attack happened to hit London. Registering was easy enough and off we went.

Each of us converted £25 into chips and sat down at the table. We got down to business.

In three hours of play, we played a dozen hands. Fucking boring.

I hit with a pair of kings in my pocket and the flop went down. Two aggressive players played it out and forced me to go all in. I won the hand doubling my chips to £53. Next was Graham. He got queens in his pocket. Everyone folded before he could eek any money out. He then played a little loose and got to about £40 in chips. Rachel was the luckiest. She hit pocket tens. The flop came down. She’d made three of a kind 10s. Everyone on the table went in except Chris, Graham and I. The pot got to about £90 and she cleaned up.

About 2 hours into the game it was like this;

• Rachel – £90
• Me – £50
• Graham – £40
• Chris – £15

Not bad. This could work.

Now here’s the bad point. The casino makes its money on a rake per half hour. Every half hour we each had to pay £3. In total we stayed for 3 hours, so the total the Casino raped off us was £72.

That’s a lot of money considering we only bought in £100 in total.

As the night wore on, the rakes and blinds killed us. By the last hour, I was down to £20. Chris was down to £5 and Graham was down to £20. Rachel luckily cashed out.

I decided I couldn’t play like this. It was 1.30am and I thought fuck it. I went all in. Chris went all in. An even tighter arsed player, hit pocket aces. I couldn’t have given a shit.

We ended the night with:

• Graham – £10
• Me – £0
• Rachel – £80
• Chris – £0

We lost £10 between us for 3 hours work. If i’d have had more discipline, we’d have been £10 up.

Moral of the story:

I have no doubt that if the play was more refined, we’d have been able to double our money. Is it really worth it though? To play poker so tight that it doesn’t become fun. If we’d all have stuck to a dead end job for 3 hours, we’d have made £60 guaranteed, rather than some pot luck dream.

I’ll go to the Casino again, but with the intention of having fun.