Yanchep Park

Yesterday a nice little walk in Yanchep Park. We found an amazing new type of tree we had never seen before;

the Australian Tap Tree:



For some more photos look here! (browse through them 1 by 1 OR choose slideshow)

Mundaring Weir Dam

Just a quick photo - update of an enjoyable day (yes, we have a bit of holiday now!) with Peter's dad and stepmom...



For the rest of the photos, look here:-)

Action photos

Ok guys, hundreds of phots have been shot at the competition. A few of us... what do you think? :

Quickstep, Charmaine, Carousel and La Bomba:



Second of 7:

Back ...

Well ... another 10 months without any news. I guess that is what happens, the longer you're here the rarer something new or interesting happens. And you dont take time to update the blog anymore:-).

Anyway, last weekend we entered the WA Open Championship. Being at level 2 we entered de level 2 and level 3 for ballroom and new vogue. ALthough this was the second time we competed in our formal dancing outfit, it was the first time that Martin van der Poel made some recordings again. So for all of you who have been waiting to see us without having to go to Perth .. have a look at below recordings.

Oh before you look, the results were:

L2 Standaard: 2nd of 7 competitors (unfortunately no recordings of this one)
L3 Standaard: 3rd of 6
L2 New Vogue: 2nd of 4
L3 New Vogue: 5th of 5 (clearly not quite at that level, although we think we are not far away:-)).

L3 Standaard:



L2 New Vogue:



L3 New Vogue:

Time Flies, 2 ;-)

Good morning again, another early morning for me, 03:53. Ready for the 'Main Event' of the WBCOOP. Lets hope I actually get through to at least the last 153 today, so I have not been getting up in the middle of the night twice for nothing... ;-).

04:55. The first break coming up. Not very succesfull so far. But as they say, a chip and chair .. ;-). Currently 1029th of 1448. The tourney started with 2062 players.

05:59. Second break. Going a bit better, currently 383rd out of 785.

06:26. Well, that was it. Ended 495th position. Pretty unlucky with the last hand: I got KK as hole cards. One player raised, I called. Flop came up 2 6 8. So I go all in. Other players calls (I think, oh oh, would he have AA?). Cards shown, does he have 6 8 ... No further good cards on turn or river, so his two pair (66 88) beats my KK.
Anyway, as they say, that is poker...

very early :-)

Well, the first tourney yesterday did not go too well, ended up in 1356th position (of 1533 entries:-). Of course being an 8-game, it was a bit too challenging. I probably should have played only the Texas Holdem hands to get a bit further... but anyway, for that tourney I did not have to get up in the middle of the night.

Today's one I did have to do just that... It is 03.55 AM now. The 6th WBCOOP event will start in 5 minutes. At the moment there are 1908 players that entered the tourney. Let's see if I can improve the score. Aim is to get at least to the 153rd place (which gives a SCOOP 11 USD entry ticket). Of course, winning would be all the more interesting (SCOOP 1050 USD entry icket) ......

05:00.
Well, Survived the first hour. Made 2 bad calls early in the tourney which cost me a lot of chips. I have been able to win some back later on, so still hanging in there :-), Currenty in position 467 of 1165...

05:38.
Well, that's it, I'm out (364 th). Not too bad, but empty handed all the same. Give it another try tomorrow morning. For now time to go back to bed an get a few more hours sleep :-)

Check check double check

Just found out that I did not read the description of the tourney for tomorrow morning (Saturday) very well yesterday. Tomorrows tourney is a so called 8-game tourney. This means that every few minutes (when the blinds are being raised) the type of poker game played is changeed as well! Since I usually only play Hold'em (and 98% no limit only) that is going to be a very interesting challenge, having no idea how the other types really work...

Maybe if I find some time tonight I can play some of the other types (playmoney) to try and get a hold of it. And of course tomorrow try to mainly play the Hold'em ones!! And hope that luck is on my side ....

Early morning game(s)

Well, my blog was accepted so I did get the ticket for the WBCOOP tournaments. Hooray!! The confirmation of getting that ticket was sent at 03.20 AM. Funny thing was that there was also a reminder in there that the first tournament will be starting in 40 minutes .... :-). So missed that one of course!

Basically one of those tourneys starts everyday at 4 AM (this is WST time), so it is out of the question for me to play in today's, tomorrows and Friday's one. But the Sunday one (and probably the Monday one I have registered for). So, keep tuned for my results (if any ... :-)).

Edit:
Good that I checked once more, I found one more WBCOOP tourney that I can play at a more normal time: Saturday morning 08:00AM. So that is a better time to play:-).

Also what I have learned is that the prizes to be won at these WBCOOP tourneys are tickets for the upcoming SCOOP (Spring Championship of Online Poker). These tickets are worth from 11 dollars up to even more than 3000 dollar. These tickets can then be used to enter in one of the preliminary SCOOP tournaments. As you would expect the more value your entry ticket has, the higher prize you can win (or the lesser steps you need to take to get to real, real money). The total prize money for last years SCOOP was up to 30 million dollars, so interesting to know what it will be this year ..... (Did I say before: "keep on dreaming, Pete" ? :-))

Time flies - Poker

Wow, I almost cannot believe it myself, the previous post is from May last year! I guess it is actually time to catch up a bit on all the time past since then!

As you may know the financial crisis has had a bit of an impact on us aswell. From December 08 till September last year Peter was out of a job. Luckily Ellen was working all the time so, no real financial problems for us.

Of course being at home for a long time means you have time 'on your sleeve' available to pursue other interests. One day in June I was looking at the Windows games availabe under Vista and played some Texas Hold'Em games. Of course it took some time to have an idea of the game, because other than seeing poker in movies, I had no idea what the game was about really.

A few weeks later I discovered there was (actualy are more, but this would probably the biggest one) an online poker site (pokerstars.com) where you can actually play (for free as well as for money) against people all over the world. Now I have always been enjoying playing card games since I was a child, and after years of hardly playing any at all, I now had an opportunity to catch up on some card game time:-).

By now (a good half year after 'discovering' Texas Hold'Em BY chance), I have become a fairly regular (online-) player. Of course, somewhere in the back of my mind always the idea that it would be very nice to get to a professional level and who knows in time being able to earn an income playing poker (keep on dreaming Pete ;-) ;-))

Except playing against other people (at sit&go tables as well as playing tourneys) pokerstars also organize all kind of freeroll tourneys that give you options to get into the major tournaments. Not easy of course, but possible...

The latest initiative is the online championship for bloggers. Another opportunity to play some serious (freeroll) poker and have a chance to earn something nice ;-).

A condition for entering into this is that you have an active blog which is older than 2 months (easy for this blog!) and updated regularly. For the rest it would be appreciated to keep update on the progress for these tournaments...
So, a long introduction, but expect to read some poker stuff in the next days ... I am going to enter this blog tonight, and hope they will process it with speed since the tourneys start today ... :-)

Finally, in case your interested as well HERE is some information on this particular tournament. Hope to see you there:-)

Dutch Remembrance Day 2009 / Friends visit

Last Sunday (May 2nd) the Dutch club in Perth (Neerlandia) organised the Dutch Remembrance Day. This is in effect the Perth version of the 'dodenherdenking' in the Netherlands which takes place every year on the 4th of May.


The Australian War Cemetery (in Karakatta/Nedlands) has a Dutch Annex were 28 (Dutch) victims have been buried. These 28 people were refugees that fled the Japanese army from Indonesia to Broome (in the North of WA) only to be killed in the air raid on Broome.
(the Dutch Annex at the Australian War Cemetery in Nedlands, WA):


This is the story as per a government website:
In February 1942, Broome in Western Australia was used as the Australian end of an air shuttle service from Java. Hundreds of evacuees were ferried to Broome in Dutch, American and Australian military and civil aircraft, including flying boats of Qantas Empire Airways.

By the end of that month, the town was overflowing with military personnel and refugees. People slept wherever they could while waiting for a flight to continue their journey south. During the last weeks of February 1942 over 7000 people, including the former commander of the 8th Australian Division, Major-General H Gordon Bennett, who had escaped from Singapore, passed through Broome. On one single day, 57 aircraft landed there.

On 3 March 1942, without warning, Japanese fighters attacked. The attack lasted no more than 20 minutes, during which time 25 Allied aircraft were destroyed and dozens of people were killed or wounded. Many victims were Dutch women and children packed into flying boats on the harbour either waiting to be unloaded and ferried ashore or waiting to depart for the southern states. Another 30 crew and passengers, mostly military personnel, were lost when an American Liberator bomber was shot down shortly after taking off. Precisely how many people died in the raid, and who they were, will never be known.

Correspondence, coins and trinkets that were recovered from the wreckage of the sunken flying boats can be seen in the Broome museum. Dozens of people lost their lives during the attack on Broome on 3 March 1942. Many of the Dutch women and children were trapped in flying boats in the harbour. Others were incinerated, drowned or taken by sharks as they attempted to swim ashore. The Dutch bodies recovered were first buried in the Broome War Cemetery but were later removed and reburied in a special area in the Karrakatta cemetery in Perth. Many were not identified and they lie in unmarked graves.

Although it felt a bit uneasy (for me as photographer) to take photos, I have done so and I believe it is actually good to make (more) people aware of this.


For more photos have a look here

On a bit lighter note:
After the ceremony Neerlandia had opened their clubhouse for coffee and lunch. We enjoyed that so much that we actually decided to keep our membership of Neerlandia going (we had just send an email the week before to cancel ours!!)

Then at the Easter weekend we had (Dutch) friends over who are living in Sydney. They have family in Perth and stayed a few days at our place as well. They have a weblog of their own, feel free to have a look there to see how they liked their stay (please note, their website is published in Dutch!)