Generalmente tengo bastante paciencia. A veces me detengo a admirar la genialidad de alguna que otra campaña de marketing y me digo “que inteligente esta compañía”; por desgracia, con Movistar Venezuela no he experimentado lo dicho, sino todo lo contrario.
Movistar y sus directores de marketing me han motivado a escribir lo que a continuación será una carta que he decidido dividir en dos, (1) la queja, (2) la reforma.
La queja:
Todos los días recibo en promedio tres mensajes de textos, todos con el fin de venderme algún juego de trivia o una “noti-promoción” que no me interesa en lo absoluto.
Del mismo modo, recibo aproximadamente una llamada mensual, en la que intentan venderme alguna “mejora” a mi plan actual u ofreciéndome alguna “promoción”, sepan que lo único que logran es amargarme el rato.
La realidad es que no quiero cambiar mi plan y tampoco quiero recibir noti-promociones ni ofrecimientos de jueguitos vía mensaje de texto.
Entiendan que mi número de celular es privado. Solo espero llamadas y mensajes de textos de mis allegados. Cada vez que me interrumpen con sus llamadas y mensajes de textos me hacen reconsiderar mi elección de compañía proveedora de telefonía celular.
La gota que derramo el vaso fue la última llamada que recibí, el día de hoy, tuve que decirle a la operadora – que poca culpa tiene “Por favor, dejen de llamarme, no quiero tener nada que ver con Movistar y sus promociones”.
La reforma:
Tranquilos señores de Movistar, no les voy a pedir que cambien sus formas; como usuario de su servicio entiendo que debo respetar sus decisiones como compañía, después de todo tengo otras opciones, es por eso que no les voy a pedir lo imposible. Mi propuesta de reforma es más bien una mejora a su servicio de atención al usuario.
Dejen que usuarios como yo, que no le interesa en lo absoluto las promociones que ofrecen ni los juegos disponibles vía mensajes de texto tengan la posibilidad de darse de baja de su plan de marketing salvaje.
Que su estrategia de marketing salvaje sea opcional para el usuario, que pueda enviar un mensaje al “333999” y nunca más recibir mensajes molestos de Movistar. Incluso estoy dispuesto a pagar por el mensaje de texto que envie para darme de baja de su plan de marketing salvaje.
Piensen en el beneficio. Abaratarían los costos de sus campañas de marketing. Tendrían un retorno más alto en su inversión – y es que solamente llamarían y enviaran mensajes de textos a aquellos que de verdad quieran recibirlos, los demás, como yo, no serían fastidiados y seguirán utilizando sus servicios, sin quejas o con menos quejas.
Espero que tomen en cuenta a sus usuarios y entiendan que el interés de una compañía como Movistar debería ser mimar y consentir al usuario para que así sean usuarios de toda la vida, y que así entonces se den cuenta que están alienando a algunos de sus usuarios con la agresividad de su estrategia de marketing.
Phuket is almost coming to an end and I feel like is too early.
Three weeks ago, Nathanael (another friend that I met in BsAs) joined Magne and I. He’s going to Malasya today so we played Chinese Poker the whole night and now, here I am, writing about how fast time goes by and how emotional I get about it.
Last time I remember wondering if I could get sick of the ocean, well, I haven’t, on the other hand I am not going as often as I was going but is fair to say that I go fairly often.
We have been frequently going to a restaurant named “Daily restaurant” which name I will never forget or Magne will never forget . One of the waitress is rather nice and has made her mission to teach us some Thai, sometimes is really confusing some people use different words for saying the same and when I ask I get mixed answers and it gets tricky, besides I think that I am probably below average when it comes to languages, seriously, even though I have a pretty good memory I don’t seem to learn a lot.
I don’t have a camera so I never take pictures (cheap excuse), Magne on the other hand has a camera but never takes pictures, he thought that it was appropriate though to have a memory of the place + our thai teacher .
I noticed some stuff that I found really interesting, Magne, Nathanael and I we are all using the same phrases and using the same words in general, at least when we talk to each other, I also noticed that I have many phrases that I probably overuse a lot or are my standard responses to many situations, I say “You can’t have everything in life”, “c’est la vie (such is life)” a lot… And now thanks to Nathe I can swear in Finish and I have no idea about what I am saying. I wonder if they have noticed that too… Magne just told me that he really dislike when I say “It’s not raining, It is only pouring water out of the sky”, I think that is one of my best ones… I probably have more that I don’t remember or I am not aware of…
In completely unrelated news, Connect 4 got considerably less interesting and even though I am probably not that good I am probably good enough to beat most new players. Nathe and I got into some trouble by playing connect 4, go figure, I rather not talk about it… Shenanigans.
There’s something about saying hello to a lot of people on the street, people that I basically see every day. Somehow I like that a lot, which I find extra weird, since for the most part I thought I wouldn’t like that, I am still impress to the fact that I learned to like salad, not only that, I learned to like bacon too, I had more bacon in two weeks that I had in my whole life, seriously.
I am going back to Hong Kong in 4 or 3 days I am not completely sure, it feels like I left years ago and it feels like I just arrived here, I think that’s what people call Nostalgia. Anyhow, It’s time to move. I am still figuring out what the fuck I am going to do next year and I have very mixed ideas, I thought I had figured it out but I am not sure…
I am very confused about some topics, such as: Politics. Hurts my head because I don’t know what to think and what ideology to support (assuming I have to support one, which most of the times I just do the easy thing: Play Devil’s advocate). I am happy with my decision of not voting in my country though, I wouldn’t know what to vote besides null, and what is the point of voting null anyway… Ugh, I have been educating myself and read The Republic by Plato, which was indeed a good start but there are still many interesting questions and assuming society must live life under a state then the way the state should be gets really tricky, judging by my behavior lately these days I think my brain got exhausted to think so much about this kind of stuff, lately I have noticed myself in a lazy loop which I think I have from time to time, is part of my “cycle” of life.
That’s it, time to call it a post…
(Nathe is gone by now)
I watched the whole thing, towards the end it was very painful, too spooky for my taste. I had to watch it until the end though, I really wanted to see how it ended.
The show basically was a bunch of people that got drop off on an island. The island was arguably paradise yet somehow almost everyone wanted to get out of it back to the “real” world. I was having a long walk in the beach and somehow I was thinking of that, what was so bad of living in a small community on an island? Why would everyone want to go back? Specially considering the background of the majority of the losties
Maybe it wasn’t at all about time traveling and the spooky stuff, maybe it was about how a lot of people overlooked paradise and somehow wanted back in a reality that people call “the real world”. Maybe I am just over thinking this and I have no point at all…
I would think of this place as a place I could live forever – might be because I just got here. I haven’t felt that with many cities though, I also came to the realization that probably a small town fits me better than a huge city. I guess it truly depends on what I have to do. That’s a very backwards thought; I had the impression that what I wanted was a huge city considering that my hometown was feeling small…I guess this is what people call “find yourself”.
The pros of being in a small town is something very significant: people are much more laid back, everything is much more slow, life is not a rush. I was listening to a podcast that said that people walking and talking speed depends a lot on the city (radiolab’s podcast) that got me thinking and well, considering that I have never lived in a city with tons of traffic besides Bangkok I think it makes sense, I really lost a bunch of time stuck with traffic, I probably shouldn’t say lost but it felt like it.
I am very biased right now and I can’t even think of the cons.
I doubt there’s more than 10k locals here to be honest, although there are many more close towns (~10mins drive) each have something different to offer, this town seems to be the perfect combination to make me want to live here forever, close to the beach, everything I need around is on a walking distance (restaurants, groceries stores, I don’t think I need much more). Almost every local have a decent idea of English, which makes communication much easier.
I get to live here until December 15 and I am already thinking about coming back, I guess this time overstaying is not an option; I want to keep my promise, one time. I was also thinking about Costa Rica because it might be similar but maybe I will hate the ocean after 7 weeks (doubtfully).
I went nuts, I ordered salad for the first time of my life and the next day I did it again, I probably can’t think of something more out of character than that… Not in the food department.
I am living with Magne a professional poker player that I met in Buenos Aires and thinking about it I haven’t had the urge to play poker but when I discuss hands with him I really want to play… Ugh. Is good that we have a similar sense of what living life is, our lifestyle is pretty much the same at the moment, I will like to brag that I manage to wake up earlier though. I also got pretty interested in connect 4, a game that seems very widespread here, just for entertaining sake, Magne crushed me pretty badly I probably lost like 9/10, I want to get better at it…
In other stuff, like a month ago I was reading 2+2 and there was this huge long thread about a guy who was a week away to be homeless and the 2+2 community decided to help him, people started to give him small jobs, one of those was to make a video hugging people and, at some point people just started to offer donations and I almost did that too until I read that one of his dreams was to have a website and help people so it was almost a no-brainer to offer him my help in that regards, Jared has been working on the website (all the content is his creation) and I gave some help here and there with setting up the website/design, definitely check Jared Huggins out, he has a very original and touching story to share with the world and fortunately things are getting much better for him.
Good luck Jared! I think if he gets picked to play The Big Game he has a decent shot of winning some money, I heard he was getting coach by people that are very good; Jared said he was going to give away a percentage of his winnings, I find that very brave.
I haven’t watch poker TV in quite a while and I got some urge to do it today for whatever reason, somehow I stumble on the Pokerstars.net Million Dollar Challenge, that I did hear from hmm, too many details. Anyway, I think the “pros” are either soft-playing or Daniel Negreanu felt a lot of sympathy for the star of that week.
This particular episode was pretty entertaining, a priest was the star of the show and that’s an interesting start considering the format of the show…
I will be a snob and explain some things:
The format of the show consist of three rounds, each round represent a prize, I will skip the first round because is uninteresting, once the priest won the second round he had 25k in his pocket, he could either take that money or play for 100k + a shot to 1mm, I was almost sure that the priest was going to take the 25k home but he impressed me and went for the 100k, to be honest anyone should take the 100k shot, 100% of the time if their goal is to maximize their EV and I don’t particularly think this is being greedy just smart.
The priest either have a 100% shot at 25k or if I were to guess against Daniel Negreanu he is probably 2:1 underdog, so he has ~33% equity out of the 100k if he decides to go for it, which it is ~33k on Expected Value (EV). The difference is ~8k which is pretty big, around 31% more than “playing it safe” and taking the 25k.
From my point of view that’s the right decision some people might argue that picking a 100% shot on 25k is worth giving away 8k on EV or 31% of the prize. Keep in mind that I assume that the priest is going to win 1 out of 3 times, which considering the quality of play I could be dead wrong and he is likely to win a bit more which in theory means that he can possible be making much more than 33k instead of 25k, so it becomes even an “easier” decision to go for it. I am also not counting the shot to 1mm which I am not sure how it works, so all in all it would be a terrible decision not to go for it, at least from the perspective of maximizing the EV.
I am trying to think of reasons to quit and take the 25k but to be honest I would never do it and I would not advice anyone to quit. Just by playing you instantly win ~31% more. (33k instead of 25k). And that’s assuming you’re 2:1 underdog, in other words, that you only win 1 out of 3 times.
Here’s the first part of the show I really liked the jokes of John Thomas “Spider” Salley.
For what is worth and if it matters at all I think everyone played really bad, specially the last hand and this is the reason why I think there’s a chance is either rigged or Daniel Negreanu felt a lot of sympathy for the Priest, which is reasonable I guess… /end of judgment
I will be going to Phuket on the 25th of this month. It is amazing that it has been almost a month since I arrived to Bangkok.
I will probably be living with a friend that I met in Buenos Aires, I am not completely sure, I will meet him on the airport, an other friend from BsAs should be coming around two weeks after, it’s going to be nice.
BlissfulWays got a lot done (believe it or not) this month, although so many unfortunate things has been happening, we were suppose to launch three days ago and then things out of my control happen and we had to delay anyway, /end of whine.
I will stay in Phuket for a month and 3 weeks, probably will do some aquatic sports, I haven’t done many so should be fun, after that I will go back to Hong Kong for Christmas on December 15, should be really nice, the weather it’s going to be perfect and after that I am very uncertain. I still have a flight back to Buenos Aires on the February 2nd, by then it would be a year since I left home, I am still unsure whether or not I will take it or change, I think there’s a good chance I will take it(~80%).
I use to be a rage machine. Literally. I would get upset about small things, big things, medium size things, everything would make me upset. I was touchy. Some might say that the correct word is “intolerant”, I say maybe…
Fortunately for the most part, I have outgrown my touchiness and probably it takes a lot of work to get me upset (this is not a challenge), some of it has to do with the fact that I approach most of the things with sense of humour and some of it has to do with the way I perceive the world now, even though sometimes I just fall back on getting upset for small things. My computer freezing or the Internet not working still gets me upset… Not all the times but more often that I would like.
I get upset when expectations are not met. That’s in a nutshell. Probably how upset I get depends on how far from my expectations the result is. I can’t trick my expectations, I can’t change my expectations nor I can change how I react when my expectations are not met. What can I change then?
The way I see it, expectations are a way to compare, I have expectations because I have a point of reference. I can change my point of reference, that I can do, that is to say that I can change my perspective. That doesn’t necessarily mean I won’t be upset though, I will probably be a bit upset but overall I won’t probably duel over it for too long. At least that’s what happens now the majority of the time, I haven’t had a rage outburst in long time, is not like I was particularly crazy about expressing my anger and frustration, but sometimes I did yell at people, I did mistreated a lot of people because of it and I did some (rarely) physical aggression towards myself, like hitting tables and stuff like that, thinking about it, I just realized that is not that I am hitting the table, but rather I am hitting myself…
Nowadays, I think I let go quite easily and by easy I mean that I won’t probably care too much about it for a long period of time, which is basically the biggest difference, I don’t get hung up on things that often, in fact probably rarely I do.
I probably learned how to do this thanks to playing poker, I can think of millions of reasons of why, but basically comes down to competition and a desire to be better. To do “right” what other people are not properly doing was probably a good motivator. What I am saying, in other words is that probably a lot of people let their emotions affect their decisions and when you factor anger and frustration in your decisions almost always the decision is going to be far from optimal. That’s a crazy circle when you think about it. When your expectations are to get closer to optimal as possible and you end up doing the complete opposite, just doing that will increase anger and frustration….
I could go on a philosophical rant about what is optimal and what expectations are but it would be a really long and boring rant…
I have also notice that I have been taking deep breaths when I am close to get upset, I do think deep breaths help but is not like a magical thing. I probably do them unconsciously, is a way of saying (probably) “Is not important, get over it, quick!”. Which is probably a different way to show anger, to let it go through that deep breath…
Sometimes, one deep breath is not enough. I have tried meditation but I have failed miserably I can’t think of a moment where I stayed “still” for more than 5 minutes… A shower for me is a very good way of meditation, swimming pools are also a great way to meditate and by meditation I mean to do physically nothing, just let the brain do the talk…
Up to this date when I discovered that Santa Claus didn’t exist I don’t remember feeling such sadness. It might sound dramatic, it really was.
We don’t really use the figure of Santa Claus, in my family at least, it’s called the son of Jesus. The story is pretty much the same. He brings gifts to kids that were good kids during the year.
For 10 years I believed that on Christmas I would get grades in the shape of gifts. I would get those gifts from God himself. What could be greater than that?
I would ask adults why some kids didn’t receive what they wanted and the answer seemed the same all the times: They didn’t behave well.
I was proud of myself, most of the times I got what I wanted that meant that God was happy with my behavior, that ultimately I had God’s approval and forgiveness.
I think the whole idea of the son of God existing and bringing gifts itself made the world a better and mystical place.
I use to have a neighbor that went to the same school I did. In the mornings his mom would bring the both of us to school, one of those mornings probably the very first days of January I asked him what the son of God got him and that was when the first brain fuck of my life started.
My friend’s mom told me that the son of God didn’t exist. I denied it. Many times. It was obvious that he existed, how else would I get gifts? From your parents, she said.
That was shocking. I still was in disbelief, I had to ask other kids, some knew that it was their parents some didn’t know. I probably spoiled some of them.
When I went home my parents confirmed what I have been told. That was a sad day. My mom asked me to keep the secret and not tell my brother nor my sister. How could I do that?
Somehow, I still believed in the tooth fairy at least I had that.
I have somewhat of a clear image of this day. It was long time ago.
It occurred to me to ask my mom how do I make a baby? I think the fact that my brother was newly born had something to do with this. My mom told me that babies are made out of love. It made sense, back then.
Following that I asked: What is love? My mother told me that hugs and kisses like the ones I was receiving was love. What an Epiphany.
I reached many conclusions. That love are babies. That kisses are love and that hugs are love.
Following my math it made sense that the more kisses and hugs the bigger the baby. It also made sense that everything I was watching on TV was real. Whenever I would watch a novel and the people on the TV would kiss each other I would think: Ah! they are making a baby!
Thinking about it, is probably the reason I am not that affectionate. Think about it. Hugs and kisses are how babies are made, if I start kissing and hugging everyone I will have millions of babies.
It took me some time to realize that what my mother has told me was just the beginning of the creation of a baby. Fortunately it takes much more than what I assumed when I was 4 years old. Just imagine how many sons I could potentially have.
In such world paternity tests must be a high demand market. Giant babies could be born out of marathonic hug&kisses sessions. Since girls seems to be smaller than boys I think the trick to have girls would be to hug&kiss less, the trick to have boys specially big boys would probably be to hug&kiss for a long time.
What a weird world my 4 years old me had in mind. That’s probably why questioning assumptions is important.
This is a parody and is something that was born in 2+2 Forums and became a hit among poker players. Rub, rub…
Lingo
There are a lot of acronyms and words that are very common in the language of the majority of poker players. The younger I will argue, the most they use it, in general the words are fairly known by the big majority of Poker players. Keep in mind that when I refer to poker players I refer to people that play poker for a living online and are winners in their lifetime.
ldo, donk, standard, level,prop bet,ship it and fish I will argue that these are the most common in the community among poker players, there’s also a lot of influence from the internet subculture, words such as lol and the like are used with high frequency as well.
ldo: stands for “like duh, obviously”, a lot of poker players I would say use the word “obviously” too much, I think I might still have that quirky habit.
Donk: is someone who is a losing player but can be use as synonym of stupid.
Standard: is the word that poker players use for “normal”, mostly can be use as sarcasm.
Level: This has to be the most complex word and is highly used. I will quote the Beginners FAQ of 2+2.
The term “level” really has two usages in these forums. The first is to outsmart someone by thinking several steps ahead or above them. This comes from the idea that beginning players are on “Level 1 thinking” which is they only consider the value of their own hand and ignore everything else. Better players operate on “Level 2 thinking” which means they consider not only the value of their own cards but also the possible value of their opponent’s cards. Even better players consider the value of their own cards, the possible value of their opponent’s cards and what their opponent will think of the value of hero’s cards. This is “Level 3 thinking”.
This is a potentially infinite progression:
Level 1: What do I have?
Level 2: What does my opponent have?
Level 3: What does my opponent think I have?
Level 4: What does my opponent think that I think they have?
Level 5: What does my opponent think that I think they think I have?
This progression is illustrated amazingly well by this clip from The princess bride
The other way “level” is used is synonymous with “joke”. To imply that someone is gullible. That they’re thinking one or several levels below everyone else because they fell for what was obviously a joke or sarcasm or parody.
If I say “Battlefield Earth” is the greatest movie ever made and you take that at face value and believe I’m being sincere then you have just been leveled. Everyone else knows I’m being sarcastic.
Prop bet: Is a bet on pretty much anything and can be between many parties. An euphemism for a bet basically.
Ship It: Is an exclamation, a way to celebrate something.
Fish: A recreational poker player basically, can be synonym of donk.
Lifestyle
The lifestyle of poker players really varies. I wouldn’t think that there is a “perfect” stereotype for poker players, however there are many commonalities that a lot of poker players (in my opinion) share.
Sports
The big majority of poker players regardless of the country seem to like sports, specially Basketball and Soccer.
Soccer games amongst poker players are frequent, I think this is one of those few fields where gambling is not involved. Out of many games I only remember gambling once for the bill.
Gatherings to watch live sports games are quite common and frequent, specially in bars.
Prop Bets
I am not sure what to say about this. There might be times where there are a few prop bets but they don’t happen as often as you would think.
There are some epic ones that stamp in my brain but to the outsider eye they are probably not that interesting.
We were in a Vietnamese place, like 10 of us, we have been to this place many times. There’s this really spicy pot of sauce and randomly I started asking how much for drinking this whole pot of spice and numbers started to come out of everyone’s mouth but at the end nobody took it. Health risks was also a topic of conversation.
Other than that, there are probably other few bets of that nature and there are also sport bets, specially while watching live games either broadcast or real life games. I remember going to a few sports events and there were always side bets involved, I would argue that when you are not very familiar with the teams having bet on one of them, even if the bets are small it make it much more exciting .
Dinners
Big dinners of 7-10 are not uncommon and at times is something bi-weekly and other times it can be something that happens everyday.
Conversations in dinners varies a lot. Something that I find remarkable and unlike what most people probably think is that poker players rarely talk about poker results. Is unlikely to hear people talking about how much they’ve won or lost and is also unlikely to hear people asking about that. Although I think the big majority would be very open to share those results among other players if the topic came up but is not something that happens quite often.
Whinny poker players are also uncommon, not a lot poker players complain about their bad luck and when they do it’s probably because they are overwhelm and the bad run is probably really big, in that case I think is like group support and it doesn’t happen that often but it happens.
I think peer pressure also has something to do with that, is a wide known fact that nobody likes whinny players.
Topics of conversation in dinners can vary a lot, it could be from traveling to the meaning of life…
Night Life
Night outs are obviously something young poker players do a lot and some don’t do it at all. It really varies from person to person.
Health
Believe it or not the big majority of poker players are concern about their health. Poker players are aware that spending so much time in front of the computer waiting for donks is not particularly healthy and the diet of a poker player is not particularly healthy either.
Some take action, some do sports and go to the gym almost religiously although I would think this vary a lot.
Is probably some sort of cycle of “on” and “off” in regards to the gym and diet.
Here are two documentaries that can illustrate the life of two (completely different) poker players:
Disclaimer: All I have written is what I have observed and lived myself. This is completely my opinion. Disclaimer 2: The big majority of poker players are quite reserved when it comes to being poker players if you are an outsider to poker be nice.