I'm a person who is struggling with the idea of how to be happy, productive and successful in life. It's not that I'm unhappy with my life right now, it's just that I have a distinct feeling that it could be better.

Two weeks ago, I had two teeth surgically extracted. The teeth in question were my lower right 2nd molar and premolar. About a year or so ago, the molar cracked and I got an abscess beneath those two teeth. I had to get a root canal in each, which was difficult because the roots were twisted and almost entwined. Unfortunately, the root canal treatment failed and I had to have both teeth extracted.

Most majors cities are sited on either an excellent harbour or an easy river crossing. Auckland isn’t called the City of Sails for nothing – our harbour is one of the best in the world. And tsunamis only reinforce this.

I am a procrastinator. Always have been. And not just with my thesis – with just about everything. I’ve been reading “The Procrastinators Guide to Getting Things Done”, which describes different kinds of procrastinators. It turns out I’m not a pleasure procrastinator or a disorganised procrastinator. I’m a self-doubt procrastinator and a binge worker.

This morning I made myself breakfast. That’s not particularly unusual, I have breakfast at home about half the time. Today, I had bacon and eggs with tastes-like-home-made-but-isn’t tomato relish and a vanilla chai latte. Everything was ready at the same time so I sat down to enjoy it. At the exact second that I picked up the fork, the whole building’s fire alarms went off.

Lately, I’ve been addicted to watching MacGyver. I was initially reluctant to watch it again. MacGyver is one of my idols from childhood and I was worried that if I watched him again now, I’d discover that he’s actually pretty lame. Well, I didn’t need to worry. MacGyver still rocks.

Now that I’ve finished my thesis, my next work related worry is continuation. Continuation is a version of the US tenure system that has all the downsides and none of the upsides.

Well, I’m more or less recovered from the flu now, and it’s Christmas day, I’m stuffed full of christmas dinner so what better to do than lie on the couch watching tv and playing a bit of poker?

Today was about as bad as yesterday. I lost about 3 dollars in about 2 hours at the 5c/10c tables. I did a few stupid things, like calling down to the river with nothing but a straight draw even though the other guy was raising and reraising and clearly had a hand (he flopped the nut flush). I don’t think I should play when I’m not able to focus properly. I think I’ll give it a miss until I’m recovered from the swine flu.

A couple of times I’ve been on Full Tilt and seen Kenny Tran, one of their pros playing at the 5c/10c limit tables. The first time I saw this, there was only a single table full at that limit and it had a waiting list of 36 people. All the other tables were empty and I couldn’t find anyone to play a game with.