I'm generally a pretty laid back person. I'm not easily angered and most annoying things just roll off my shoulders after about 5 minutes of grumbling. I do have a few triggers though and one of them hit me recently during a live tournament.

Rudeness at the table. Bad manners. Short-sighted, arrogant bullying. These things flip some kind of switch in my brain and make me want to go all 'deranged sorority-girl email' on people. The rudeness doesn't even have to be directed towards me. That red-mist descends even more quickly when someone is targetting a recreational player on the felt.

Look, I get it. Some people use table talk and petty behaviour to change the game flow and make themselves a target. I've heard people say that they're actually trying to become a target at the table in order to get people to play poorly and dump off their chips to them in frustration. And maybe this does work, in the short term. If a player is up against someone with more skill than them, they might want to shake that opponent up and put them off of their game. It might work. However, I'm guessing that a good player is ignoring that kind of provocation at least 7 times out of 10.

Most of the time though, the rudeness takes the form of berating the percieved 'less skilled' players at the table who manage to win hands by playing in a manner that you wouldn't call the best possible line.

"How can you even call me there with that? What were you thinking? Don't you know anything about poker?"

Is getting a player to stack off to you, once in a blue moon, really worth the long-term damage to the game? The player stacking off will usually be (like me) not a great player and the pros could be taking their/our chips in myriad other ways. When we make the poker table an unpleasant place to be, populated by some kind of "cool kids vs the newbies" dynamic, we remove one of the biggest draws for receational players to even want to sit down at the felt. We suck the fun right out of the game.

A lot of people play poker for fun. This is a hard thing to remember when you're playing it to pay your bills and getting unlucky against those who see poker as a game to be played for enjoyment. It can be unbelievably frustrating. I get that, I do. But causing those people to no longer want to play, will kill the game in the long term. Snide comments and poking fun at the players who are making bigger bet sizes than the norm or are chasing draws without the odds to do so, is counterproductive. Sure, by drawing attention to these things, you make it clear to the rest of the table that YOU understand poker but you're also underlining that you really don't understand the wider game. Don't you WANT players to make mistakes against you? Don't you WANT to occasionaly sit down at a table with some unfamiliar faces? Why are you trying to stop those things from happening?

I'll admit that most of my thinking here is that I just truly hate rudeness, wherever it happens, but there are actual game-play reasons for my severe annoyance with bully boy antics at the table. It's unpleasant and unproductive. And mean. When in doubt, just follow Wheaton's law. Don't be a dick. It works for all situations in life.

I've had 2 blissful weeks at home. After a long stretch on the road, it usually takes me a few days to relax so that I can change my frenetic pace into something more fitting the 'being at home' variety of life.

Things here in Parma move much, much more slowly than I'm used to. That's not a bad thing. The parmesan must be aged, prosciutto had better be cured for a minimum of 18 months and don't even ask me about young balsamic vinegar. A slow pace has it's place.

The Italian approach to slow food is mirrored in the approach to paperwork. Every single bureacratic decision needs to sit and cure for a few weeks before it can be dealt with. There's a beauty in this (because, indeed things WILL be dealt with) but it's hard for this fast-living person to accept sometimes.

Right now, I'm struggling with the Italian requirements for residency. In order to be legally approved to reside here (even though I'm already an EU citizen) I have to commit to being, not just in Parma but IN MY HOUSE, for 45 days in a row so that an official type person can come by and spot-check that I really do live here. With my job, that's pretty much impossible.

I've been a perpetual traveler for a long time now and I reeeeaaaaally want to settle down and live somewhere properly but it feels like my job and lifestyle (both of which I love) are making this next step almost impossible. You wouldn't believe how difficult most of the countries that I've lived in, have made it for me to become tax resident. Sure, I plan to use their sidewalks and maybe a roadway or two, but I'm hardly a big drain on public services. (and don't even get me started on how immigrant populations have a much smaller impact on public funds than the general population thinks they do).

Seriously. I'm Canadian. I expect to pay taxes. I'm okay with it. LET ME LIVE IN YOUR COUNTRY AND GIVE YOU MY TAX MONEY.

Aside from all of that, I am squarely in relax mode, just in time to ramp things back up and get ready for my first transatlantic flight in what seems like forever. Early next week, I'll be flying off to Montreal to play in the WPT Canadian Spring Poker Championship for Party Poker.

I can taste the poutine-flavoured victory already.

And just like that. We've moved into our new place in Parma.

I say, "just like that" but as anyone who has ever moved house (all of you) knows, it was one hell of a long, stressful and difficult process. Most of the heavy lifting in terms of the paperwork and bureaucratic wrangling was done by my ever-patient boyfriend while I've been gallivanting around Europe working on poker TV shows. So, aside from one hell of a guilt hangover, I'm feeling remarkably perky about the whole thing.

Moving to Italy has dropped me farther than ever down the Italian rabbit hole and given me a deeper sense of this country and its unspoken rules. There are forms and contracts for every damn thing here, always complete with long lines to stand in at various official buildings throughout the city. Plus, there's the uneasy feeling that I'm always forgetting to get some vital piece of paper stamped by the mayor himself.

The flip-side of the never ending paper trail, is the incredible humanness of the people who are sitting behind the usually implacable bureaucratic desks. There is a sense here that anything is possible as long as they understand why you need it to be done. If you express to them that you desperately need this particular piece of paper for some grand reason like love or the ability to go and see a sick relative or some other heartfelt pursuit, they listen to you. There is no automatic shutting down when you've forgotten to complete subsection 4b in triplicate. They actually look for short cuts and play the system, not like a violin but like an entire damn orchestral string section in order to help you get what you need.

You can see that they know that the bureaucracy in Italy is back-breakingly sucky and instead of becoming soulless DMV-type drones, they throw themselves into the matrix in an attempt to try to find a way to help you.

And, almost always, they're able to.

Even when they can't find that secret route that will shortcut you to the end boss, the feeling of having dealt with real, thinking and feeling human beings who care about the outcome, means that you don't leave the ugly, square city building with it's flickering fluorescent lights feeling like stepping in front of a car.

The month that we were finally able to move, the city decided it was the perfect time to completely shut down the road in front of our building for necessary road works. The entire road surface was stripped off and deep holes were dug down to access the bones that lay underneath it; pipes like arteries stretching out in each direction, bundles of electrical cables like exposed nerves. It didn't so much look like repair work as it did a half-finished autopsy where the medical examiner has gotten bored and wandered off for a cup of coffee.

I admit that I panicked a little bit. This was going to make moving rather difficult. I was picturing extensive 'fees' to be paid to the moving men to lug all of our stuff 200m down the rickety, narrow walkway to the waiting van. Silly me. All it took was one smallish Euro note and a suggestion that the road workers 'go off and have themselves some lunch' before the barriers were rolled back and the moving van very carefully navigated the open pits in the road to park directly in front. Health and safety hazard? Sure. But nobody blinked an eye.

I don't think I've ever actually bribed someone before. I can't say that I disliked it.

Viva Italia.

It is exceptionally hard to organise a house-move when you are never in the country. The clock is ticking down to zero hour but the number of days that I've spent in Parma have been few and far between. Thank god I have a very patient boyfriend who picks up the slack without even so much as the tiniest of guilt trips.

I'm not being dry or sarcastic. That is actually a true statement. Dude is a SAINT.

Moving house is one of the most stressful things that you can do in life and the bulk of the responsibility for everything is falling on his shoulders. Not only am I never here to help but I don't speak Italian either so... yeah. Not helpful. I'm sure that he's tired and frustrated by all of the many last minute things that are going wrong but he's still gliding through all of it like some kind of house-moving zen-master.

I'm not going to lie. It's pretty hot.

So the new house will be number 31 in my lifetime. (http://www.cardrunners.com/blog/kara/packing-up-and-moving-on-reprise) You'd think that I'd be better at moving by now. I am not.

Things that I have done recently instead of preparing to move:

I was in London working on the Party Poker Premier League for a couple of weeks and managed to run my immune system right down to a stub. From there, I flew straight to Venice to play the WPT event and by some weird twist of fate, ran deep. I think feverish Kara plays better poker than (quasi) normal Kara.

I had a brilliant time with the pokers in Venice. Really brilliant. Considering how bad my results have been recently, you'd think I'd have been stoked simply to cash again for once. I basically bubbled this tournament last year, and I was bubble +1 in Baden at my last event. So, falling short of the final table (I was 13th) at WPT Venice last week was surprisingly painful but a real shot in the arm to keep working on my game. I love hanging out with the Italian poker crew as well. They're unbelievably funny and supportive. I feel pretty lucky to be included in their group now.

And now I'm home, in an apartment full of boxes, with 2 days to get all the loose ends tied up before we get to our new place. I have just realised that it's Easter and that's a real holiday in Italy. Absolutely nothing is open. THERE'S SO MUCH TO DO and nothing is open.

I'm frustrated. I'm excited, I'm nervous, I can't stop sneezing... Oh, it's all happening here.

I have a place to live!

Boom. After nearly 4 months of searching and trying to convince people that I really am (because I really am) a responsible adult, lease papers have finally been signed in Italy. I'm not entirely sure what I signed as I don't read Italian, but I think the contracts mean that I now have to live there forever. I'm okay with that.

The move doesn't happen for a few weeks but I'm getting more and more excited about being able to settle into my new home. I love this country and I'm already starting to see small changes in the way I approach life, just from having spent a short amount of time here. Although you can never really make (accurate) big, sweeping statements like, "All Italians are like this, and all Canadians are that," there is a flavour to Italian life that differs from what I'm used to.

The people that I'm meeting in Italy come across as both very warm and very demonstrative. There seems to be less self-consciousness than I'm used to (and more shouting) and the social rituals around giving one's opinion are shorter and more to the point. I like that. Where I'm from in Canada, it can take 10 minutes just to buy gum. You have to factor in all the chatting about the weather, the terrible state of local politics and a few inquiries about family life (even when you've never met the person before). In Parma, people are very happy to answer question in detail about the age and quality of the cheese that I'm buying but otherwise, there is a lot less faffing about. Things are direct and to the point. I like it a lot. For someone like me, who is excessively concerned with social appropriateness, it's really quite freeing.

I've started the long and ridiculously expensive process of having all of my worldly belongings shipped to Italy from California and even though they won't arrive for a couple of months, I'm already imagining where I'll put things.

After 11 months of living out of suitcases, the idea of having a nest of my very own is exhilarating. The fact that the nest is in Italy, is a childhood dream come true.

When I was a kid, bruises gained from successful (and unsuccessful) adventures were worn like badges of honour.

As a farm kid, bravery and nerve were one of the main forms of currency. The person who could climb to the highest point on the tallest tree, the person who could jump from the highest hay bales, the one who managed to walk out the farthest onto the ice-covered lake - THEY were superstars.

And the bumps, scrapes, bruises and sprains that came along with those visible signs of daring, were prized.

I still can't believe that I never broke a bone. Nope, not even my nose. I know, you're shocked. As a very clumsy person, I've had to learn to reign myself in so that I don't actually end up in traction.

I remember having a spectacular wipe out on a too-large bicycle as I raced my neighbour down the gravel road that separated our farms. I still have the scar all over one side of my knee where the skin came right off. I was picking bits of rock out of it for a week. I think those bruises hurt a lot less than the (much deserved) angry dressing down that I got from my older sister. It was her bike and it looked about as bad as I did. Oops.

I miss those days; the exhilaration of knowing no limits and not caring so much about the consequences. I'm a bit more timid now and not as likely to rush headlong down a steep hill, just to see how much speed I can get. I guess that's part of growing up. Bumps, bruises and being covered in dirt aren't as highly prized when you're an adult. Stupid adulthood.

To hell with that, I say.

Party Poker have been treating their event qualifiers to some really fun outings lately. In Prague it was indoor skydiving and recently in Vienna, I spent the day sledging with the qualifiers and two of the Royal Flush Girls. Violet, Sonia and I threw ourselves all the way down from the top of the ski hill on tiny metal sleds. We crashed into snowbanks. We crashed into each other. We crashed into other people. We laughed our heads off. By the end of the day, my legs were covered in bruises from holding the front of the sledge with my knees in a death grip, as I tried to urge it to go faster while still trying to make the whiplash corners.

That was a week ago and I'm still covered in bruises. Badges of honour for an afternoon spent acting like a kid again. It was one hell of a good day.

There's a video here, if you're interested:

http://t.co/NJYmxB9N3X

I'm in Vienna and it's bloody cold here! I think there were 6 inches of new snow when I woke up this morning. It's like being back in Canada. Pretty though. You can't fault how pretty it all is.

I miss the sunshine. I think I got a little bit spoiled after living in California for three years. When I moved to the USA, I genuinely believed that I'd end up living there for a very long time. I even had all of my worldly belongings packed into a shipping crate and sent over on a boat from England at (very) great expense. That all seems like a million years ago now.

I'm back living in Europe now and as much as I do (oh, I do!) miss the sunshine, there's a sense of rightness that living over here brings me. I wish that I was closer to Canada and my family but when I made the decision to move to Italy, even Mama Scott said, 'yup, she belongs in Europe.' Now I just have to find a place to live so that I can ship all of my stuff back over here. I've been living out of suitcases since May 2012, with all of my stuff packed up tight in a storage unit in Santa Barbara. I miss my stuff. I am longing for a place to settle down and nest in.

Speaking of which, I had no idea how difficult it was for people who play or work in poker to rent a house in Europe. Seriously. For the first time in my life, I'm realising just how poorly some of the general public view poker players. I'm just a damned journalist and not even a professional player and still I can't get anyone to rent a place to me. Even the promise of a huge deposit and revealing every single bit of financial information about me possible has no impact. I've been giving prospective lease-holders more information than even my accountant has on me! I've done everything short of a full on physical exam and still, no deal.

Balls.

I've been so tempted to write a big ranting post about the whole nightmarish situation but considering that the people from whom I'm trying to rent a place are all bloody googling me, I'm going to bite my tongue. For now. At least until I finally manage to sign a lease.

I'm very responsible. SOMEONE RENT ME AN APARTMENT, DAMN IT. (please)

Buongiorno!

That's right bitches. I am totally learning how to speak Italian. Boom. So far, I can say hello and goodbye and ask for more pasta. So basically, what I'm saying is that I'm already fluent.

Okay, maybe 'fluent' is a stretch. I am learning though. I finally stopped being lazy and found myself an Italian tutor in Parma and I'm working with her once a week. It feels weird to have actual homework again for the first time in years. So far, she has not yet given me any stickers or gold stars when I do well. I'm disappointed. I respond well to treats.

Italy is the fourth country that I've lived in but it's the first truly foreign one. Canada, England and the United States all speak English (*ahem*more or less) so even while I was dealing with culture shock after moving to a new nation, at least I could listen and pick up on the social cues around me. Here, I'm like a toddler. I stare blankly at people while they try patiently to explain things to me and I have to work really hard not to just smear chocolate on my face and hide under the table when it all gets too much. I have a newfound respect for toddlers. This language learning shit is hard!

Thankfully, I really love the way Italian sounds. When I'm in a big group of people and everyone is talking, laughing and telling stories, the sounds start to blend together like some kind of happy, festive white noise. I'm finding it hard to believe that someday in the future, something in my brain will click and that garbled noise will finally turn into true communication. Words, sentences, ideas. I'll be able to understand the radio, the TV, people on the street, the words to songs. It's an exciting thought. I can practically feel my brain swelling as my grey matter creates lots of new folds, like with *Spoiler Alert* the Observer's tech on Fringe.

If only it was so easy. Sadly, there are no Farscape translator microbes to give me a short cut on learning a new language. Man, wouldn't that be awesome?

This is hard. Somebody give me a damned sticker!

Fake it 'til you make it.

When I first started working in television, way back when, I had very little idea of the 'proper' way to do things. I kind of fell into media work by accident when a friend mentioned a little TV presenting gig on a show that they thought would be perfect for me. By some miracle, I landed that first job which eventually, in a long and roundabout way, led me to poker. I was extremely nervous but decided that I'd just do my best and try to soak up and learn everything that I could. I totally faked my way through it until I had a better understanding of the skills required to work in front of a camera.

I've always been a fan of taking risks and trying things outside of my comfort zone and of course, it doesn't always go well. I think that it was Taylor Caby who once blogged about how 'failure' shouldn't be seen as a negative. Like so many people, I hate failure. No, that doesn't quite cover my feelings around this word. I actually fear failure. The idea of falling short, not measuring up, lacking what it takes - that is all anathema to me. But without failing at things, how will I know that I'm actually trying hard enough at things instead of just "phoning it in"?


Over the last few years, I've put some effort into changing my view of failure. I've realised that if I'm not pushing myself hard enough to risk failing at something, then I'm not pushing myself hard enough at all. This stands for both my personal and professional life. Failure shouldn't be some doom-laden word, full of finality. It's not some malevolent little period at the end of bad sentence.


If something doesn't go the way I think it should or if I haven't reached a goal that I set for myself, that's when I can learn something. Why didn't it work? What change can I make, which new route can I take, what new way can I start to think about something? Also, it's exhilarating to teeter on the far edge of what I know that I can do. It's the same reason that I go on rollercoasters. Fear and excitement feel remarkably similar and it's not that difficult to trick your brain into identifying that rush of adrenaline as pure thrill.


I was really good at this for a while. I saw exciting new challenges and opportunities where I would once have seen the finality of 'failure'.
And then, over time, I started to suck at this. Life got in the way and I began to fear failure again. I felt like mistakes and lack of success were a comment on me as a person rather than being the sometimes logical outcomes of experimenting and pushing boundaries. They'd come to mean that I just wasn't good enough at something, and frankly, that blows.


I don't know about you, but often I have to learn the same lessons over and over again in different ways, before they really settle in my brain.


So I'm pushing myself again, stretching what I know of my capabilities in hopes of breaking out of the (very) little cozy nest of life that I've become comfortable in. I'm doing things that I'm actually not good at. I'm trying to learn and speak Italian with actual Italians while living in Italy. I have to fail at this every single damn day otherwise I'm not doing it right. It will probably be a couple of years before I'm fluent and I'll make a lot of gaffes along the way.


By the way, the plural word for 'fig' in Italian is 'fichi'. It is NOT 'ficha' and I wouldn't suggest that you use it in conversation with someone like, say, your boyfriend's mother. It means pussy. Epic fail.


Also, I'm going to be hosting the European Poker Awards this month in Paris. Given my job, this might not seem like something that should cause me any stress. For some reason though, working to a live crowd instead of a camera TERRIFIES me. No really. We're talking, sick to my stomach kind of nervousness. But, damn it, I'm going to do it. And I'm going to smile and fake it and do the best job that I can. And if I stumble on my words or if - worst case scenario - I fall over and flash my knickers to a room full of the biggest poker industry names in Europe, I'm quite sure that it won't be the end of the world. God, I really hope that doesn't happen though.


And before I pick up that microphone, I'm going to take Amy Cuddy's advice and do a 'Wonderwoman pose' for 2 minutes to feel more prepared. This Ted Talk video is pretty incredible and sincerely worth watching for anyone who sometimes suffers from nervousness. Actually, it's one hell of a life hack for all of us, no matter what.


Fake it 'til you make it. Or until you become it. Just remember not to say 'ficha' in polite company. Ahem.


http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes_who_you_are.html

2012. What a year.

12 months. 51 flights. 2 Eurostar trips. 21 long car journeys taken instead of flights. 13 countries. 3 continents. 21 cities. 45 different beds. Only 10 weeks in my own.

I lived in 3 different countries. I lived briefly in a Barn. If home is wherever your 'stuff' is, then I still live in a storage unit in California. I started to learn a new language. I ate THE BEST CHEESE OF MY LIFE. I learned how to make gnocchi from scratch. I was able to work live on ESPN and in recorded shows watched by scary numbers of people. I dressed up like a Jedi and swung a lightsaber in the halls of the Rio.

I sat as a judge for the European Poker Awards. I headlined my first poker tournament. I visited my family in Canada twice. I did not swear on live TV but someone I was interviewing did. I watched a famous poker player sing along to High School Musical - he knew all the words. I went to watch an Arbresh Reggae band perform in a tiny mountain town that was nearly inaccessible. I drank hot wine from a fountain in Venice and didn't die from lead poisoning.

I got to show Las Vegas and the WSOP to my mother for the first time. I watched two friends get married in Texas through an online stream, from my hotel room in France at 3am. I celebrated my parent's 45th wedding anniversary. I sat in a huge auditorium with only 5 other people (all over 60 years old) and watched a film about early avant-garde animation. I sat alone in a foreign restaurant and asked them to bring me whatever they thought was 'typical' for that region. It tasted awful. I loved it.

I started taking photographs to document my travels. I saw Dynamo the Magician perform his magic up close and personal and had no idea how he did it. I did Karaoke for the first time ever and was hailed as 'catastrophic.' I drove 2 hours through a Italian night with the sky lit up in sheet lightening alongside good friends from California, with gangster rap playing on the stereo. I sailed through the Greek Islands.

I drank a lot of very good scotch. I read more than 50 books. I got my first pair of glasses. I made some incredible new friends. I got to know old friends better. I fell in love with one of them.

To say that this year has been 'full' feels like a massive understatement.

It was a hell of a year. A truly great year. A learning year. I absolutely loved it. Bring on 2013.