Tilt

Andrew tells me from his computer, this guy's practically giving me money; I've won $90 in the last hour from him. The guy's in tilt, he says.

The gambling term, tilt, means that a player has lost an amount of money that is so great the loss has psychologically affected his level of play. Rash bets are made in an attempt to quickly regain the losses. Andrew, a careful player, can take advantage of such an opponent's rash game-play. A game-play Andrew better defines as charity. For a player who finds himself in tilt it is best to just walk away from the table and know, with a clearer head, game-play has better potential for improvement.

It's good to know, through poker; Andrew will be financially stable as he wins (or makes) more than he spends (or loses). For me, being here two weeks now, with no financial stability, having no job, an amount of anxiety establishes itself in my thoughts. Coming to Prague I have lost a lot: most of my family, all of my friends, my sources of income and my language. If coming to Europe is a gamble, then the past two weeks I have been in tilt.

So I begin to interview, searching for job openings on the Internet.

Partial success occurs as I land a seasonal job at the end of the season.

Oleg the Ukrainian, Eric the Mexican, Giorgio the Italian and Prokop the Czech are the international crew whom make up the team at Praha Bike, a bike rental, bike tours, Internet cafe and art gallery. The crew has taken me in as a bike mechanic and English tour guide.

Praha Bike's Green Trail Tour, longest of two city routes through Prague, will take you, from Old Town Square, over the Vltava River that winds through the city, and up the butte on which stands the Metronome. It's from here you have a 180 degree aerial view of the city's array of beautiful architecture, the foliage it surrounds and the azure Vltava. As far as Czech's are concerned, this is the top of the World.

On a city block, history and schools of art are meshed as various buildings of Art Nouveau to Baroque, Renaissance, Cubist, Gothic, Neo-classical and Ultra-modern tower together. Standing at the Metronome you hear the mechanics of the giant metal sculpture as you see the city's architecture in its artistic grandeur.

The Metronome is a red needle structure, resembling a meter, attached to what looks like an oil pump which provides the needle's movement as it sways from left to right like a needle in a foot-scale, if you were to constantly step on and off. Upon the hill this swinging structure is viewable from most of anywhere in the city. Although if it were anytime before 1962 and after Communist Soviet Union's occupation of Czechoslovakia the Metronome would not exist, rather the largest monument in the World of Stalin, accompanied by patron Red soldiers, would loom over the city. But it's not, it's early August in '06, and the times have drastically changed.

This is what the Metronome represents, change as a constant and committed movement. Nothing is static. A county can be oppressed, a player can be in tilt, and a foreigner can be anxious, but in an instant, as quick as a deep inhale and exhale, times change and improvement reveals itself.