Getting into the swing of things ...

We have spent the day "moving in" to the convention centre - getting our computers set up adding new printer drivers (why is the one you want never there ?!), and getting onto the internal network that has been set up. The hospitality desk is up and running and distributing the bags, players are arriving almost by the minute and all the staff are here. The Vu-Graph studio is in place as you can see, though the background wiring is still being done. We have photocopiers set up (5 big ones …) notices are on the display boards outside the offices to tell people where to find places like the Press Room. There is a small army of helpers building the tables with screens ready for play, moving the computers to their final stations, checking the network connections between the floors.

Tomorrow things get going in earnest, with the Captains' Meeting and then the Opening Ceremony in the evening ... then an early night for everyone ready for the start of play on Sunday morning.

On a personal note, we discovered a great Korean restaurant last night and enjoyed beef with noodles and some fantastic chicken soup with ginseng! It was a fun evening – a massive building, the first four floors filled with shops then the next six (yes six) floors just of restaurants ! I have never seen so many restaurants in one place – something for every taste, and it was really hard to choose between them.

This is a photograph of the Huang Po River taken from my bedroom window at dawn … just to show you a bit of Shanghai !

I will find some more pictures later to give you even more of a flavour of the event ... so watch this space as they say !

Empty rooms !

This morning was the time to check through the venue and make final decisions about which room should be allocated for which purpose - obviously the playing rooms are the main halls and are unchanging, but the offices have to be carefully looked at and decisions made about the layout - both for which room will be which office, and for the layout within the rooms as well. It is surprising to some people how much infrastructure there has to be and the different aspects that have to be taken into account. For example, the duplication room is very noisy, so can't be next to a meeting room. The vu-graph studio needs a lot of space, plenty of air conditioning (it gets very hot under those lights) and must be in a quiet area. The WBF meeting room requires a board room layout, the WBF office (mine, shared with Carol who is WBF Secretary and Christine who is Assistant Treasurer) needs space enough for all the paperwork, somewhere for people to hold quiet one-to-one meetings, and things like that.

The only room that isn't empty at the moment is this one, where a lot of the equipment is stashed awaiting distribution to the various departments as you can see in this photograph. This is all shipped in from Europe and the boxes you can see contain hundreds of boards for duplication, all the WBF laptops - about 80 of them - printers, leads, hubs and sundry other items. Two container-loads of material in total is shipped out to a Championship ... more if we need to ship tables and screens, but in this instance those are being provided by the local organisation.

The playing room is having the partition built to separate the Open and Closed Rooms, and once that is done the tables will be built and it will be transformed from an enormous open space to a very busy area - I will post more pictures of that later !

Many of the players are now starting to arrive and have a look round and of course lots of the staff members too - it is great to see them and renew old friendships ... for most of them we only meet once a year at the World Championships, so there is lots of news (and gossip) to catch up on !

Watch this space for more ... hopefully tomorrow !

Welcome to Shanghai

So - I have arrived in Shanghai for the 2007 World Championships - and wow is it an amazing place. We had a warm welcome at the airport from members of the Chinese Contract Bridge Association and were brought to our hotel - I am very fortunate to be staying at the Oriental Riverside Hotel right on the river, next to the famous Shanghai Telecoms Tower, and it is a gorgeous hotel let me tell you ! With, as you can guess because I am posting this, a broadband connection that I am making good use of.

I am going to try and post a blog on a regular basis, to try and give you some idea of what it is like "behind the scenes" at one of these events - so watch this space. I will take some pictures and post them as well, and hope you will find it interesting.

Today, we have had brief look round the Convention centre - which is enormous, and some initial plans are being made by the technical team for the exact layout of the rooms and offices. Tomorrow will be the major day for those decisions and for starting to get to work in readiness for the arrival of the various teams of people who will be working here - the Tournament Directors, the Scoring Team, the Bulletin Editors and of course the Secretariat (well, we are here already!) and later on the Press and Media.

I have seen an army of helpers already packing the hospitality bags - all the participants get one of those - and they will soon start filling the empty rooms with tables and screens, computers and technical equipment, bidding boxes, bidding trays and all the attendant paraphernalia needed for a World Championship

The WBF Executive are also arriving in readiness for their meetings and I have spotted the first of the participating teams coming to get acclimatised and over their jet lag before play starts on Sunday.

It is all quite quiet and empty at the moment, but it will soon start buzzing! And I will try and keep up with the atmosphere and the excitement for you ... hope you will find it interesting!

Summer's almost over

What there was of it - I don't know about you, but the summer here in England has been singularly uninspiring - thank goodness I managed to escape to the wilds of Orkney for a while where the weather was fine if a bit chilly and I had a lovely relaxing time with my sister joining for the first week, and then my daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter for the second week. It was a bit of a squash in the caravan we rented, but we had enormous fun! I took some pictures (as always) and they are here if you want to have a look. The ducklings were particularly adorable :-). And despite the little galley kitchen we managed to prepare some yummy food !

So what news on the bridge front ? Well, the system cards have all been filed for Shanghai - you can find them here if you are interested in seeing what the top players are playing this year. I am not quite at the stage of packing a suitcase, but I am certainly thinking carefully about what I am going to take especially in terms of the technical stuff!

And we are also looking foward to Beijing of course, in October 2008 (I can't wait !) ... I have just put up a press release about that - click here to read it. And click here to read the other Press Release about FISU (been a busy day today !)

Not long now to the EBU Simultaneous Pairs - Monday 17 & Tuesday 18 September. Club lists are up if you want them - just click here to find them. And the material has just been sent out for the BGB Autumn Pairs on 10th & 11th October. Club lists for that will go up in due course.

Our annual ECatsBridge Simultaneous Pairs for Children in Need is fast approaching - the dates are Friday 9th, then Monday - Thursday 12th - 15th November ... different hands each night of course (I must be barmy!). Last year we raised a staggering £53,567.35 - that's $107,975.09 which is amazing - aren't you bridge players just fantastic ! I wonder if we can beat that this year. If your club wants to enter, do email me and let me know - we would love to have you join us! Details of the event are here

That's about it for now - watch this space though for future blogs!
all the best to all of you
anna

Shanghai Approaching!

The World Championships in Shanghai are starting to loom large on my horizon, as the teams are registered and the systems come rolling in (not quite as fast as I would like unfortunately - come on guys, get weaving!)

Don't forget you can enter the transnational Open Teams - such a great event and wow ! you get to see Shanghai as well as play bridge in a fantastic tournament. AND you get to see some of the great players in action in the final stages of the Bermuda Bowl, Venice Cup and Seniors Bowl. All very exciting ! Have a look at the ECatsBridge website for more information about this.

More local (and much sooner!) don't forget the English Bridge Union Brighton Congress - it starts on 10 August, but there is still time to book in. Click here for more information about that one.

Don't forget the next Green Pointed Sims will be the EBU Autumn Pairs on Monday 17 & Tuesday 18 September ... just get in touch if you haven't entered and would like to ... details are here

So what else - not much bridge really, it all seems to go slow in the summer months, which is really just as well with the World Championships coming up, but it did mean I could take a day or three away from the office to go wandering ...

... and as usual I headed North (despite the weather) and surprise, surprise, found myself in Scotland recently where I came across this furry little fellow - isn't he wonderful !

It was great to see red squirrels in the wild - round us they have been driven out by the greys, so I thought I would share this one with you.

We visited the Osprey Centre as well, and were rewarded with some great views of these wonderful birds - too far away for my camera unfortunately but I really (really) can't afford the sort of lens that would capture them!

So ... I hope you get good holidays, good weather and have fun ! And maybe I will see you in sunny Shanghai !

And they call this summer ?!

I don't know about you, but here in England it has been the wettest June since records began and it is merrily continuing into July. However, I am not really complaining because we spent the last two weeks in June on the Orkneys - right up there in the North of Scotland. And we were rather luckier - it was cloudy some of the time, chilly (well quite cold actually) some of the time, but also sunny some of the time and we really didn't get much rain at all. And we relaxed and it was great. Took some pictures which you can find those on Flickr if you are interested.

And I had a reminder about another wet summer yesterday when a very old friend, Tony Sowter emailed me telling me he has set up his own website. Tony is/was an international player of some repute, winning the European Championships back in Killarney in Ireland, playing with Roman Smolski .. all too many years ago but what a fun Championship that was! But I think it rained every day - soft Irish rain, but no less wet for all that!

But anyway, to bridge and more work related matters ... we are really starting to "ramp up" towards Shanghai and the World Championships, and the lists of teams, although incomplete as yet, is up on the site - click here to get to them.

The European Championships have come and gone and were, I gather, very successful - I wasn't their myself, but am meeting friends who were at the weekend so am looking forward to hearing all about them. You can find all the bulletins and results etc on the official event site of course. Congratulations to the teams and pairs who were "on the podium" - a full list of them can be found in the final bulletin.

And next week sees the start of the European Youth Championships in Jesolo, Italy, so for the youngsters and young at heart among you, take a look at the official event site for that as well and see how the Junior, Schools and Girls teams get on.

Simultaneous Pairs - well the BGB Summer Pairs is at the end of the month, and I will be putting up lists of competing clubs in a day or two so you can try and find one to play at if your own club isn't running it. Remember, it is green pointed, so well worth entering !

So - wherever you are have a great summer. And if you have been on holiday I hope it was as good as mine, and if you are going on holiday I hope it will be as good as mine !! But's let's hope for a bit of sunshine wherever and whatever you are doing.

Busy Times!

This spring has seemed particularly frantic for some reason - lots going on, and lots coming up ! I managed to escape for a few days, to Orkney as usual, which was wonderful, but despite trying to keep on top of emails while I was away, there seemed to be a pile of stuff to do when I got back - ho hum. Took some pictures while I was there - if you want to see them they are on my Flickr pages


As I write this, the first clubs are uploading results from the World Wide Bridge Contest - it seems a long time ago that my daughter and granddaughter came over to help me pack up the last of the booklets ready to send out and I took this picture of them in the office. I do hope those of you play in the event enjoy it - and the excellent commentary by Eric Kokish! Click here for the results pages.


The European Open Championships start soon, in Antalya - all the information is on the EBL site, which will also have the results and bulletins once it all gets going. Vu-Graph will be broadcast live on BBO as well of course!


Now it is probably time to take a deep (very deep) breath and start looking forward to the World Championships in Shanghai - there is more information on the website - including the Conditions of Contest - so click here to go to the relevant pages. Do join us for the Transnational Teams if you can - it is such a great event and I am sure you would love it. And you get the chance to enjoy all the fun and excitement of the final stages of the Bermuda Bowl, Venice Cup and Seniors Bowl!

The BGB and EBU Spring Pairs have come and gone, and we are now looking forward to the BGB Summer Pairs at the end of July - but there are also the Bill Hughes and Kidney Research events in between. So if your club isn't yet entered and wants to be, click the links and you will see what to do ! Overseas clubs are welcome to join in these events if they wish ... the more the merrier.


So - back to work ... time to typset the Children in Need booklets I guess. It never stops !!