Bridge Players are wonderful - it's official

I just can't believe how much money you all raised for Children in Need - thank you so much, all of you who took part and donated so generously. Over £55,000 ... truly amazing. For those of you who couldn't join us this year, we will be doing it again (insanity runs in both Mark's and my family obviously !). It is such fun, so do think about joining us next November !

It has been a frantic month, what with that, and getting all the information together about Beijing 2008 and the World Mind Sport Games.

Add to that extra bits to do with the Laws, lots of work on the EBU site, getting information ready for publication in the new WBF Directory, to say nothing of preparing for the EBL sims, sending out the mailshot for all next year's sims to the clubs, sending out the January Sims material and (well in a day or two) sending out the results from the Autumn BGB Sims ... with apologies for lateness, you can see why I am feeling positively breathless ! And looking forward to a nice break over Christmas!

But before that I need to get the BGB April Sims material typeset as well as the EBU May Sims stuff ... and get the July one off to the commentators and organise things for the Autumn ones ... one long cycle of events and you have to keep on top of it or it is a major "firefighting" exercise!

There isn't much direct news really, but I just wanted to stay in touch via this blog so you don't forget to come back and look occasionally you see !

A quick mention for my American friends who celebrate Thanksgiving today - I hope you have a great day ... and to my special Scottish friends who will be celebrating St Andrew's Day shortly - I hope you like our St Andrew's day cat, devised especially for you.

Until the next time ....

Shanghai - a distant memory already!

Well, I had a safe journey home from Shanghai - I was actually "bumped" off my flight, but as that meant they moved me to another flight and put me business class I wasn't actually too annoyed! Once I got home I slept for hours ! I am one of the lucky ones and don't suffer from jet lag as such, although I was very tired and did a lot of sleeping. But I was always aware of the time and did my sleeping (mainly) through the night, though confess to an afternoon kip on the Monday and Tuesday after I got back!


Last Monday Mark went into hospital for the day and had his gall bladder out (together with some very large gall stones !) and he is making a good recovery, though still suffering a bit as a result of the anaesthetic ... before he went in, we had a lovely weekend pottering around and taking photographs, with the colours and light really starting to tell us that autumn is well and truly here. Thought you might like this one, just to show how pretty it is round here!


As for me and the bridge stuff - well, I have been getting the results of the EBU Autumn Sim ready to post -they will be going to the post office this afternoon at last. The BGB one is having the frequencies checked at the moment then I will finalise that and, of course, we are gearing up for the Children in Need event - click here for more details of that and click here for lists of clubs playing in the event. Do join us if you can and help us raise lots of lovely money for the charity - we sent them over £53,000 last year and it would be wonderful to beat that in 2007. If you can't join us but would like to make a donation - well that would be wonderful. Just click here and it will tell you how !


Then once that is over there is the European Simultaneous Pairs on Monday 26 and Wednesday 28 November - all the material for that is sent by email, and if you would like to join us - well that would be great - just email me (anna@ecats.co.uk) and we can sort it out for you! By which time it will be time to pack up and send out the next BGB Event - the January Pairs ! Arrrrggghhh!

And in the meantime I really (really) need to get the entry forms out for 2008 - they are nearly ready to print so I hope to get that going in the next few days!


The EBU site has now got its complete calendars up for 2008 - do let me know if you spot an error won't you, or if you want your county event included, drop me an email. Club events can go on the club events page, so if you have an open event, again, let me know and I will try and sort it out for you.

So long ... and thanks for all the fish !

Well, it is just about over ! The last 8 boards are being played (and are, I am told, pretty exciting!) - as I write this the USA team has just pulled back a raft of IMPs in the final with Norway ... but now I am finishing off, I learn that Norway has won !

Carol is double checking the minutes from this mornings meeting - and you should watch this space for exciting news about the junior events in Beijing next year! Christine is sorting out her last bits and pieces and we are all cutting CDs and DVDs of the data we have accumlated on our laptops so that it is all backed up in case of disaster - then we will give them to each other for safety (how paranoid can you get !)

Goodbyes are being said, as we all prepare to go our separate ways. Few of us will meet again until next year in Beijing, which makes these annual events extra special. Love is being sent to the ones who didn't make it this year for various reasons, boxes of material are being packed up ... how on earth did we fit it all in to get it here ? There is always so much more to take home, despite using up lots of consumables !

Then it will be time to go up to the room, open my suitcase and hurl everything into it - after all, packing to go home is just target practice ! Though why on earth packing clothes to go home should always seem to take up more space is also totally beyond me. Life is, indeed, full of mystery.

Tonight is the Victory Banquet, when we celebrate the achievements of the winners, relax with friends over a dinner, and - I am told - watch and enjoy a show, so that should be great fun. Not that I want to be too late, as I have to catch a shuttle to the airport at 06.00 tomorrow morning - yuk ! My flight is at 10.55 and I land at 4.15 ... please don't expect me to be in the office on Monday though. Sleep is top of my list of priorities (after cuddling family and cats of course !)

So - as in the title (thanks Douglas Adams !) ... so long and thanks for all the fish - thank you for reading my blogs, and I hope you have enjoyed them. And I will be back with more in due course ...

nearly there ...

Sorry I didn't get to post anything yesterday - it was a really busy day and I shut down with such a sense of relief, I don't think I could have typed another word!

Today has seen the 2007 Laws adopted by the WBF Executive Council, and they are posted on my website for download, translation and adoption by the Zones. I will be emailing out very shortly to tell all the NBOs, Zones, TDs and Press about it ... it has been the culmination of 5 years work by a great sub committee, all of whom are very relieved and are wandering around looking relaxed!

We are all looking with some dismay at the amount of material we have to get home with us - many of the people here have been shopping to good effect, and have quite a bit of extra baggage. Mine was very overweight on the way here, but I haven't been near a shop, being a good girl, so if I can disgorge some of the non-essentials like the shampoo, I may get near the 23 kilos I am meant to have!

The Championships are all winding down - we are busy checking to see who will become World Grand Masters at the end ... looks as though there will be one or two, but of course it depends on who wins! You can only become a World Grand Master if you have a) 10 placing points - very hard to come by - AND b) have actually won a World Championship.

Poor Carol has been in meetings again today - the final council meetings, where they deal with the reports from all the committees and things like that, and make plans for the future. Beijing is going to be really (really) exciting next year, so watch this space for more information and all the details!

And now it is just one more day - I fly home on Sunday, and Mark is going to meet me at the airport and take me home, to my fabulous family, to my extended family (Mark's sons), my cats, the railway station and my own bed! And to my relief I have heard from my younger daughter who has got to Lima safely AND found an internet connection which is marvellous! Tomorrow will undoubtedly be extremely hectic, with all the final last minute things, the packing up and so forth, so if you don't hear from me ... I will be in touch again when I get back to England, home and beauty !!

eeeek ... look at the time

I thought I would try and finish early - joke !!!

But it has been a good day for getting things done. You may have seen the picture of the Laws Drafting Sub Committee in today's bulletin, relaxing after a job well done. It has been a long hard slog for them to get the draft done and they certainly deserved the celebration !

The day went quickly - the last bits of the laws printed off for the final final proofread, the transnational teams checked, the start of the arrangements for the Victory Banquet, plus sundry other bits and pieces. A working lunch with Anna Maria Torlontano, working on Women's Committee things - there is a new project afoot for a WBF / BBO Women's Festival to be held next April which should be excellent fun, so watch this space for more information as it becomes available.

I am told that the bridge is quite exciting too !!! After the fall of mighty Italy, everyone is watching the South African team of course to see how they fare in the semi finals. We got 148 teams in the transnational in the end - what you might call a goodly number ! They are all battling it out now - when you go down between sessions the noise is just unbelievable mainly because the halls are all marble so the echo is incredible! I am just grateful that it is 2 floors down - I remember in Istanbul the playing rooms were right outside our office and every time the players came out we were nearly deafened by the noise.

There are lots of meetings going on with IMSA (International Mind Sports Association) to set up the World Mind Sport Games in Beijing next year - poor Carol has had the joy of taking the minutes at those ! And Christine has been going nearly demented sorting out the entry fees for the Transnationals and the payments to all the staff, the per diems etc.

So - now it is time to go and find some Appeals Committee members who may be needed for an Appeal, then I am going to call it quits for the day - it is 7.20 pm and I have had enough for one day

I have been online (thank you MSN) to Mark in the office, and as he has installed a webcam there, have been able to watch him at work, and also see my daughter, Vickie, who is busy packing up the CiN material ready to post when the post office will accept it. My younger daughter flew off on her adventures (see an earlier blog for more detail) at some "oh-mi-god" o'clock this morning, lucky girl! and I am going to have a little brag about my granddaughter, Jasmine who has just won the Year 7 cup for Maths at her school :-) Heaven knows where she gets it from - it certainly doesn't come from me !!

more tomorrow ... hope I am not boring you !!

No gossip !

There isn't a lot to say about today - it has been reasonably quiet, giving me a chance to work on the new Laws documentation and ensure that it is all in order - printouts are being done for proof reading, so I have had a chance to concentrate on that.

The wind has died down and the sun even came out for a while I am told ! I have been hiding behind my i-tunes to such good effect, I don't even know what has been going on in the bridge ! No doubt you can find that out by going to all the links and looking at the results and Vu Graph and things like that. And there are bulletins to read as well, with lots of the hands being reported.

So, not much news today - will try and do better tomorrow !

Behind the scenes

The offices behind the scenes consist of the WBF Secretariat (where I work alongside Carol von Linstow and Christine Francin) – we are pictured here relaxing in the evening – Carol on the left as you look at the photo, me on the right, and Christine in the middle. It is a big room, which is just as well, we need the space !

Beside us is the WBF Meeting room, set up boardroom style, where the main Meetings are held, including the Meetings of the WBF Executive Council. It has the comfiest chairs in the building, and is really a very imposing room, with a massive oval table with a hole in the middle to put projectors on for presentations and things .

Next to that is the duplication room – now, I am sure that some of you will deal the boards for your clubs using the duplimate machines – spare a thought for the team doing it here in Shanghai – they are pictured here with some of the hundreds of boards that they deal again and again. The hands played in the events are, of course all the same and during the fortnight this team will deal a staggering 40,200 boards!

As you can see, there are stacks and stacks of boards just awaiting their attention !

The pink shirts, by the way, are the "uniform" polo shirts worn by all the members of the Shanghai Bridge Association who are working here and helping us - there are so many of them, and they are really great, helping in all departments, practising their English and allowing us to try and speak in Chinese !

On the other side of the corridor is the Main Office, where the photocopying of the hand records is done, and where the Operations Director, Maurizio Di Sacco has his office. Next up is the IT department, full of boxes of equipment (mostly empty at the moment) and there are a couple of desks set up there with computers for use by committee members.

The final room on "our" corridor is the bulletin room, where the editors try and convince me that they are slaving away all day and deserving of my deep sympathy! They do a great job on the bulletin though, as I am sure you know from reading it each day!

Across the way – over on the other side of the main corridor is the Vu Graph room and the filming studio, and I posted a picture of that early on in these blogs. Next to it is the Press room where all the members foregather to write and send their articles. Behind that is a small meeting room that is used for Appeals and sub committee meetings. And that's about it really for the offices – in some ways we could do with a bit more space – another couple of meeting rooms would be useful, but we manage OK !

The Vu graph theatre is also on this floor, and is packed for every session ! The computer championships is being played up on the 5th floor (we are on the 3rd floor) and the main playing rooms are all downstairs on the ground floor. However, the semi finals have been moved up to the 5th floor to permit the Transnational open teams to take up all the space on the ground floor – it is going to be a bit of a squeeze as at the moment we are expecting some 150 teams!

It has been the most chaotic afternoon, with teams registering left right and centre, changing their team members – which sometimes changes the amount they have to pay – but, we have got there. It is about to start !! And that is my work done for today … phew – I am exhausted !!