Rio Day 2 - Pre-Tournament Briefing

Waking up from what would be the best snooze of the 2016, I was greeted by my housemates Nathan and Christian both whom are big names in the Umpiring Circuit with a lot of experience to rely on during the tournament.

We are allocated 1 room each in the Technical Official Village aka Military Officers' Accommodation. It even comes with a nice name - Vila Verde.

 I must be honest the rooms aren't bad, livable and comes with a 1980's AC unit. There is a TV in each room but none in the living room, just 2 work table and a router for our internet which is one of the best i ever had in an  overseas tournament i must say. The TV set in our room you can see is really just done up for this event with the hole being punched in the wall and wires falling everywhere.
Well at least there is something to watch in the room.
A queen sized bed and 2 fluffy pillow with a blanket suited for winter I must say accommodation we really cannot complain at all.

Our breakfast is in a huge makeshift food hall with 1 buffet line of hams, cheese, many type of bread, fruit cocktail, and coffee / tea... Oh not forgetting the trays scrambled eggs (more like fried eggs being scrambled which is frequently topped up from the kitchen. I am very sure this will be the same for the next 20 odd days so I am going slow on the selection i have in front of me.
Didn't manage to grab a photo of this, still feeling the effect of the long flight. Trust me, this breakfast does remind me of my army days back home.

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So off we go as 1 team of Technical Officials, Men and Women all in one bus... loads of hugs and kisses.. many "Hi" and " Hello" for those whom we met for the 1st time but mostly excitement of seeing old mates / friends / colleagues again in other previous tournament! We have now all arrived in our sport's biggest stage - The Olympic Games.

What more can I ask for but to just do my best and paint the town red! This will be a great learning experience... I can't wait to jump into it.

At the briefings we were broken up into teams of 6 (3 Men 3 Women Umpires) to come up with our aims for the tournament and I got this crazy people to do our 'assignment'.

(Front Row)  Joobs, Melisa, Nathan, Michele 

(Back Row) Christian

Major focus for this game is mainly what we always talk about.
1. Protecting Skills (Sliding tackles by defenders and/or attackers)
2. Elimination of Crowding
3. Intentional running into 5 meters area to breakdown on Aerial being played by the initial receiver

After the discussions, we had time to take a walk around our 'office' for the next 3 weeks and I must say with all the bad publicity surrounding the whole Olympic event, Hockey venue is pretty impressive.

Now let the games begin! Uniform collection in the afternoon and Opening Ceremony tomorrow....