Rio Day 2 - Uniform Collection

As excited as we are to collect our gears for the games, never would we ever expect to wait 6 long hours to get pieces of clothing, bags, shoes and bottle from the organizer.

Yes you heard me right! 6 hours was the total wait to get our uniform and opening ceremony suit. But what can we do but wait patiently till our numbers are called and wait again as we go into the fitting room to get fitted into our sizes and queue again as we check out our items in the uniform hyper-mart.

So in between the wait we went for a wander around the neighborhood and after getting 2 wrong directions pointed out to us and 1 failed attempt to buy beer from a fast food stall (they weren't allowed to sell...sadly) we managed to find a 'roadside stall', okay truthfully was a man on bicycle, selling drinks including beers, of course, doing his business. So we got a few Antarctica (Local Brazilian Beer) from him and happy as a bird we can be...

Beside him was a huge space where groups of people gathered to play musical instruments for what sounded more like a celebration rather than a performance. With our beer in hand, we just 'trespassed' and stood around with our cameras in hands and became a real tourist for the 1st time.

As I was about to leave the compound a lady tapped me on my shoulder and asked if we can do a we-fie with her and her mates. Of course I obliged! How can i say no to such friendly people. Just a happy bunch of people doing what they love, willingly accepting strangers who walked in a friends.
How awesome is that......

This is the best part of our uniform collection! Got back to Vila Verde past midnight and another early day tomorrow.

Good night world.

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....

Rio Olympics Day 1 - The Arrival

After enduring what may be the longest flight i ever experienced (late departure from Singapore, bad sleep to DBX and 5 hours lay-over at DBX) I finally made it to Sao Paulo Airport. Expecting to get priority movement to the counters for my transit but only to find that it's in a pretty quiet state...
Quiet being there were nothing much available.

Yes there were volunteer, notice the singular form and it's intended, and a "special lane" for athletes and officials transiting from Sao Paulo to Rio but there is absolutely no system in place to assist and speed up the process.

1. Once I touched down, there were armed 2 plain cloth officers standing just at the entrance after the aero-bridge checking passport of each passenger 1 by 1 and questioning them. As i was the last passenger (yes as i can see cleaners going in and out of the plane and no soul behind me) it took me 1 hour to clear the less than 50 meters walk way. Damn i was upset. And upon understanding that i was here for the Rio Games, they started to apologies and hurried me to catch my connecting flight.

2. Along the way as i was trying to get to the counter to get on my way for transit, i met another volunteer and with her limited English she pointed to where i should go and kept saying " Follow the blue line" So i did, of course!

3. Upon queuing on the supposed express lane, there were many more people in our queue than those normal queues for normal passengers. Only 4 counters were opened available to us and more than 10 for the rest of the passengers. Of course, the normal passengers queue went very much faster and in 20 minutes, there were no more queue in the other line and about 40 of us still waiting patiently at the express queue to get through ours. Luckily I met a few familiar faces joining the line and it all got better.

Myself, Deon (Floppy) & John Wright (Bongo)

Feeling a little crazy with Michelle Joubert (Joobs)

4. So we finally got through the counters after the wait and even though we have 4 hours of transit time, we are now left with 2 hours! So off to the Accreditation Counter and get those cards validated for our access to all the Olympic venues and our village. 

Getting out to the terminal (1) with our luggage, we are now informed (okay we found it out ourselves by asking and roaming around looking at signboards) that we must go to Terminal 3 to catch our connecting flight. What an adventure! 

Fingers crossed... hopefully Rio will be easier to outmaneuver and get to the village as quick as possible as I am floating on my feet with 4 hours sleep in total. 

Rio Olympics Day 0 - The Departure

My younger brother is sweet as usual and agreed to send me to the airport even though he has to be there 12 hours later where he is scheduled to fly ( he is an air steward ). Leaving my family behind is always not a good feeling but as always, they (try to) understand that this is my "pursue of happiness" in a form of my representation in the sport i love. Mikayla got extremely whiny as she knows that i would be away for awhile and of course my Mrs ain't as chirpy any more after dinner.

So here it starts... my 1st Olympics adventure. Before i left, many people wished me luck and also asked me what are my expectations for the games.

Honestly, i have none! It's my first ever Olympics games, why should i expect anything. When I get my 1st appointment, i will get on the pitch and do what i usually do and try to be better than my last one (champions trophy) and improve from there. So Rio get ready! I am coming to paint your city red.

SGP - DBX / DBX - GRU / GRU - GIG = This is going to hurt a bit.

Going to board now. Emirates please treat me well... Talk soon =)