Finally Awake - 21 Oct 2008

After a good rest (very good rest yesterday) I am finally fresh as a daisy. The course went relatively well and at least I didn't feel compelled to sleep through it due to tiredness. The course material was terrible absolutely woeful and I can't see how in the hell the Microsoft team who prepare such courses managed to confirm the course matched the labs and exercises cos it didn't.

GDA members have respected me today by not overwhelming me with phone calls so I am very pleased I have been able to concentrate on my own things and of course things for the GDA after hours.

Come lunchtime I receive a collection notice slip from the post office and I think to myself finally my extra phone battery has arrived so I head down to the post office at 2pm. When I got there it was in fact GDA stuff which I usually expect to collect at the PO Box but this time received personally. It was the information pack and tickets from the BDO for the Winmau World Masters & Lakeside World Pro playoffs which we will be attending in December.

After my win in Spain I checked out the photos on a website of Antonio from Granada. A good friend who gets us into all sort of competitions across Spain (http://www.recreativosangeire.com/). If you'd like to see the photos taken at the competition click on the following link and select A.D.E.A & then click on Almeria 08 http://www.recreativosangeire.com/galeria_imagenes.php

I have received comms via their forum from various Spanish guys (which I joined today) about players that we met me there in Almeria and want to come to Gibraltar for the PDC competition. In fact some people approached me saying I am such & such and that I have been in contact with then through emails before. God knows how I now have so many contacts and its become the typical scenario of they all know me and I don't know any of them but its all good if it promotes the GDA across Spain. This also emphasizes my efforts in trying to obtain as many contacts as possible and although of course I go to Spain to play and not to promote it is inevitable that such contact with different people will lead to the promotion of darts on the Rock.

This reminds of the last competition I went to in June (I think) whereby I received several emails as well (by the way everyone who contacts me gets added to some GDA emailing list or another jejeje). So in summary its all good to visit Spain as it helps in promoting darts in Gibraltar.

In fact I have realised that I have over 30 Spanish contacts that are not in their correct emailing group and have not been receiving my endless barrage of emails so I will rename them properly (which is important for identification at a later date when I need to find individual emails) and add them. Not bad I now have close to 100 Spanish Contacts (including x-pats and Catalan's)

Recapped with DarrenD. via msn as he really needs to press on with the 50th and the invites which we still need to send via post, I am hoping he does this as soon as because this mail will be received by the older members who used to play over 20 to 50 years ago. He truly should realise it is very important and should have done it before, but then again we are all very busy and I gave him the list just last Friday.

He also received a phone call from a quite justifiably worried youth member as their league has not yet started. DarrenD. advised him to call DylanD. & NicholasC. as they were the ones who were going to run the youth this year. I agree as there has been some conflict on this issue and I truly am quite tired of being caught up in the middle.

As president I have to try to direct the association as best as possible but I am not willing to be a sucker for other peoples problems, own interests or change of hearts. If there is a problem let them speak to each other and come to an agreement like adults that they are.

My last task of the day has been to place an ad with the Friday Ad (Gibraltar section). I am hoping we can get a cheap second hand A3 scanner as I have a collection of over 30 press articles which are larger than A4 and I usually tend to have to reduce photocopy them at work and then take that A4 home and scan them in (so that we have an electronic copy saved for records purposes). Although I spoke to DarrenD. and his dad has an A3 scanner I truly would like to have one for the GDA as it makes our lives a bit easier if in 1 process I can scan things in and not take 3 or 4 steps to get my hands on electronic copy. Lets see what happens.