What a time!
If you’ve made it this far (ie, still checking my blog), cudos to you! If not, then this is just a journal entry of a pretty amazing time!
So, what happened since Saturday? Well, it started with Dusty and Jesse’s baptism’s, and Jesse’s 1st birthday party on Sunday. Moo and Donny stayed at my place. That turned out to be a much bigger night than I had expected, so I was suffering all day Monday. The less documented about that, the better.
Tuesday morning my alarm went off at 5.00 so I could pack my bags, and I caught a shuttle bus to Ballina airport at 9.00. I arrived at Sydney around 11.30, met up with Brett, and checked in for our flight to Singapore. We went through immigration (no problems), I showed Brett some of the work I had been doing in Lennox Head, and we boarded our flight to Singapore.
A few movies later (and only one beer – I was still pretty tender), we arrived at Changi airport. After collecting our bags, we caught a cab to our hotel and checked in. We had a single room with 2 beds for the first night, and 2 rooms for the second night. So we freshened up and went for a walk to get our bearings, and have a couple of beverages. Neither of us had been out in Singapore before. I didn’t know what to expect. I knew what Thailand is like, so wondered if it was the same. Same same, but different. We had a couple of beers, and then were ready to call it a night, given it had been such a long day for us both.
Wednesday we met with Andrew (from Sportainment), and had our first “sales” meeting. Andrew had already demonstrated Datascore to them, and Brett knew he could be wishy-washy, so we had pretty much agreed our aim was to tell them what we’d do for them, and that this is the last “meeting” about it. Well, things couldn’t have gone better. We spoke to the guys who hire the courts to run the tournaments (one of which is a local sports commentator who plugs his competition, which will now include Datascore), and also the guy who owns the courts (as well as other courts). All were extremely keen, as customers have been demanding statistical data from them for over a year. Brett and I had already agreed we would put a demo court in for them for 3 months (knowing they won’t be able to pull it out, but after their comments, this was confirmed). They wanted it in the next 2 weeks (before their next season starts). Obviously we couldn’t meet that time frame, but we tentatively agreed to late September. Plans to be confirmed.
The guys then took us to another stadium (outdoor) to look at – this involved the 3 of us squeezing in the back of a 2 door Volvo for a 15 minute drive. The less said about that trip, the better :). As always, it was all part of the adventure though!
Next meeting wasn’t Datascore related – I went along as “Sportainment IT Manager” but didn’t really have input. But then came our first lesson in Singapore – cabs at 5.00 are not easy to get! At a taxi rank, we booked a taxi, that took 15+ minutes to arrive, in the humid heat. So I was pretty much at the end of the line. We got back to the hotel room, got our second room, and then got in the pool. Immediately I was back to 100%. It’s amazing what a drop in core temperature can do!
We met up with Andrew a bit later in the night at Raffles Long Room (across the road from our hotel). This is where the Singapore Sling was invented. So Brett and I had to have one there. We went to Clarke Quay for an awesome Japanese dinner. We then walked along the Quay, and had a drink. Andrew went home and Brett and I went out for a few more drinks before calling it a night.