Tournament Diary

So, today was our first tournament day.

I wrote the software that they are using today to conduct this question and answer quiz tournament in 6 game rooms today, 2 each in Dar es Salaam Tanzania, Kampala Uganda, and here in Nairobi Kenya. The top 4 teams at each of these tournaments will win an all-expense-paid trip to Kampala in February and will appear on the televised game show, Zain Africa Challenge.

My software is used to display the categories for each of the 3 rounds of play, to show the next question in the selected category to both the Host as well as to the players and audience, and then to score the results. The application is fairly simple to operate after a little practice, but if something goes wrong with my computer code or if the scorekeeper is confused, it is my job to help them fix the problem and get them back on the right track. If there are problems here in Nairobi and can easily go into the room to help, but if the problem is in Uganda or Tanzania they reach me by cell phone. If my day goes well, my job is to sit in the hallway with my cell phone and listen to my iPod or read my novel. If my day doesn’t go well it might mean that we’ve all wasted our time; This tournament cannot run without my software.

A brief diary of my day.

5:00am I woke a few minutes before my alarm and showered and got dressed. After checking emails for any overnight crises (there were none) I packed up my computer and headed downstairs.

5:45am I convinced the service staff at the breakfast restaurant to allow me to grab a bowl of cereal and some fresh fruit before they opened at 6.

6:10am Mark, Raj and I were in front of our hotel waiting for Jasan to pick us up and take us to the Sarova Panafric Hotel where our tournament will be taking place.

6:30am We arrive at the hotel to prepare for the day. We had come the night before to set up the rooms in advance, but one of our 2 rooms was in use that night for a dinner so we had one entire room to set up before the participants arrive at 8am.

8:05am Room setup is complete, just in time.

8:20am Our participant registration table reports that there are 5 player changes. I discover that there was no built-in way to print Name Plates so I quickly design a new report for that purpose. I made my way into the player meeting just in time to be introduced.

9:10am Nearing the end of the player meetings, the power goes out.

9:13am The hotel generator comes on, restoring power.

9:30am We start playing our first game of the day. It goes very smoothly.

10:15am Mary and I realize that it is going too smoothly. Neither of us has received a phone call, email or text message from our teams abroad. This either means that things are going exceedingly well, or that their problems go beyond our frequent power failures to include a long-term drop in their cell phone service.

11:05am The hotel generator stops running, plunging us into darkness again.

11:15am The generator has been restarted.

11:18am The generator stops and starts yet again, stopping only long enough that we need to halt game play and then re-set to start again.

12:00pm We have just completed our 4th game of the day out of a total of 15 that we will play. So far we are averaging more than half an hour per game. At this rate we will not finish until after 6pm. We need to speed things up!

12:30pm Good news! Mary’s phone finally rang; it was Lillian calling from Tanzania. Surprisingly, cell phone service is just fine where she is, and the reason we haven’t heard from her is that there have been no problems requiring my help.

12:45pm Charles just called my cell phone from Uganda with the first legitimate problem of the day. It was not a problem where my code exploded, but instead a strange situation where they needed my help to talk them through re-setting a match to a previous round. I’m pleasantly surprised at how well things are going.

12:48pm Because we are so far behind our time schedule, Mary has decided to modify the plan for our lunch. Originally we were going to break for one hour and enjoy our lunch poolside. Now the plan has been modified so that matches will continue during lunch, and that the 13 teams not playing in rounds 7 and 8 will go to eat immediately, and the teams that play during lunch will eat after their match. This means, of course, that the staff manning the game rooms (myself included) will not get a break for lunch, but will eat in their game room during the 5 or 10 minutes between matches. No big deal, but I would have liked to eat outside.

1:05pm It’s warm here today. It’s actually a few degrees cooler than yesterday, but with 50 or 60 people packed into each of the game rooms it’s uncomfortably warm there. I mention this because as I sit in the hallway outside of our rooms I notice that most of the people here are wearing long sleeves. Many are wearing jackets, either fleece hoodies or sport coats. I wonder how that man I see in front of me can bear to sit in that hot room wearing that corduroy sports jacket.

2:20pm Mary’s plan for lunch worked reasonably well for most everyone except for staff. Apparently no one got the message to make some plates for us, so we are taking a 20 minute break to run down and eat.

2:32pm Lunch was very good and I’m sorry to have had to rush it. A nice buffet of chicken tikka, braised beef with brown sauce, chicken curry and fried fish filets. They also had some traditional Kenyan staples, rice and sweet potatoes. I tried the fish and the beef and they were both satisfying. I enjoyed my 12 minutes poolside.

2:45pm I enjoy a small sigh of relief. We just received an email from our Tanzania crew that they have completed their tournament and chosen the 4 teams that will advance to the TV show next month. They are the first ones to finish because they only had to play 7 matches today, not the 15 we have scheduled. They had no problems at all in Tanzania that required my help. Now they get to enjoy the rest of the afternoon on the beaches of Dar es Salaam.

3:00pm Just finished round 9. 6 games left to go at 30 minutes a piece has us finishing at 6pm.

4:07pm Not much to blog about because we have settled into a steady rhythm.

4:30pm We’re down to our last 2 matches now. I just visited one of our game rooms and the temperature is in the mid-90s in there. When we arrived at 6:30 this morning they had the air conditioner on full blast and Mary and I joked that we might need a sweater. Now the room is a sweat box, and the funk factor is high in there.

4:45pm The results have just come in from Uganda, leaving us the last tournament to complete. We’re the largest one, too, so it’s no reflection on the strength of our staff. Time to put my computer away and get ready to start packing up stuff here. We should be finished in less than an hour.

5:30pm We have finally finished our tournament. Mary is conducting an awards ceremony in one of the game rooms while we, the staff, are breaking down and packing away the equipment in the other room.

6:30pm Pack-up and load-out complete, we board our van, 12 hours after we arrived this morning. There's lots of laughter and energy left in this group on the ride home. Although it was a long day, it went more smoothly than we could have hoped. As we are dropped off at our hotel Mary lets us know that we can sleep in tomorrow as we aren't expected at the office until 10:30.