AN EVENING IN EINDHOVEN

We were the fortunate recipients of invitations to President Rona’s Wednesday gala dinner in Eindhoven.   At 7:30 p.m. two buses were waiting for the guests and it took about 25 minutes to arrive at the destination with all bedecked in their non-bridge finery.  After a short cocktail party with unusual hors d’oeuvres, we sat down to a lovely duck dinner with all the trimmings.   Short speeches followed with all the past presidents in attendance.    Mr. Rona introduced them (Patino, Wolff, Damiani and d’Orsi) and  presented them each with a gift – a framed group picture of them from the opening ceremony on Saturday.  After a delicious dessert, we left for home but didn’t arrive until about 12:30 a.m.   Quite a hectic day.  Dan and Bobby were not in festive moods because after they blitzed their first opponents Wednesday, they lost the latter two matches and dropped to 11th.

However, today started out better as USA 1 (d’Orsi seniors) just beat Pakistan but we did not wait for the final score (close to a blitz)   There still is Indonesia and India to be dealt with this afternoon and just now (before today’s last two matches), we got back to 8th place (the cut off for qualifying).  There remain eight matches before final determination of the qualifiers.  It may go down to the wire.  Go Team!