Game of the Century

Monday 30th

Golf is a cruel game. We start each round with such optimism and hope only to have it dashed upon the shores of inconsistency and incompetency.

We started gathering at Le Katai from 8 or so onwards and like a number of the others, I had breakfast there. I had knocked up a results sheet as an Excel file in the early hours and printed it off back at the hotel. We loaded up the minibuses and headed off to Chonburi Century for the first game. It seemed to be a long drive and is in fact the furthermost from Pattaya that we will travel. The Bar owner, who is also organiser for our golf and 3 of his regulars joined us for the day, sharing the buses but playing together after our groups.

The course was unimpressive and certainly not up to the standards of the ones we played last time. In fairness a lot of this was due to the fact that it is the end of the dry season and this has resulted in a lot of grass being brown and patchy. The greens were watered but the fairways weren't. The sand traps were very coarse and gritty and there was only a thin layer of this "sand" in them anyway. The bare fairways did mean you got a lot of run on your shots. Some others who have played it before said that it was a lovely coarse then, so maybe its just the season.

I started with a good drive but got a phone call from Panu with some problems. I arranged to call him after the game but it did rather throw my concentration. I was driving fairly well nonetheless ( with 2 or 3 exceptions) but my putting was pretty ordinary. I went out in 14, 4 strokes over my handicap and then had a disastrous back nine saved only by parring the last 2 holes. Our best score was only 30 points, 6 over the nominal score for this type of competition. The worst was only 19 with me being in the bottom half of the field of 8. I did pick up the long drive prize at least.

The club house is also rather basic with a very spartan sitting area with plastic tables and chairs and drinks in cans and bottles. The green fees, caddie fees and cart hire were each 200B, less than $10 and to be honest, that was about what they were worth. They had drinks huts every 3 holes so there was a bit spent there and in the "clubhouse" afterwards. A further 200B as a tip still made it a cheap day.

The trip back did not seem nearly as long for some reason but it was hot and humid and I headed for my airconditioned room. I found an email from Pan Orient and responded then rang Panu to get some data to test to find the bugs.

About 6-30 I headed to the Bar and TVL and I went to a restaurant near Mike's for their smorgasbord. We'd been there with Marie last time. At 185B it's great value, with Thai and European hot dishes, soups, a salad bar and desserts and fruit. We also had a couple of iced fruit drinks. From there we went to the new mall which was still under construction last time. There's a supermarket there and I bought some cereal, milk juice and plastic bowls. I really don't need a full English breakfast everyday, even ignoring the cost aspect. Speaking of which, they had actual "made in Australia" Smiths potato chips there at a suitably horrendous price (over $10). Even Doritos were about $5 a bag. I also picked up some sunscreen at Mike's. I had only a bit left in the bottle normally in my golf bag and decided to get one here before I left, but i hadn't got round to it before the first game. Fortunately I was able to borrow some.

I came back to my room and spent some time adding a few extra options to a couple of report and export routines but still didn't have the data to doing any bug testing. I'd only had a couple of files to do the import tests on before I left and some of these issues have come up once a number of days data has been added.

I have watched another film on the TV as well. Boat trip tomorrow.