Today my brother Bernie would have been 68 years old. I think he would have liked this barging caper.

We were waiting for the Pan Conference video-conference around noon, so I did some websiting, while Rita went swimming again. She was wondering why she was feeling tired after doing her 1km of laps, until she realised that the “pool” at the lake was 75 metres long, not 50 metres.

We finished setting up the PolyCom video system and gave it a test-run. All seemed to work OK. In the late morning, we went up to the Library, which is near the Market Square just behind the statue of the Knight. However, when we got there we found that the librarian didn't know the WIFI password - she assumed we would be using the library laptop which was already connected to the internet. But we couldn’t do this because we had to have the PolyCom software installed and that had already been done on Rita’s laptop. We also couldn't connect directly to the internet, because there was no ethernet connector on Rita’s Mac.

So with time running out, we hurried back to the barge to use the 3G phone connection. We kept trying to connect, with no success in connecting with anyone at the other end - Rita would get on, but no-one else would, and then the system would automatically disconnect after a time when she was the only party connected.

After her session had finished in Trinidad, we got an email saying that they had experienced tech difficulties with the hook-up (it wasn’t just us) and so they had rescheduled the Q&A session to after lunch! But at least they had played the YouTube video we had created of her presentation, and it had been well received.

At the appointed time after lunch we tried again to connect, with no success. However, Rita did manage to see some of the following presentations on the video link. We later got another email saying that the chair of the session after lunch had decided to skip the Q&A and move on with the following presentations! What a stuff-up - sounds so much like Trinidad - another day wasted!

In the evening, we decided to cycle to Buzet for coffee and ice-cream, just so that the day was not a total waste (-: