Week 16-24 2015

A not so interesting flashback…

Travel began again at the start of the week and there was going to be a significant break for refereeing. In fact, I didn’t imagine anything coming up in the near future.

I’ve been more cognizant of refereeing in other countries and how referees source their equipment so I’ve been visiting sports equipment stores around. It was interesting to see the range of quality and market prices. This is truly a global game impacted by so many cultures involved with it.

A bit out of the blue, I decided to get Lasik done. Yes, that’s right. Laser eye surgery. Casually…

I had received more comments from assessors than I had from players about wearing glasses during the game. The suggestion was always about considering wearing contact lenses. I wanted to skip that stage altogether. Nothing felt real until I was sitting outside the operating room in a hospital gown and it was quite the recovery. Some of you at this point probably want to know whether it was worth it. The answer is yes. The procedure was uncomfortable but 15 minutes of annoyance for the return was well worth it.

What is the material difference? I have to stop touching my face to remove my glasses before taking a shower and before going to sleep. That and I don’t wear glasses anymore of course! My eyesight has lost a bit of edge since when I was wearing glasses but a small price to pay considering I don’t need to read signs far away in small text. It was almost Superman-like before.

Not being able to use any electronics for approximately a week or do anything that required focusing the eyes was difficult. It brought the list of things to do to pretty much one thing.

• sleeping

I was excited to find out how refereeing would be but that would be much later.

About 1.5 weeks later, I was continuing the daily regiment of eye drops and I flew back to Dubai. Not long later, I flew for a short trip back to CONCACAF. It was wonderful to experience a new city and I was excited to go out running especially without glasses for the first time. Discovering a new city through running is fantastic and motivational.

The month ended with an exciting conclusion to La Liga as Undiano Mallenco took charge of the last game that would decide the title race between Atletico Madrid and Barcelona. High stakes game to ref!