By to­day, I ex­pect you would have signed up for 'In­spi­ra­tion' - the four-day sym­po­sium, which is be­ing host­ed by the Guardian's Sports Desk, at Cas­ca­dia Ho­tel, from Mon­day 18th to Thurs­day April 21st.

Those of us who have been lucky enough to be part of the pro­gramme over the years, must be grate­ful for or­gan­i­sa­tions like The Sports Desk for pro­vid­ing us with the op­por­tu­ni­ty to not on­ly share in the ups and downs in the lives of our na­tion­al icons, but to ac­tu­al­ly be sit­ting in their pres­ence and chat­ting with them.

I re­mem­ber last year, there was a mad scram­ble for au­to­graphs and pho­tographs when na­tion­al crick­et cap­tain Daren Gan­ga com­plet­ed his pre­sen­ta­tion. And if my mem­o­ry serves me right, Shari John, the for­mer Holy Name Con­vent stu­dent, who be­gan her writ­ing ca­reer at this sym­po­sium, shared sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments when Bri­an Lara did his thing two years ear­li­er. I know Lara is a good friend of Valenti­no Singh, the Pro­gramme's Co­or­di­na­tor and I am hop­ing Mr. V (as I call him) will in­flu­ence him to make an­oth­er ap­pear­ance this year (since I am sure all of us would like to know how an icon like him has made the trans­for­ma­tion from be­ing out in the mid­dle blast­ing the world's best bowlers to his present sta­tus as an or­di­nary cit­i­zen).

I need to re­mind you that this sym­po­sium is FREE to all stu­dents - you don't have to pay one cent for four glo­ri­ous days of in­spi­ra­tion from some of the coun­try's finest per­son­al­i­ties. Sev­er­al or­gan­i­sa­tions like the Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs, the TSTT Foun­da­tion, Toy­ota, At­lantic LNG, Shell, the NL­CB, Glow To­tal Body Spa, Red Bull and RBTT are pitch­ing in to in­vest in us and I just want to thank them, on be­half of all of us. I ex­pect by next week Mr. V will have his full list of the 200 stu­dents who have made the cut and they will be pub­lished in this col­umn on Mon­day 4th April.

Those of you who have not reg­is­tered can do so at:

valenti­no.singh@guardian.co.tt. or text/call: 773 - 3773.

Please re­mem­ber to in­clude your name, school, the form and a con­tact num­ber.

When I last spoke to Mr. V, he did not have 200 names as yet so there is still space for you to reg­is­ter!.