6 of the Best – Gamban’s Daniel Umfleet

6 of the Best – Gamban’s Daniel Umfleet

This week’s 6 of the Best comes from Daniel Umfleet, Managing Director of Gamban.

Continue reading to discover an expensive World Series escapade, an album and movie crossover and how betting on yourself can really pay off.

Best Holiday 

This is a hard one to pin down. I’ve been very lucky in my travels with Gamban thus far, and have seen some pretty amazing destinations that also enjoy a good RG conversation as the original intent of the visit, so it’s always nice when a beautiful location is coupled up by some progressive RG crusaders.

At the end of the day, I’ll have to say though, the Maldives, where my wife and I went for a 14 day wind down of snorkelling, swimming with manta rays and whale sharks, with a daily trip or two to the spa accompanied by champagne sunset dinners on a catamaran, yea, that’s the winner.

Best Album 

Eddie Vedder, Into the Wild…amazingly, it’s really a soundtrack to the film, Into the Wild, which is a story about a young man who graduates from Uni but isn’t interested in participating in what we would call traditional societal functions and heads off, first by car then on foot, across North America to try and find where he fits, sop to speak.

Vedder’s vocals, his acoustic guitar and occasional ukulele go right along on the journey with you throughout the film, and make for a brilliant stand-alone album that entices deep thinking and pondering on long road trips or just 20 minutes alone in the gym.

Best Sporting Experience 

World Series, 2011, St. Louis, Missouri, Game 6, Cardinals vs. Rangers. I was at Stanford at the time in Palo Alto, California, my brother was just down the street in Mountain View. Game 6 was originally scheduled for the day before but was rained out. As soon as it was rained out, I called my brother and said, drop what you are doing, we are flying to St. Louis to watch this game, we are not missing this.

He agreed. I jumped online, booked outrageously priced tickets to the game, then the air fare and we jumped in a taxi 3 hours later to go to the airport. We landed in STL, where we were originally from and our parents still live, my Mother picked us up and drove us to the stadium and the rest is literally the greatest story in baseball history as far as I’m concerned. I’ve never felt the ground shake like it did after Freese hit that home run. The amount of energy pulsing through that stadium could have lit the whole city for 10 years. It was amazing.

Best Film 

Cloud Atlas, which explores on a really grand scale, the evolution of humanity and the series of events that influenced a belief system embedded in a futuristic society that place their faith in an idol for all the right reasons, but are completely clueless on the real story that happened thousands of years ago. There are a lot of parallels in today’s belief structures that deserve the same level of attention as the film gave. It’s a big, beautiful film with a couple of amazing original classical pieces in it.

Best Book

Guns, Germs & Steel, Jared Diamond…this one packs a punch. The entire history of how we have evolved into what we have become as a race today and all of the advantages certain geographical territories had along the way because of access to certain materials that allowed them to create superior weaponry. Our history as a race is scary enough in current day but exploring all of the brutality throughout history that is responsible for the landscape of today, absolutely wild.

Best Bet

Switching careers and joining the Gamban team. We are helping to bring to light so many buried issues surrounding RG and the way it is managed from a lot of different angles including KYC, AML, Self-Exclusion, Legislation, Implementation and enforcement.

It’s a brave new world for this subject material and I’m pleased to be working with a team that is trying to be a part of the conversation and not just a fly on the wall or the fabric lining the curtains. It’s nice to be actively making a difference. My previous work was satisfying for different reasons but it never allowed me to work on public health or mental health issues the way I’ve always wanted too.


Source: SBC News