A couple of recent "hobbyish" developments to report in my life of late. In February I started going to the local Essendon toastmasters club. For those who don't know, toastmasters is a public speaking organisation consisting of many clubs worldwide that generally have weekly or fortnightly meetings. Everyone who joins gets the opportunity to speak (and is encouraged) in front of an audience with the idea of improving your confidence and speaking skills. For me it is a really good way to meet some different and interesting people and an opportunity for an intellectual challenge. I gave my first formal speech last week, the "icebreaker", which is basically just a chat about myself - it may seem easy but was a surprising challenge. So far I have been really enjoying the experience and already have a few ideas for upcoming speeches.
The second hobby I have rediscovered in the last few weeks is chess. I have played chess on and off for most of my life (since Dad taught me how to play when I was about 8 I think) and I tend to go through phases where I play it a lot or not at all. When I am into it, it kind of becomes a bit of an obsession...hence the lack of blog posts recently. I would suppose consider myself a slightly below average player - my online ranking is 2295 out of 4116 players on the FICS server www.freechess.org where I normally play. My handle is CloakedRaptor, maybe I'll see some of you online sometime...
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