Today is quite unproductive at work, not only I had 3 hours of meeting straight from 11:00a.m. to 2:30p.m., I did a brain dump to another colleague of what I had learnt in Saskatoon in the afternoon. The meeting in lunch time is not project related, it’s a mini seminar organized by the Toastmaster club on how to prepare a speech. The speaker is Marget Hope, a specialist on speech from SFU. I believe had I attended similiar seminar taught her before, but obviously I had forgot everything I learnt last time. Giving a speech is very different from writing an article. When writing an article, people usually use fancy words and complex sentence structures, but in a speech, simple sentence is usually the way to go. First she introduced the bubble diagram to brain storm ideas, then briefly on the technic of walk thru, talk thru, real rehersal and mental rehersal. After the seminar, I felt I am more prepared for the ice-breaker speech I have to do in Toastmaster, so I signed myself up do it the week after.

I think my chess skill really had improved, I slaughtered Gordon with a major advantage. Moreover, I tried the Sicilian defence dragon variable and really appreciate its beauty. I decided to focus on this as my main defense strategy in king pwan openings.