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Showing posts from August, 2006

Speaker's Block

I suppose everyone’s heard of writer’s block right? That mysterious psychological ailment that strikes the Jeffery Archer types, making their normally fluid pen-wielding hand go all limp and lifeless….in the process causing the masses untold misery in waiting for the next publication? Ok….so obviously you have, but has anyone ever heard of a much more infrequent ailment…speaker’s block? No, I don’t mean the stage-fright induced cant-open-my-mouth feeling, the one that causes your mouth to go dry, your knees to become wobbly blobs of jelly, your body to go all aquiver, and having that general feeling of wanting to sink beneath the podium and die greatly enhanced by the fact that your heart has miraculously transformed from living tissue to a ball of lead…..no, I don’t mean all of that, although as you can see I have had some considerable experience with all of the above. I mean the equally upsetting but less talked about one, of your desperately wanting to say something but your brain g

What ails modern tennis?

In a phrase, the death of serve-and-volley. But I’m getting ahead of myself here. To give a long, winding introduction to the topic, this resentment crept into me while watching Wimbledon 2006. I have traditionally been a big fan of Wimbledon…it ranks right up there, along with ‘Friends’ as a must-watch feature….but I ended up being very disappointed this year. Somehow, though, the idea of penning my thoughts down never occurred to me until a few days ago, when I read on a friend’s blog his views on World Cup 2006. Ok, ok, I admit it….I copied (not plagiarized, mind you) his idea and used it for my own selfish purposes and I’ve never had an original thought in my life! So what?? I’ve always been a firm follower of the ‘Copycat award’ policy. For those who’ve never heard of the copycat award (Shame on you! Shame on you!), legend goes that it was originated in GE, and is an annual award given to the employee who takes another person’s idea and makes the best use of it for his own (synony