A lot of fuss about nothing

Well my anxieties about travelling to London during apocalyptic civil unrest proved to be completely unfounded, as I sailed quite happily up to London and back without seeing a single protester. I don't think there were as many people around yesterday as there had been on Wednesday, and the only evidence I saw that there may have been some protests somewhere was the occasional policeman in a yellow bib.

My training was hmmm alright. It was run fairly satisfactorily, but was quite different to what I thought it was going to be on paper and actually wasn't relevant to what I needed at all. So I learnt some things, but will probably never use them. Still, it was a day out of the office, and I actually got home slightly earlier than I do normally, so I'm not really complaining.

Friday again today, I don't know where the weeks are going at the moment. Time is really flying by without a lot actually happening. Might try to make it to Popstarz tonight, or if not then to Revenge tomorrow (or maybe both! But let's not get overexcited).

If I'm not back in 24 hours

I have to go to London tomorrow for some IT training that I'm not particularly interested in. Where am I going? London Bridge. And where was one of the gathering points for G20 protesters today? London Bridge. Typical!

So I don't know what's going to happen now, I'm just going to head up there and see. I think I might be alright because the protests tomorrow are more likely to be over in the Docklands near the ExCel thingy they're having the actual summit at. I suppose the train could be crowded with protesters or something, or I might have trouble getting home, but I just won't know until I'm there.

It's a bit annoying though. Of course the G20 summit wasn't at the forefront of my mind when I booked the stupid training, why would it have been??

I've been following the protests today both on the BBC live webcast and on Twitter. It's been mostly quite controlled, with just the windows at a branch of Royal Bank of Scotland smashed and some isolated violence with the police. From what I could see on the webcast it was a few trouble makers trying to incite the police to fight them, while the rest of the protesters looked on a bit uneasily and wondered if they were going to get baton-charged. One of the main problems seemed to be that even once some of the protesters wanted to leave, the police wouldn't let them. I wasn't quite sure about that, I suppose if people were moving and regrouping all over the place the police would get easily overrun, but it seemed a bit stupid when some people actually wanted to go home and were being forced to keep protesting.

So we shall see what happens tomorrow. Hopefully if it's bad at London Bridge I will find out early and can just turn around and come back. I'll be more annoyed to get stuck in central London and not be able to get a train back home.

Confident Speaking

My confident speaking course yesterday was actually better than I was expecting, and may even have verged on useful.

We had a nice discussion in the morning on what makes public speaking difficult, and then we did a small practice presentation just to two other people to ease us into it. The afternoon was run by George Palmer from EastEnders (or Paul Moriarty as he likes to be called), and he focused mainly on how we use our voices, how we project, and ways of engaging with your audience. I probably enjoyed this bit the most, although it involved some weird voice exercises like bellowing "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day" at a complete stranger over and over again. I think it was quite useful though, and we learnt how to breathe in order to add more power to our voices and things like that.

And then we were supposed to end on a three-minute presentation by each of us to the rest of the group about a subject of our choosing. But in a rather anti-climactic way we ran out of time so only half the delegates got to do their presentations, and it rather undermined the point of the whole thing. I didn't do mine, but I wasn't that bothered because I didn't want to do it anyway.

So yes, it was fine, better that lots of other courses I've been on. I suppose one of the key things we learnt was that although we don't like public speaking, we're probably not as bad at it as we think we are, and people don't tend to notice even if you are a bit nervous.

I wouldn't say that I'm now going to be massively confident in speaking in public, but if you need the first line of a sonnet bellowed in someone's face, I'm your man.

Lack of confidence in confident speaking

I'm off on a confident speaking course tomorrow. I don't really want to go any more, it seemed like a good idea at the time when I booked it. I think I was mostly focusing on the free lunch though and the fact that it's a day away from my desk.

I suppose it will be alright... I don't want to go because I know they're going to force me to stand up and speak in front of the rest of the group, but I expect that's the point. The afternoon part of it is facilitated by an actor from EastEnders, not that I've ever heard of him, but I don't watch it very often.

So anyway, maybe I'll come back tomorrow with a new-found confidence when speaking in social situations and when doing presentations and things. It's possible. But it's far more likely I'll come back and completely disregard everything they said in the course, as is always the case with all staff development events everywhere.

Training and atheism

The training was better than I expected actually. I found it all very easy, but I still learnt some things I didn't know, and corrected some things I thought I knew but apparently didn't. The only annoying thing was the bizarre woman sitting behind me who during the afternoon started mewling like a kitten at everything the trainer said. She kept going "Hmmmm..... Mmmm hmmmmm.... Hmmmm?..... Hmmmmm!...... Mmmmm". I was thinking a) shut the hell up, and b) this must be what having sex with you sounds like. What the hell was she doing?? Did we all really need to hear her quizzical squealings all through the afternoon? It also sounded quite like she'd had her mouth taped shut. I wish they'd done her nose as well.

Yesterday I also started reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, on Chris' recommendation. He's been terribly fired up in his atheism since he read it. Atheism is a nice word actually when you break it down into its component parts. Anyway, I've only read the preface so far, but I'm already enjoying it. He's used the preface to demolish the criticisms of earlier editions of the book, by looking at each one, deconstructing it, and then explaining why it's wrong, e.g. 'the book is strident and shrill' - no it's not, it just says things certain people don't want to hear without pulling any punches, but is still less strident and shrill than those people themselves; 'the book is as fundamentalist as the people it condemns' - no it isn't, he argues based on logic and the evidence available, if people want to show him compelling evidence in support of religion and creationism, he'll happily change his mind - a fundamentalist would not.

So anyway, I'm sure I'll enjoy the book, and it'll probably turn my fairly vague and slightly guilty-feeling lack of belief in God into full-blown atheism. I already like his first main point: there are no religious children, only children of religious parents - they're not old enough to have a position on religion, in the same way that they have no position on politics or economics.

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Training and boozing

Today I am off at CSS training, which is lovely. I don't really need it to be honest, but it's a day out of the office and I'll get a free lunch. Plus I suppose a bit of a refresher won't hurt. Unfortunately I'm missing a staff jolly because of it, and I would have quite liked to go to the Chinese exhibition. Maybe it'll be shit and then I won't mind... I plan on joining them for the boozy part of the outing anyway. Hopefully no one will get thrown out for aggressive behaviour this time...