Making Use Of Extra Free Time

The Experiment So Far

I’ve been on my sabbatical for nearly three days now and it’s been an interesting experience. I was at the studio yesterday morning doing my show and when I arrived I had no internet access whatsoever. I had to do the whole show without any resources. It was a good test to see if I could do the whole show just from whatever came to my head but in the end I decided to get one newspaper and mainly use it for the funny stories for my bizarre news segment.

I could’ve switched on my Blackberry and used the internet but I decided to see what else I could get to hand. Because I didn’t have the internet I couldn’t do simple things like the Traffic & Travel report. I was also by myself which made it especially difficult but I used the time off air to relax and meditate.

I know it’s only been 3 day but since I decided beginning this I’ve found that I’ve become so much more focussed on any tasks at hand. It doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll continue to do this from now on but I do think that there are certain tools I’ll use much less. I will continue to use tools like Facebook and Twitter for personal marketing but I won’t use them as much to socialise.

A few people have said that I’m cheating by using blogging or or evening having an emergency phone. Who am I cheating? I decided the rules of this trial and even if I wanted to there are just certain things I would not be able to escape. I would still have to use email and internet for work and not to mention my work mobile phone. So from the beginning I decided the 3 main things I’d forego would be my Blackberry, TwitFace, and IM’s.

Mountain Climbing

So onto other things. A couple of weeks ago my friends and I went to Snowdownia and climbed Mount Tryfan. At just over 3000ft tall it’s not the highest mountain in the range but is one of the more tricky ones to climb as it requires using both your hands and feet. We managed to make it to the top in about 90 minutes and that was stopping for one break and also taking some pictures by the late on the mountain.

We were so fortunate on the day as the weather was perfect. On the peak we managed to catch a wonderful sunset. At the top of the mountain are two boulders called ‘Adam and Eve’. You can jump between the two but it is scary! I was going to try it but I’d injured my knee so it’s an experience I’ll have to savour for the next time!

Basketball

Last week I went to see the Four Nations Basketball tournament at London’s O2 arena. It was Great Britain Vs Poland and Turkey Vs Israel. Turkey thrashed Israel and beat them by over 20 points. I could see that Turkey was by far the superior side and I had a feeling that they would most likely win the whole tournament (which they did).

Great Britain lost all three of their matches over the weekend. When I was there on the Friday all the Great Britain supporters defected to support the Polish side during the game. The GB team just seemed as if they just lacked the necessary discipline to even play at a similar level to the other teams. It was my first time going to see a live Basketball game; something that I’ve always wanted to do! 🙂

Wedding Speech

On Saturday I did my speech at my friends wedding. If you didn’t already see it I put up my article last week on my top tips and writing and making a speech. I didn’t do as well as I’d hoped but there were some good things that I took away. I didn’t memorise the full speech so I kept the script with me in case I needed to refer to it.

I got someone to record the speech so I could play it back and learn from my performance. One of the biggest things I took away from it was the use of my tone. That was one area where I felt I lacked that certain ‘something’ to give the speech an even greater impact. I’ve taken something away from it and that’s what counts the most. I know the bride and groom appreciated it too which is the most important part of all. I was nervous beforehand but once I was on stage the nerves disappeared. I managed to keep my voice steady and made good use of the pauses. I’ll put a snippet of the speech onto YouTube at some point in the near future.

Asian Woman Magazine Article

Last week my article came out in Asian Woman magazine. I was asked to write the ‘he says’ portion of a the ‘he says she says’ segment. The subject of the article was ‘can you have a relationship without sex?’. I wasn’t sure how to approach this subject in the beginning as my views on sex are very liberal. I only had 400 words to play with and truth is there’s only a very limited amount you can convey within that space. I decided to just be honest and say what I felt. Although it isn’t a full picture of my beliefs but it does give some indication of what I believe about sex and relationships.

It was new experience for me writing for an international publication and also being limited to 400 words. That was a great challenge in itself but so far the response to the article from people who have read it has been good. There are plenty of people who didn’t like the article which is great news for me as it means I didn’t write something which was just a bit status quo but was also something that was bit more controversial and sparked some discord within people. 🙂

The last thing I wanted to end on was just mentioning this story on the BBC website which I’ll be discussing on my ‘Backchat’ show on Sunday.. It’s amazing the direction technology is taking!