Taekwondo

I have been doing this at the university club for a year now and am a Green Tag (7th Gup) at the moment. I train twice a week for an hour and a half, and really do enjoy it for the most part, although it has its moments!

I don’t want to mislead you - I am not the world’s most active person and am usually more in favour of activities requiring less legwork on my part. However, I am in dire need of losing weight and getting fit so TKD and working out at the gym are very much on the agenda until I have shed enough weight to look decent in a bikini top and shorts *nods*.

Update - I have put this on the back burner for a while - just lost all enjoyment for it over the summer and after missing the first few weeks of the autumn term with a nasty cold I decided the thought of a break was preferable to starting it all up again. Am still gymming regularly though - needs must after all!

Film

I’m also a bit of a film buff and enjoy most movies with a decent plot or great special effects - most of my favourites can be listed under the heading of “musical”, be they Disney or otherwise. I love that more and more musicals are being given film adaptations to bring them back to those of us who can’t always take a trip to the West End The Harry Potter, X-Men, Bridget Jones and Back to the Future films are also among my favourites, as are most Working Title/Richard Curtis products.

Reading

There really is nothing quite like being curled up on a cold evening with a mug of hot chocolate, the heater on, and a good book, even if this sentence is straight out of a ‘Woman’s Weekly’ article

Most recent reads include the latest Harry Potter, the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, and all of Dan Brown’s books so far after I borrowed the Da Vinci Code and loved it so had to borrow the rest. My favourite books have to be David Eddings’s ‘The Belgariad’ and ‘The Mallorean’, two parts of a larger series that is like Lord of the Rings in the sense that the story is an epic fantasy involving a group of characters on a ‘quest’ that are in a race to combat the darkness in the name of light. Where they differ from Tolkien’s work is that Eddings tends to focus more on characterisation than Tolkien who seems to place more of an emphasis on scenery and battle.

RPGs/MMORPGs

I never used to be into computer games all that much - they were always something I watched others playing when I couldn’t be bothered to actually do anything useful myself. But then I discovered Knights of the Old Republic , or KOTOR as it is affectionately known, and my addiction to character development and quest completion was begun! Morrowind came next and then, City of Heroes (or CoH) . This marked my first foray into the world of the MMORPG - played it for a few months until the lack of variety caused boredom to set in, and spent the next few months flitting between various MMO trial periods for games including Asheron’s Call 2 and Saga of Ryzom.

Then along came World of Warcraft, which I played for ages on and off. Since WoW, I’ve dabbled in Sims 2 , Knights of the Old Republic 2 which more than lived up to the original despite being made by a different company, and Oblivion, the much awaited sequel to Morrowind. Most recently though I’ve been playing Guild Wars

Internet communication

My other main interest is internet communication. Much of my social life revolves around the use of instant messaging (Psi , of which Kev is the Lead Developer), and Internet Relay Chat (lovingly referred to as IRC). The IRC channels I can regularly be seen in are #exeter (set up by two former students at the University and now home to many), and a WoW related one occupied by a few friends.

History

I guess, what with being a historian and everything, I should allow at least a passing comment devoted to the subject! I loved history at school, and although feel that some enjoyment of my degree was marred by the teaching, as a result of my studies I have developed an interest in social history. I prefer ‘active’ history to the kind where you just sit and read a book and find most history books incredibly boring and an excellent way of destroying a once passing interest in the subject matter. History documentaries I do quite like however, but best of all is actually going there and seeing it for yourself. I enjoy visiting castles and ‘places of historical interest’ a lot, and can remember standing on the Culloden battlefields in Scotland and looking out at the Normandy landing beaches (on separate occasions obviously as I am still developing my teleportation skills) feeling very overwhelmed by it all. And very small and insignificant as well, as I guess we all are in the end….