Monday, March 19, 2007

Happy Birthday Serge Rubanraut

Last Friday night a small group of chess players celebrated the 59th birthday of Serge Rubanraut at the Spanish Club. Serge, as our well-educated readers should know, was the '76 Australian Chess Champion. It was a good night out with plenty of drinks, many rounds of blitz games and a $5 cake that was quickly organised from the nearby Woolies. Seeing a bunch of half drunk chess players, with varying accents, singing Happy Birthday to some half-remembered lyrics, was about one of the funniest scenes I've ever seen. My friend Carey Cowling, himself a chess player, also organised a card. We passed that around for everyone to sign and I'm pretty sure that a couple of complete strangers also signed.

Conversations were the usual really, this and that. A bit of reminiscing but not really too much about chess - just life in general. The man even gave us all a quick lesson: mate, he said, so long as you enjoy what you're doing - that's the main thing.

Happy Birthday Serge!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Happy bithday to Serge!

Im surprised he is only 59,thought he was at least in his early sixties...he seems to have been around forever. hehe.