what else do you do besides playing chess?

Well, beside chess I do Gambling and ********* (censored)

Besides chess and work, I spend time with my special someone. I collect and read books, surf the net, watch tv and movies, eat in different restaurants and go to malls.

Drinking a lot of coffee is a must for me.

Video games eat up most of my free time.  I'm getting totally sick of the working routine, this 9-5 crap is driving me insane.  It's like groundhog day. 

I currently have this urge to start collecting Zippo lighters, I'm trying to fend it off.  Something which disgusts me is that I cannot find one Zippo with anything Chess related on it, not one. 

I like practicing Nunchaku techniques, I'm pretty good with 1 pair and I'm branching out into using 2 simultaneously.  I always considered that showing off in the past. I'm struggling to find the time to do it these days though.

I've seen more than one Zippo with a 'Knight' emblem on it - dunno where you get 'em though

Yeah, they're getting pretty tired of it.  I am too, to be honest.  It might be about time to do Act IV in about thirty minutes.

You're getting tired of Romeo and Juliet?  Or just tired of teaching it to dimwits? Oh, the reasons I could never be a teacher. 

My free time away from chess is spent playing with trains.

I'm in a period of transition. I'm weaning myself off guitar and getting into woodcarving. I've stopped collecting swords, old locks, and stones of all kinds (too much clutter around the house). I still collect rifles (at least they're useful clutter). I hike and I'm getting back into backpacking after being away from it for far too long. I still occasionally play Red Orchestra.

Afafbouardi, the kids are fine.  I mean sure, I'd like to strangle one until the vessels in his eyes pop every now and then, but for the most part they're pretty good kids.  It's Shakespeare that has me beat.  I never got tired of talking about the same story six times until we started Romeo and Juliet.  Shakespeare = most overrated writer in the English language, behind maybe Pynchon (who is clearly a genius but that doesn't mean I want to spend my time reading his made up postal conspiracies).

Swing dancing, DJing, inline-skating, going to stand-up comedy shows with an eye toward eventually performing it, performance art.

 You have my sincere condolences. I taught English for 12 years in Harlem, for two years in an Israeli high school, for another 2 years in a technical vocational school and for 15 years in colleges and universities. I now tutor privately, but only those whom I wish to teach.

Other than that, I love to read, smoke pipes and cigars, listen to jazz and classical music and spend lots of time gardening.

I guess I'm a bit of a fan.  I don't think I'd get tired of swooning at Shakespeare clever wordplay unless I had to explain it to unappreciative twits.  I guess I can't think of a writer who deserves a higher place than him...or that has contributed as much to the language and culture.  I also like that most of his writing is not complicated and his analogies are always sharp and easily visualized.  I bet you find new meanings to many phrases every time you reread it.

Can I now assume that Moroccan and American diplomats have now been readmitted to their relevant embassies?

Reading, especially scifi/fantasy and espionage novels. Movies, long walks around the neighborhood, facebook, an occassional play or concert, hanging out at the pub, learning photography, re-learnng clarinet.

Now don't get me wrong, I do think Hamlet is one of the most perfect stories ever written, and is maybe the first "modern" story, but R & J seems a little overwrought to me -- as a product of my times at least -- and I have a hard time identifying with any of the characters. 

Edit:  To be fair, I understand why he's still taught.  Bill just isn't for me.

Prawn...I'm an American and a Moroccan...so the nations already have a happy marriage in just me.  Flags belongs to Macbeth.  And we don't have an embassy there.

Besides, we've already established that we like the same people...Richie and Oprah, you Prawn, and Shakespeare...ooh, lofty company. But we don't like one another. 

Real Zippos? I can't find any online. The music ones are a bit lame too, there's like 6 bands and Elvis, Elvis and some more Elvis.  You would think Zippo could branch out a bit.

DMX21x1, I also work part time in a cigar shop, and I've never seen any chess zippos. 

In the sense that it introduces the hero who just talks and doesn't act, yes (opposed to the epic hero whose life was entirely defined by exteriority, Hamlet is really the first who reveals himself to the posited audience through interiority).  But, if we're talking about usage of multiple languages (referring not to the national, but to the technical) within one given text, Rabelais has him beat by a good few years.