Meeting 647 – July 30, 2008

Suvidh presented his Icebreaker

Suvidh joined us in July and he presented his first speech tonight.  He gave a brief outline of his life to date.  He was born in India, and therefore should be good at cricket and Maths. He wasn’t so certain about the Maths.  For a while he coasted along at school, until his mates started to work hard and got much better marks than him.  This spurred him to work hard too, and get high marks.  Both his parents are accountants, so he is studying accountancy.  He likes to play tennis and go skating.  He has learned to concentrate on the process, rather than the result, and consequently he has stopped worrying about what other people are achieving.

We had two visitors

Amanda came along with Ben to see what happened in the meeting.  Lee dropped in without contacting anybody and found a warm welcome, so she will probably join next week.

Glenis was Toastmaster.

She kept the meeting moving and gave very helpful explanations to our visitors about the various meeting roles.

John inspired us with the arrival last week of two packages – the body and lens of his brilliant new SLR digital camera.  Individually they don’t do anything worthwhile, but together they are wonderful.

Lynn and Table Topics! Lynn’s theme was If, But and What.  Alan, Gail, Ben, Tony, John and Cathy confronted various hypothetical situations. 

Ben’s Tonic dealt with irony.  He defined it for us with great precision and gave us two accurate examples – Socrates and Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

Craig presented Table Topics Evaluation with his customary simple expertise.

Gail presented a workshop on the Competent Communicator Manual, the basic manual when we start our Public Speaking practice.

3 excellent Project Speeches

Suvidh delivered his Icebreaker, as detailed above.  Craig evaluated Suvidh.

Amanda’s  Mosaic Maze took us on her holiday to Barcelona where she was inspired by the wonderful buildings designed by Gaudi, and particularly by the use of mosaic tiles.  So she has joined a Mosaic class and after initial traumas intimidated by other peoples apparent skill, she has freed herself from matching perfection and is getting on with the art of living with her own abilities. Judith evaluated Amanda.

Cathy delivered A childhood memory. She took us back to her childhood in Hong Kong and an exciting visiting to a floating restaurant, leading up to the flash of coins in the red neon lights across the water. Ben evaluated Cathy.

The final section

Alan’s Highlights was a rare excursion into um’s and errs.   He found very few, but did identify other fillers.  His conclusion was that we don’t notice them when the speaker is fluent and engaging.

Gail evaluated the evaluators.

Tony gave the Timing Report.

David evaluated the meeting.

President Gail closed the meeting. She reported receiving three Sponsor ribbons for new clubs started by David.  They are UWA, Marketers and Netmasters.  She gave the ribbons to David to add to the many already on our banner display .

Lynn prepared a delightful supper for us.