North Shore Toastmasters
Club Meeting
January 3rd, 2005
Happy New Year, everyone.
We began this new year with a bit of a twist – giving everyone
in the room (even guests, if they wished!) an opportunity to
ease back into the swing of clearing holiday cobwebs and coaxing
those nervous butterflies to once again ‘fly in formation’.
How did we do this? By having not one, but two, impromptu Table
Topic sessions, instead of having manual speeches during the
second part of the meeting. We learned a number of very
practical (and an off the wall?) solutions to difficult
situations. The topics given by Table Topics Masters Dave
Stewart and Li Ying Kao were creative and the participants
responded with gusto!
Normally the Table Topics Masters are the ones who do the
challenging, but this time they had to be as quick on their feet
as their Speakers. Both of our Evaluators ran into difficulties
(ie. Car breakdown on the way…) and were unable to come.
However, Dave and Li Ying immediately switched gears by
enlisting the audience’s memories to give a round of feedback on
the Speakers’ presentations.
Neville Cohen smoothly segueyed his earlier Joke into the topic
he’d been given.
Gerhard Rentsch described his stories with obvious relish.
Gerhard … did your friend really lose 50 lbs. by not eating a
thing? (You never know with Table Topics because part of the fun
can be making a tall tale actually believable!) Final Verdict:
Li Ying Kao won the ribbon for Best Table Topic in Dave’s
session, and Pam Elliott in Li Ying’s. There were no awards for
Best Evaluator since everyone contributed.
We were unanimously delighted to have Jan Khubyar return. There
is definitely no ‘rust’ on either her enthusiasm or abilities.
We really appreciate Jenny Ji’s support and ‘guest appearances’
in our club. Jenny fits easily into any group, and has been a
very comfortable addition. This week, as General Evaluator, she
gave her perceptions of the meeting as a whole. It is always
beneficial to hear perspectives from someone ‘outside the club’.
Some people were groaning about having to lose weight after the
holidays. On the other hand, our piggybank ‘Ookpig’ was
overjoyed to be stuffed with the rewards of all the ‘ums and
ahs’ that Stuart Manning so astutely picked up during the
evening. Possibly next week some of us may choose to make a more
substantial contribution:
Ruth Sol moved and inspired us with a ‘call for action’ to help
in any way we can with the devastating situation caused by the
tsunami.
Neville Cohen later followed that up with the suggestion that we
challenge the clubs in our District to make contributions in the
name of Toastmasters. We delegated him to contact Anne Kramer,
the District Governor, to see if she is willing to initiate this
throughout our District (all of B.C.).
We are looking forward to seeing everyone at our next meeting on
Monday Jan. 10.
Club 1085
We began this new year with a bit of a twist – giving everyone
in the room (even guests, if they wished!) an opportunity to
ease back into the swing of clearing holiday cobwebs and coaxing
those nervous butterflies to once again ‘fly in formation’.
