“Seventeen
members present on a beautiful spring evening – a good sign this
club is holding strong!” exclaimed Ruth Sol in her General
Evaluation.
The momentum began building a few weeks ago with the theme on
Imagination, and still continues to hold strong – this time with
the whimsical theme created by the Table Topics Master: “If you
were………”. It was further propelled this week by Karen Arnold’s
Word of the Week, Chimerical (pronounced ‘k-eye-m-air-i-cal’).
What a joy to have a new-to-us word that was easy to pronounce,
easy to understand, and easy to use. No wonder Karen was
impressed with the number of times she heard it in our roles and
speeches.
Neville Cohen Chaired this enchanted evening with a smile for
everyone. It was clear he was delighted to have a fun theme to
work with, and an array of wildly imaginative, quotable
introductions ready for members with various roles. Stuart
Manning’s introduction for him was ‘just right’ when he said
that Neville is a very dedicated member.
Through her due diligence, Anne Marie Deluise assured us that
she would work very hard to help us overcome our um’s, ah’s, and
other little distracting bad habits that take can be annoying in
otherwise quality speeches. True to her word, she fleeced many
pockets, and if there hadn’t been a limited ceiling of
twenty-five-cents, our piggy bank would be very heavy indeed!
Li Ying Kao never ceases to surprise … This time, not long
before the meeting began she was asked to give the Inspiration.
Her message was inspirational and wise: If we were to daydream
about what we would like to be, “if I were a ……”, we should be
careful about what we wish for because you never know…. it might
come true. She agreed that daydreams can be good, but if we take
any of them seriously then we should be sure to have regular
‘reality checks’ along the way.
Ana Maria Lovrich has an impish smile, which suited her role as
Jokemaster to a T. The story of poor little Charlie’s struggles
and eventual great success in math was cute, funny, and had us
looking ‘outside the lines’!
Jessica Li has definitely become a most competent Timer. As the
General Evaluator noted, she was very careful with her use of
protocol, and her explanation of the role would have been very
helpful to our first-time guests.
This meeting was described above as being ‘enchanted’, and it
was… in spite of the fact that it also included two more serious
sessions: our club elections and a business meeting.
By acclamation we voted in our
New Executives for the Year 2006 – 2007
Term Beginning July 1st, 2006
President – Omar Hung
Treasurer – Jessica Li
Vice President Education – Don Ekroth
Vice President Membership – Joanne Renfer
Vice President Public Relations – Li Ying Kao
Secretary – Karen Arnold
Sargent at Arms – Jim Sinclair
Members at Large – Dave Stewart and Jill McCormick (who will
bring added experience and mentorship to an executive with so
many new executives) Pam Elliott will be Acting Past President
Business Meeting
Chaired by our President, Gerhard Rentsch.
The Financial Update was circulated and passed in our
Treasurer, Omar Hung’s, absence. It was very straight forward
and there were no questions. We are in good shape.
Wind Up Party June 26th (erroneously stated as the 29th at the
meeting) When asked for a home to hold this, Pam Elliott offered her
house but would very much appreciate it being held at another
home if someone else comes forward. This will be a pot luck
family BBQ.
Agreement by the club members that we hold two informal events
over the summer to help keep us connected, and to be advertised
with the hope of attracting new members for September. Two
locations were suggested: Lighthouse Park and John Lawson Park.
There will be further discussion about the details before a
decision is made.
Pam Elliott reported that our club has the potential of having
achieved 8 of the possible 10 goals by the end of June for the
Distinguished Club Program. This earns us yet another Select
Distinguished ribbon for our banner. The level of awards is:
Distinguished, Select Distinguished, and President
Distinguished. Our club has always prided itself on encouraging
members to achieve their goals at their own pace, yet even with
this more laid-back approach we have almost always achieved at
least Select Distinguished status. Once again we are doing very
well.
Then we progressed on to the lighter moments of Table Topics,
where Jim Sinclair titillated our imaginations with a wide array
of great topics, with expert bridging between speakers. When the
winners were announced, we were told that the Best Table Topic
ribbon went to Karen Arnold, and that the voting was so close
that they felt it appropriate to also announce that the
Runners-Up were Anne Marie and Jill.
Don Ekroth takes delight in any role he is given, and it was
obvious in his delivery of Table Topic Evaluations for this
session. He gave personable, personal evaluations in which
suggestions were smoothly sandwiched between strengths. He
always gives us a laugh or a chuckle that even the recipient can
enjoy - this time it was a perfect little demonstration of Dave
comfortable lounging on the lectern before launching into his
topic
. All going well, but sadly for us, Don plans to head
Saturday (June 3) to Prince Rupert where he will be based for
his fishing season. We wished him well, and left no doubt in his
mind that he will be missed.
Jill McCormick gave us a very appropriate twist to the Toast!
First she acknowledged the theme by reading Robert Service’s “A
Rolling Stone”, but we didn’t Toast anything to do with that.
Instead we gave a hearty Toast to the newly elected incoming
executive! She then introduced the Speaker for the evening.
Parvaneh Bahrami’s second speech to our club was a sincerely
delivered, very informative, professional speech. In the
background, Dave Stewart was the magician who helped give this
presentation a professional flair by manning the
Power Point pictures, which helped us better see where Parvaneh
was taking us.
Her speech was “About Iran”, her original homeland. She took us
there first with a map of the world (“Iran is shaped like a
cat.”); told us about one of her most favorite vacation places
there, relating it to Kelowna; then we heard some of the history
of Iran. We learned through colourful visuals and a very good
speech.
Stuart Manning was at his best evaluating this Speaker’s
performance. He gave a very thorough, positively focused
evaluation, especially for a newer speaker. He gave her very
good suggestions which will b easy to incorporate on other
speaking occasions. Very well done.
Ruth Sol tied the evening together with her General Evaluation
on how we did. Many of us particularly appreciated the reminders
on meeting protocol. Re this, she also endorsed Don’s reminder
of how important it is to never leave the lectern empty. There
should always be someone at the lectern (meaning that the
Introducers solidly wait right there to shake hands with the
person they have introduced, and similarly the Speakers solidly
wait directly at the lectern until the person who introduced
them comes back to shake their hands at the end of their speech
or role). These reminders help keep us on our toes, and help
prevent guests from seeing a ‘sloppy appearing’ meeting. Thank
you, Ruth! She described our club meetings as “similar to a
microcosm of what we might find in a ‘real life’ corporation”,
so our Toastmaster meetings give us practice for ‘the real
world’. Ruth won the ribbon for the Best Evaluator of the
evening
. Neville’s bridge was “As always, Ruth is very
perceptive in her comments and tonight was no exception.”
We are looking forward to another terrific turnout on Monday,
June 5th - see you there! Guests are always most welcome to
come.
Club 1085
. All going well, but sadly for us, Don plans to head
Saturday (June 3) to Prince Rupert where he will be based for
his fishing season. We wished him well, and left no doubt in his
mind that he will be missed.
