Election Day!
Last 24th of May we had an exceptional session: it was the election day.
A TM club is more than the sum of their parts and in order to continue breathing, growing and alive it should renew itself periodically. Otherwise it wouldn't have last more that the founder toastmasters or it would have lost its dynamism.
Another fortuitous example this "the show must go on idea" is that when some members could made it for a last minute inconvenience another member step it and, in this session Sean Palit stepped in and took the role of president in behalf of Sandra Almeida. As Sean explained, unexpected problems are no so serious as "it is worse to die".
Isabel Montero, as the Toastmaster of the session called to the fore the election by prompting every participant to campaign for president.
Isabel Beltrán chose "quirky" as the word of the day and noted that we should elect her president as one of the oldest, and therefore wiser, members.
Sheila was courageous enough to step in to fill the ah-counter role as Soledad couldn't make it and promised to teach people the many nice places for eating out she know if ever elected president.
Suzanna, as the time keeper, explained how the three lights system works and postulated herself as president based on her strong party throwing skills.
I, Sebastián, was closing the technical team as blogger and I called the attention of the people to the fact that guests don't contribute to paying the club expenses so we need to build a wall to keep then out and... they are going to pay for it!
The first prepared talk was the ice breaker for Miren Alli, titled "looking for paradise". She believes that, in the end, we de what we do because we are chasing happiness the best we can and advised us to keep growing. Paul Conde evaluated her talk with some improvement tips, a video of a toddler so cute you will cry and noting that her managed to to faint. He was also threatening to bring everyone to the district contests if elected president.
The second and last prepared talk by Maria Luisa Gomes was titled "bookworms on fire!" and aimed at making people use goodreads, the social network for bookies (not to confuse with wookies). Manolo, making use of his quirky English, evaluated Maria Luisa but noted that he had to do a lot of thinking to find aspects to improve. He concluded: "vote me for president because I'm a book owner".
Beatriz García was not only sergeant of arms but ran the table topics not without asking people to vote for her as the Real Madrid fun she is. She asked Marc Mayoral to explain why he would be a great Big Brother participant, Cristina to run for president of a men's club and Rosanna, a guest, to run for president of the ejection club. She guaranteed us to to "find the best, most exotic places to be ejected into". It was fun but we should stop using the word "volunteer" if the table topics master is always naming specific people to the front.
Emily Jacquetton tried to bribe members with free life coach sessions in exchange for votes. As it didn't work, she proceed to do the general evaluation. She disclosed very important secret information during the evaluation. However, we vowed not to divulge such information to the people not coming to the English sessions. If you really need to know what we learned there, you should come next time!
Finally we had the actual election and the Sean was crowned as the new club president after a brief Bulgarian-style election.
In summary, it was a very interesting session and this textual depiction is not enough to transmit what was like to watch it live. If I were you I'll attend the next one!
