This night has been full off surprises and proper TM spirit! Dimitri and Clara, our guest of honor from a fellow TM Club were happy to experience how we organize our ever faster growing TM club.
Toastmaster Peter set off to whistle for our team's strength embarking on a beautiful analogy of Rugby marking its robust cornerstones: placar- perfeccionar- el equipo. “casi nos matamos pero nos lo pasamos bien.”
Before the speakers started Maria set the scene with her beautiful joke about the effectiveness of consulting for bar tenders: You'd be surprised to find out how much time you can safe yourself as a waiter wearing a spoon in you upper pocket, and a subtle cotton thread attached your best kit's zip.
We congratulate Xavier after having been a member of the club for such long time to finally do and receive his ribbon for the Icebreaker on ¿Quién es este chico? that gave us a nice inside into where he comes from and where he is heading: to share the objective of becoming a better speaker and to improve his body language.
Laura decoded the mystery of the ever
reoccurring question: Will anyone ever win in a promotional contest? In her third speech she quickly got to the point and listed the deepest secrets of how to benefit from promotional contest and lotteries: Go for brands and products that are nearly forgotten, like peanuts; choose only one chain of supermarkets; be the first one in the promotions; call or enter the competition between 4am and 6am, or just go for the “regalo seguro” option, where you might have to buy more of the same product, but in the end, once you have collected all you little stamps your assured to win!! Laura received her TM Club Pin, and can now be a mentor for other club members.
Pilar as the last but not least speaker of the night brightened everyone's faces with her astonishing accomplishment: In only one evening she not only bagged her emergency hand luggage, but 3 titles in one row: CC + ALB + CL!! Who would have known that this was all due to one coffee mug exported from Mexico. Personally, I loved her pragmatic attitude: if you ever wanna wake up with your hairstyle already done- shave it all off, and you are freed for a year! We all congratulate Pilar for her amazing results and thank you for the inspirational message that the impossible can get in its place (“lo imposible puede llegar a su sitio”).
Peter had a special and well appreciated surprise for Pilar and the whole TM Club that JibJabb-ed with the Soul Train animation/movie: Great Funkin Job!! The whole room was filled with laughter and applause!
Great Team!
Finally, Cormac made some interesting and valuable points in his “informative speech” about the process of evaluation. Rather than being super sweet or super nasty, the appropriate communications skills are necessary for the speaker to learn from the evaluation. Although we can read about this in our manuals, I think it's very important to underline the evaluation's objectives: to better public speaking skills and to build and maintain self-esteem. This is best done by repeating the evaluation's objectives and to speak in a “positive” way and from the “I” position. After all, this is why we are all here, to get the motivation to become a better communication master.
Our last smiles and laughs we owed to the 3 Table Topic Speakers: Tania who convinced the Parliament why tomatoes should grow on trees from now on, Paul who introduced the new fruit “uvaceituna” and Cristian who made clear that a car's motor can run on sunflower oil.
M.A. Shared the following important data:
TM Club Barcelona can't actually accept any new members as of now.
Monday 14/03/2011 ASET (additional TM meeting; details Kai)
Important dates:
23/03/2011: speech contest
27/04/2011: sesió a català
25/05/2011: Sesión con sombreros!
Maike
Joan, en el papel de Presidente, dio la bienvenida a todos los huéspedes y explicò la estructura y el propósito del club. En TM es importante la improvisación y esta no faltò al momento de asignar la función de Ah-Counter. Nuestro amigo Franco, con dos apariciones como invitado, se improvisó en este papel. También fue importante la presencia de Ana y Xavi que fueron indispensables como Timekeeper y Grammarian. Stefan fue el Toastmaster de la noche, a él la tarea de presentar: 
