What's the next destination? (10 April 2013)

Please take your seats, fasten your seatbelts and get ready to take off for our next exciting journey!

As usual, our trip started with the Sergeant at Arms, Teresa Rubinat, who gave the start and reminded us to turn off our cell phones or put them in "over the rainbow" mode.

Next comes our President Marion Chevalier, who kindly asked the new passengers (i.e.guests) to introduce themselves. She also welcomed a new member of the craft Gerard Vidal.

It's now time for our pilot (the Toastmaster), Christian Clottu, to accelerate and take us through the mysteries of the journey. Not long ago he came back from another wonderful trip of his that gave him a loads of inspiration for today's one.   Completely prepared to continue, he, then, introduced us to his fabulous flight attendants: Timekeeper Natalia Guardian, Ah-counter Rayanne Bachammar and Grammarian Isaac Riera. The word of the day chosen by the Grammarian was "SCHEDULE", very appropriate for this session's theme as it's extremely important to arrive on time to each of our destinations.

Our first stop was called "Connection and Healing". The local guide, Brock McCurdy led us to the world of chiropractics, an alternative medicine through which doctors manually treat any neuromuscular diseases and their impact on our general health. To demonstrate how amazing our body is, Brock shared with us an example from his own practice, where a patient of his with deep depression was to commit a suicide. Through this powerful example, Brock explained to us how strongly connected mind and body are. Such a serious mental disorder, for example, can be healed by "fixing" the broken puzzle together. Thanks to the golden hands of Dr. McCurdy, his patient had overcome the depression and started  a normal life. Brock, we now know who to refer to when we have a similar problem!

To the second stop "No more excuses" brought us Ambrós Abellana.  Using a strong example,  Ambros demostrated us that even disabled people can fulfill their dreams such as scuba diving in a wheelchair. Even disabled people sometimes know how to live better their lives compared to the rest of us, the healthy ones. The tip to this is not to look for any excuses, just dream and act to make it a reality!

Our third guide, Marion Chevalier, said that "It's all about applied science".  If you'd like to improve your leadership and communication skills,  be more proactive by taking a role in the sessions as often as you can. Thus, you not only get used to the audience, but also keep improving your skills day by day. Toastmasters is the place "where applied speaking is made".

Brum, brum, brummm, the plane accelerated again to the island of evaluations. Please, pay careful attention to the safety instructions of our great evaluator mermaids (Lidia Plaza, Ana Villar and Jesús Salillas) as they  give some tips to  the guides on what to improve for their next trips.

Do you like to improvise? If so, let's fly to Table Topics Bay where Cristina, the Table Topics Master, will test your job interview skills. Don't stress out! This is not a real interview, just a practice. A great chance to land the job of your dreams! The three candidates of the night were Judith Permanyer, Joan Fabregat and Marcus Matioschat. Judit was looking for a Public Relations Assistant for Dracula; the candidate should be persuasive and empathetic to calm down the bad-tempered personality of Dracula, she needed a good communicator and of course, someone willing to take an active part in carnavals.  Joan urgently needed Personal Assistant to Pope Francis I. The skills he mentioned as important were a loyal person to help the rest of the people and above all, a candidate whose dream was to become a part of the Vatican City Church. At the end, Marcus opted for the position of Professional Dances for Jennifer Lopez. He honestly admitted that his dance skills were not so good, but he would compensate them for others which would make him better professional assistant, background singer and a promoter in Spanish-speaking countries.

So far, so good. The journey overall was very interesting and charged our batteries.

Only the landing.....was a little bit tougher because the Co-pilot (i.e the General Evaluator) José Bellocq was not as satisfied as we expected. He was probably affected by Dracula´s bad temper and skillfully pointed out the safety instructions to bear in mind for the next trips. As far as the Cabin Crew, the Grammarian Isaac was slightly disappointed, as well, since the word of the day  SCHEDULE " came quite late on our schedule". Fortunately, the airhostesses were content with the time and the lack of background noise during the trip.

At the end, our President Marion gave the award to one of the guides, Ambrós for successfully completing his third speech.

The Sergeant at Arms, Teresa Rubinat (and the blogger) thank you all for this wonderful voyage! Looking forward to the next one!

"One´s destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things."

Blogger: Mariyana Tasheva