“Life is not an MP3 where you can play what you want, but a radio where you have to enjoy what’s being played.”

May 22nd, 2013
Tonight’s meeting was coined by last minute changes and unexpected incidents that posed some challenges before and during the meeting but that were successfully overcome as always at Toastmasters Barcelona.

Teresa Rubinat, our lovely Sergeant of Arms, opened the meeting apologizing for having started five minutes behind schedule. Marion Chevalier, our president, welcomed the fellow toastmasters and our guests. We had the honour to welcome a toastmaster member from Canada who is on vacation in Spain and tries to attend some Toastmaster meetings in the countries he is travelling through.

The Toastmaster of the night, Mariyana Tasheva, told the audience that she did not know until the day before that she would be the Toastmaster of this meeting. She reported that VPE Agnieszka Gut asked her on Tuesday morning if she would accept taking over the toastmaster role the next day, and Mariyana accepted and asked then “how could you refuse this request from a friend?”. The next “last minute change” was in the technical team. Rubén Martínez Fanals was kind to accept the role of the grammarian in the last ten minutes before the meeting. In his fresh new role, he explained the word of the day: to dawdle; a word having both good and bad sides to it. He was followed by the Ah-Counter José Bellocq, the Timekeeper Beatriz Fernández de Molina, and me as the blogger, who exposed the duties and challenges of our respective roles.

Due to some technical problems (power point) at the early beginning of Natalia Gurian’s Icebreaker, she interrupted her speech during the time the computer issue was solved, and in the meanwhile Hans Pubanz entertained us telling a joke about relationships and lunch. Once the computer issue was solved (it took thirty seconds), Natalia let us know in her: “4 degrees of separation” speech what she had in common with Clint Eastwood, Kim Kardashian, Ruben Darío and Enrique Bunbury. She took us from Armenia (Gurian is an Armenian name as well as Kardashian), to Spain, Nicaragua -where her parents met (and by the way, her father looks like Clint Eastwood)-, and Guatemala to Antigua, where she was born. Antigua: the place where Enrique Bunbury “would like to pass away at.”

The second speech had the exciting title “The Watson in you”. Lidia Plaza started her third Competent Communicator speech warning us not to believe what she was going to say, but to listen attentively and then make our own conclusions. She constructed her speech around the novel figure Dr. Watson, an example of a critical thinker whose characteristics are objectivity, critical thinking and active listening. One of the elements that represents Dr. Watson is to ask questions, a skill highly developed by kids, however that we have lost becoming adults. Lidia encouraged us to develop Dr. Watson’s skills in ourselves and concluded with the benefits of “the Watson in you”.

Javier Macias started his Spanish speech with the question: “Realmente tenemos libre albedrío?” and spawned our interest instantaneously. He demonstrated the power of how the group or society has an impact on our own decisions. He told us, in his first example, about one experiment done with monkeys. In the second example, he referred to his own experience in an Assembly of his neighbourhood community where he had to give in. In his third example, Javier showed us a video recording about an experiment that concludes that we are not free in our decisions but will conform to the group. Javier concluded that we can change things ourselves, but that the influence of our environment, the context, is very important. He closed his inspiring speech advising us that changing things is possible; however, we should elect the context that allows us to do that.

The evaluation part included useful advice from the evaluators Judit Permanyer, Marion Chevalier and Christian Clottu. 

“Happy Birthday to you, happy birthday to you…”, the Table Topics started with a heartily Happy Birthday song. Isaac Riera, Table Topic Master, chose the soon-to-be 10^th  Anniversary of Toastmasters Barcelona Party on Friday 24^th of May as Table Topic and Hans Pubarz, Eric Guntermann and myself (I had no choice, I was chosen by the table topic master) participated as topic speaker. “Hans Pubarz, landed accidently, in a Star Trek Enterprise event that took place in the same building as our own Anniversary Party, and was invited to give a speech although he had no clue about Star Trek. Eric Guntermann had to make a declaration specifying the act on a picture where he was caught in a not advantageous situation as toastmasters treasurer and I had to explained in my acceptance speech what I will do with the nice present (that I disliked totally) offered to me by all toastmasters members.”

Agnieszka Gut, as the General Evaluator of the meeting, enjoyed the creativity of the speeches, the fact that there are no definite answers to everything and the tip pointing at how we can make decisions. She also pointed out the creativity in the evaluations and celebrated that the guests spoke. Referring to what we can improve, Agnieszka advised us that four back up plans are not enough at toastmasters and reminded us to provide the Sergeant of Arms all the materials we need for our speeches in advance.

At the end of the session, Marion Chevalier, informed us that there was no more opportunity to register for the 10 years Toastmasters Barcelona Party. Furthermore, she informed us about the meeting on the 5^th of June: “Demos voz al medioambiente” that will take place in CaixaForum.  To close with the club business, she let us know that there would be the elections for the new committee during the next meeting on 29^th of May. Teresa Rubinat closed the session and invited every one to join to have a beer in the, for us, very well known bar.