!! syadiloH yppaH
Hmmm. What
a weird session. That’s what I’d call it if you ask me.
It all
began at the bar, where we all met for food & drinks. I have a picture to
prove it, right below this text. Check us out! We’re all happy campers, must
be the thrill to begin another TM session.
So we began
by adjourning the event. That was after having Nacho Tellez, our General Evaluator, comment on the whole thing up
until then. It is strange because to me his evaluation was really detailed and
structured, yet, we didn’t really seem to have done much up until that point? Interesting.
I recall
having an outstanding Table Topics session after that conducted by Table Topics Mistress Jelena Vetockina, where some
psychoanalysts visited us and offered counsel. The board was integrated by Dr. Doriana Bagnoli (eminence in cigarette-stealing
behavior), Dr. Catalina
(specializing in motivating people with funny Manga names such as Kikuro) and Dr. Rayanne Bachammar, who has a PhD. in helping bulky, Schwarzenegger-like
guys (I had to Google that surname to spell it right, dang it) to overcome
their fear of small children.
We moved on
into the evaluation portion of our session, with Judit Permanyer, Ana Villar
and Marion Chevalier delivering in
style as usual. Evaluations packed with ideas for improvement are great; having
them delivered by those three and their savoir-faire?
Icing on the cake.
On came the
third speech of the evening: a breathtaking revisit of one of Andrea Buron’s most tough and changing
moments in life. She took us on a six floor elevator ride of tension, fear,
questions and eye contact with a person close to her final moments which deeply
impacted her, and pointed out the way in which Toastmasters can be of help to
come to terms with those traumatic experiences and put them into proper
context.
Close your
eyes now. Hold on, open them again so you can read the instructions. All right,
close your eyes and use three seconds to think of a drug. Do it now. I don’t
know what you thought about (better keep that to yourself?), but I’ll tell you
what you didn’t think: Cars. Speaker Mariyana Tasheva went for an eye-opener
on how the U.S. is heavily dependent on them and private transportation in
general, and pointed at global warming as one of the undesired consequences of
that. She proposed expanding public transportation and using one of the older
means of transportation known to mankind: the body.
Somehow, some
ice had built up at this point; someone had to break it. Marc Majoral was the brave soul to
present himself to the club through three major moments of change in his life:
travelling and living abroad; coming back and obtaining a job in the career he
always wanted to pursue; and his change towards a healthier lifestyle when he
began running. You have to love Ice Breakers, especially when we get to know
someone so well and see their will to move forward in the TM experience. Way to
go and an Ice Breaker ribbon to you, Marc!
With the
speeches concluded we moved onto the technical team presentation: Cristian Couso as the Ah-Counter, Oleksandr Raspopov as the evening’s
Grammarian and Lukasz Zagroba in the
role of Timekeeper. They then gave the word to Sandra Almeida, our skillful Toastmaster for the session, who
proposed the topic of Summer as our
last theme in July. Okay … so now I see why the Word of the Day was ‘Dive’. All
right, this is starting to make sense…
Then Sandra
greeted Judit Permanyer on the role
of acting president who welcomed the guests to the session. (Note to self: I
should propose the committee changing this part of the agenda and actually
wishing farewell at this point, looks like it’s a bit too late in the session
to welcome anybody?)
On a final
word, I want to thank you all for the great idea of walking backwards all the
time for the whole evening. I found that to be original and hey, I went with
the flow. After all, we do a lot of clapping and other peculiar stuff so it was
appropiate for a club like ours.
…hold on…. unless...
Hmmm. I think I might have messed somewhere people. erehw erus yllaer toN.
Definitely,
I need a holiday.
HAPPY
HOLIDAYS TOASTMASTERS, SEE YOU ALL BACK SAFELY ON THE 4TH OF
SEPTEMBER!!
Isaac Riera
.jpg)
