February 20th 2008

Diligent was Belinda's word of the day. And she did a jolly diligent job as our Toastmaster of yesterday's meeting; a meeting which for the first time in 2,5 years lacked of any guest... Of course there is no need to worry about new members, two of which we could warmly welcome; Raisa from Finland and David from the UK. Applause... For a long time we couldn't count with a Jokemaster of the Day. Until José stood up and recited a great Holmes/Watson joke, very British indeed. The night moved on with Table Topics. Paul had prepared his session with diligent care. He called on diverse "experts" in art history and made them comment on the greatest pieces like an elephant portrait created by his 19 month year-old son, one of the most promising contemporany artists in the world. - Antonio was so impressed by a 2 cm steel construction, a mile-stone setting needle sculpture, that he could only grasp for breath, speechless. - The speeches! Kai made his body talk presenting us a fable about the external evil and why it is so convenient for societies to cultivate it. He did an awesome job, we felt like being part of the story. Then came Veronika straight from down under and gave us an extremely entertaining lecture on the little differences in terms of Australian words and expressions. And all that dressed as a sort of baywatch lady. Rose took on the challenge of stepping in the agenda on short notice. Nobody really realized the limited prep time of two hours only. She performed her third project of the advanced manual "The Entertaining Speaker" and yes, she "made us laugh". Rose made fun of all the techniques we learn at TM, like variety of voice, eye contect, body language, catching the attention and many more. Hillarious, especially her ASSet. - Evaluations and a remarkable general evaluation of the meeting by Xavier rounded up a highly entertaining evening. - fm