So Dimitri opened the show, you could clearly feel a sense of urgency in the agenda. On the drop of a hat Dima gave way to Angela, who in-turn gave way to Florian, and on and on it went till everyone got tired and gave the lectern to the chattering German. The German was just relishing his time there, and boy he is a damn good host. His word of the day was "Wall".
It might initially sound a bit unusual but given the historical significance of the past week (20 years since the breaking of the Berlin wall), it was indeed a timely one. He proceeded to talk about times in Germany circa Berlin wall demolition. Slowly Florian started sounding like the grumpy cursed history teacher that you surely have encountered in school. Thankfully, he didn't continue long and moved along with the agenda.
Govind (who also happens to be yours truly) was the Table Topic master. My theme was unusual phrases encountered in usual and unusual places. Arthur dealt with an exotic cuisine named "tap water and lawn trimmings." I am sure everyone would be licking their chops to taste this exotic and exquisite dish. Due to stringent copyright laws Arthur has requested me not to reveal the preparation of this exotic cuisine and so I have to oblige (Exceptions are granted if accompanied with an exceptional amount).
Next came Alex and he spoke about making a rope with dope. He calmly went through the motions and it has be said that he did a good job. The actual phrase "rope-a-dope" is a boxing terminology. Given the obvious lack of time, we had to cut short on Table Topic and rush into our prepared speeches.
Luca was the first of the speakers and gave first of his many speeches. He gave a quick fire auto-biography and well it did sound interesting. Except there was a small glitch when the guitar was taken out and..., well never mind.The next speech was by Dimitri aka Dima aka the multi-faceted Russian of
TM Barcelona.He talked about misconceptions associated with using GDP as the primary progress indicator. He used some nice examples to show the fallacy of using GDP as the sole progress metric. The talk was informative except that there were these economic terminologies dished out regularly, which at times made you wonder if he was speaking English or a mixture of Russian, Catalan, Spanish.
Then along came Ernest. One could clearly make out from the time the meeting started that he was bubbling to burst out his second speech. Eventually, even the German aka the host had to relent and give way. Ernest spoke about the need to show a bit more environmental responsibility by avoiding regular use of plastic bags. He spoke with clear conviction on this issue. To justify the case, he used a pile of statistics that would have scared the living daylight out of anyone.
The final talk was an educational session by Edith. While pouring loads of praise on the club, she pointed out some weaknesses. One of her major concern was a need for improved time management in conducting the meeting. This was unanimously felt by everyone in the meeting.
She opened the floor for opinions in improving our meeting schedule. A whole bunch of ideas started pouring along, and some very nice ideas also.Another suggestion she gave was to have theme meetings. A theme that would run through the entire meeting. Ironically, the theme of this meeting was almost crystal clear and it was "Bordering Sublime and Ridiculous". The ridiculous part being the host of the show and the table-topics master.
The clock started ticking - tick..tick - and continued ticking, well it still does but the point is that we were starved of time. Even the German felt the need to hurry up. Evaluations went almost on a tick and unsurprisingly all the prepared speeches were well received. On the very next tick Angela took over to close the meeting. Thus, an eventful meeting came to an end.
Thats all from me.
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