Dear friends,
What an international meeting! Thanks to the great PR work of Craig and the strong commitment of our former Member Jazzmin, who emigrated to Cape Town in South Africa some years ago, we could welcome a good number of guests from many parts of the world. Oliver, our presiding officer of the evening chatted with and warmly welcomed Jazzmin, Kala, Julian, Domingos, Lei Li from Norway, Mona Lisa from Mozambique, Desberia and Tsungie from Zimbabwe, Ulrike from Essen and Prince, who has been a guest several times already.
Jeff, as Toastmaster of the evening and General evaluator, very briefly explained the structure of the evening and welcomed Craig as Grammarian, Martin as Ah-Counter and Eloisa as timer.
The word of the day “affable” – meaning easy to get on with, a friendly character – was well used.
Jeff’s thought of the day expressed that being human means we don’t need to be perfect. Making mistakes is very human.
The table topics questions were related to the theme and presented by Sybille:
1. What does it mean to be human? Amrith shared a story about his son. Don’t expect perfection and see the things from the point of view of the child.2. Quotation by George Orwell: “The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection.”
Martin explained that it is more healthy to give up trying to be perfect. Let yourself go.
3. In what way are all human beings the same, no matter where they come from? Mona Lisa explained that all human beings are born, spend some time on earth and each and everyone dies in the end.
4. With their intelligence human beings have changed the world in many different ways for the good and the bad. Examples? Prince spoke about the fact that developments are neither good or bad. Only the way they are used by people.
Thanks to the commitment of our guests we had three prepared speeches. Fangfang working at the path visionary communication held her first speech at level 2, referring to understanding your leadership style. The title of her speech was: Leadership is like farming. Her speech was evaluated by Jazzmin.
Desberia working at the path dynamic leadership no. 4 / level 3 delivered a speech focusing on storytelling with the title: “He almost died”. This was a very touching speech. She shared with us a very dark moment in her life. Well done. The evaluation was given by Oliver.Julian spoke about presentation skills focusing on effective visual aids. In his speech “cooking with color” he skillfully combined the image of cooking with the use of colors in presentations, visually and in the diction he used. Sriram gave his feedback to this speech.
In the evaluation session the Grammarian Craig gave a very entertaining and memorable report on the usage of the English language of this evening. The General Evaluator gave feedback to all functions and table topic speakers. He thanked Craig and Jazzmin for their commitment to invite so many international guests.
The award session was exciting since the speeches were all very good. The best Table Topic speaker of the evening was Mona Lisa, the award for the best evaluation went to Sriram and the best speaker was Julian.
Our next meeting is on the 24th of August, we would love to have you join us!Best wishes to you all, Jeff
( A big “thank you” to Sybille, who again has done an amazing job writing this recap.)
Here is a snapshot of the evening.