The club has a new meeting room, at Building 15, near to
Ginninderra Drive (see map at the end of this post and in the Meetings page at right), and will meet here till December, at least, and
during 2014 as well if possible.
We are very pleased to have had a second visit from guest
Sandy, at this meeting. Sandy happily mastered the timing device, as well as
taking part in Table Topics. We do hope she will join.
At this, the last meeting for 2012–13, seven members were
present: Leona (President), Ianon (VPE), Geoff (VPPR), Peter H (Treasurer and
VPM ), Dominic (Sergeant at Arms), Carmen and Ann. Poignantly, it was (member) Yuyu’s
last day in Canberra before moving north with her family. She phoned in and we
were able to say a brief, remote, goodbye to her and to wish her well. Yuyu
joined the club in 2010 and since then she has given 10 speeches, of increasing
excellence, gaining her the award ‘Competent Communicator’ and the right to put
‘CC’ after her name.
At today’s meeting, Geoff’s speech gave a thought-provoking
rundown on the fluids one needs to keep an eye on, in one’s car. Most of us
would only have thought to be checking the radiator fluid or coolant, and the
oil level and, perhaps, that the battery cells were wet. In fact, most of us
don’t check those nowadays in modern cars. Geoff, alarmingly, pointed out that
there are 8 fluids at least one needs to be watching in a car, even a modern
one. He outlined where to find these fluids (mostly under the bonnet). We now
know we should also be feeling the tyres, gently, as if they were horses’
fetlocks, to check on the pattern of wear on the outside edges. This is all quite
apart from the chore of keeping a car clean and shiny (for fuel economy). It
was an enlightening speech with no jargon and plenty of quiet authority, and no
‘ums’ or ‘ahs’.
Next, Leona’s speech outlined for us the structure and
higher echelons of the Toastmasters organisation in Australia. Beyond clubs
there is ‘Area’, which is a name for a group of clubs in the same part of town
or country. Benjamin@UC is in Area 17, Belconnen. Sets of adjacent Areas are
grouped into a ‘Division’, which represents all the clubs in a region. We are
in Monaro Division, obviously in the Monaro part of NSW. Divisions together form
a District. There are 10 Divisions in our District 70 (which covers much of NSW
including ACT), and there are four Districts for Australia and NZ. Each level
of Toastmasters has volunteer officers to represent it. Clubs have executive
committees; Area has an Area Governor; Division has a Division Governor;
District has a whole team of people. There is so much to know about how
Toastmasters operates as an organisation, and it will take another speech to
finish the story.
Carmen then proposed some very curly and challenging Table
Topics for us, e.g.: ‘If you were trying to persuade an overseas student to
study in Canberra, what would you say?’; ‘Tell us how you would manage if you
arrived late at the airport, just in time for your plane, and found you had forgotten
your ticket’; ‘What do you think is the worst place in Australia? Now tell us
what would be good about living there!’; and more in that vein. These were
great fun to tackle, and good practice for the Table Topics club contest that
is coming up in August.
The evaluations of speeches, Table Topics and the meeting as
a whole, produced both approval and points for improvement, as is usual.
Finally, the committee of 2012-13 metaphorically handed over
the reins of the club to the new committee for 2013-14.
If I could propose a
‘toast’ it would be: ‘Here’s to another excellent year coming up!’
*Benjamin
has continued to meet fortnightly between June 2012 and June 2013, but without
blogs.
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