But first, a reminder that the next meeting is planned for Wednesday 16 April, in room 2C7, due to the Good Friday holiday.
The meeting got off to a mixed start due to unplanned absence of the Sergeant at Arms, who was injured in an accident. His colleague, who brought the box of "stuff", inadvertently left the timer, name tags, gavel etc behind, which had been removed from the box. Nevertheless, the meeting went ahead as planned. Overall we had 10 members and visitors present. With 10 current members we meet the TI requirement for club membership. Unfortunately we have lost experienced member Leona, who is directing her energies to another club. Nevertheless we still have a number of experienced members, which is great for training new members.
The first speaker was absent. Keiko gave a very moving advanced manual talk about Atomic Bomb victim Sadako and the 1000 paper cranes. Very poignant for me, as I took my family to the Hiroshima peace park and museum last holidays, where we saw many tales of bomb victims, and the statue of Sadako. With no first speaker, new member Nicole was able to run a longer Table Topics session. Again we had some fantastic topics - I wish I could come up with such thought provoking topics. Peter H. was asked what he thought about fashion. Visitor Baran was asked whether experience was more important than knowledge, given that many University graduates cannot find jobs. Lili was asked which country she would most like to visit, and why. (An easy question for her, as she hasn't been home for three years.) Geoff was given the scenario that he had a contract with God giving him superhuman powers, but that if used them to assist find Malaysian Airline flight 370 he would lose the powers. He was asked if would he use the powers to assist find the missing flight. He argued that he would not use the powers to assist find the missing flight. Linda was asked what she would do about scarce resources. Keiko then directed a topic at Nicole - "I am interviewing you for a job. Tell me why I should hire you".
It is great to see that the new members are already showing improvement. Indeed feedback to me is that I have shown great improvement over the last 18 months.
