Averting Catastrophe in Jam Packed Meeting of Friday 22nd May (meeting 1044)

Apologies to all our avid readers, I have been away from Toastmasters meetings for a couple of months, so sadly, no blogs for while.

On Friday 22^nd May we had a jam packed meeting focussed on catastrophe and disaster, thanks to Peter Herbert.  Co-incidentally (or not) the word of the day was “catastrophic”, which Peter managed to use quite a lot, filling all of the roles of Tonic, Speaker and Tabletopics Master in one meeting!

And by “catastrophe”, I don’t mean the public speaking ones J, as there were none of those, but real ones.  It is always good to keep on your toes!

We were happy to welcome back Area Governor, John Burge again.  (At the meeting was also Ianon, Keiko, Geoff, Lili, Linda and Karina).

The meeting began with Peter’s speech about Preventing Catastrophic Events, which he delivered in his usual engaging style.  After Peter’s speech, John conducted the annual Club elections, in which the new set of Committee members were elected for the 2015-2016 year.  The Committee is as follows:
                President: Geoff Adams
                Vice President Education: Karina Redpath
                Vice President Membership: Ianon Yusoff
                Vice President Public Relations: Lili Zhang
                Treasurer: Dominic Dolan
                Secretary: Ianon Yusoff
                Sargent at Arms: Peter Herbert

Tabletopics followed the elections and we all had the opportunity to speak about catastrophic events, albeit in lightning speed (1 min each) because we were running out of time.  We spoke of cyclones, flooding and fires, the likelihood of these events and how to avoid the damage they cause.

Announcements included Leadership Training on 13^th June, Humorous Speech and Club Tabletopics Contests on 17^th July.  Also, I understand that Rita, who spoke in our Club one week I was away, was runner up in the District International Speech Contest! Congratulations Rita!

We have a treat in store for us at our next meeting on Friday 5^th June.  We have speeches from two of our best speakers.  I, for one, am looking forward to it!