Congratulations to all the winners and the participants

Dear All,

Did I say Andrew was setting something special for us and Yes, he did, and the night was special. We had great food, we had sambusas, we had cookies and we had red and white wine flowing and more than this we had a great turnout for the meeting. With Andrew, the contest chair and Tom, the chief judge running the show efficiently, I was able to sit, relax, enjoy the wine and the great food.... Excellent job guys. I can't thank you enough.

Thanks goes to all the volunteers for bringing the food. Thanks goes to all the members and guests for showing up tonight and making the contest a HUGE SUCCESS... And SUCCESS it was.

Special thanks go to Yvonne, our target speaker. The speech was fabulous, it was like a perfectionist putting on a show for us. It was like a feast to hear the speech over the great food. Did I say the contest is about pleasing essentially all the 5 senses - yes, all the senses had a Treat.

Finally congratulations to all the winners and the participants.

Sonia, Mike and Rich came in 1st, 2nd and 3rd, respectively, in the humorous speech contest.

Ian, Kate and Jessica came in 1st, 2nd and 3rd, respectively, in the speech evaluation contest.

Sonia, Mike, Ian and Kate will represent the club at the area level. The area level contest is on Oct 10th at North East Utilities, Berlin starting at 6.30 pm.

We have more good news, Shari joined as our club member tonight.. Welcome Shari to our family! With Shari joining we reached the magic number 8 of new members ..... 8 = 2 .... That calls for extra celebration and I can sleep well :)

Thanks again to all of you. Our next meeting is on Oct 1st at our usual time (7.15pm) and our usual location. Please sign up for the roles.

Goodnight and see you all in 2 weeks.

Chandra

Club's Quality, Energy and Enthusiasm

Dear Eagles,

With the cool breeze in the air, it seems the days of extremely hot and humid days are finally over. In the past few months, we have seen many weather changes - hot days,  humid days, rainy days, windy days, but among all these unavoidable changes we have one thing staying the same - and that is our club's quality, energy and enthusiasm. We had another solid meeting with a good turnout including 4 guests.

With the humorous speech contest looming, Richard quoted Bill Cosby on how humor helps in many other dimensions  "Through humor, you can soften some of the worst blows that life delivers. And once you find laughter, no matter how painful your situation might be, you can survive it".

Kate as table topics master did something different, she made the previous table topics speaker to pick the next one... This was really good. There is always something new you learn at toastmasters!

Coming to the prepared speeches, with both the Republican and Democratic conventions done, Richard talked about three kinds of political ads - attack ads, contrast ads and dirty tricks and gave examples of each in his speech appropriately titled as " conventions are over. Let the ads fly". Richard is like an encyclopedia, his speech was loaded with details, facts, valuable information and to be honest it was difficult to keep pace with note taking. Couple of quotes I was able to jot it down - " we all know that politics is a contact sport" by Obama and another by Truman "if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen".

Dawit in his speech titled "Peace Corp & me" talked about how the Peace Corp missions enrich and enlighten the lives of both the volunteers and the beneficiaries,  and after a certain time the definitions of providers and seekers may actually reverse. Dawit had a few capturing quotes in his speech like "if you spend 24 months in Africa, you learn to move(dance)" and of course Jessica as general evaluator pounced on that statement and requested Dawit to show some moves in his next speech which Dawit accepted with a smile.... (Body Speaks?) ... So keep an eye on Dawit's next speech and don't miss it if you want to learn some moves :)

Ute gave the speech on "Time to talk about food" where she did not talk about food per se but rather with good demo/gestures showed how different cultures consume food in different ways like use of silverware, use of wood (chop sticks) and of course use of plain hands. And what can I say about the speech?  She packed every  aspect of toastmasters into practice in her speech, be it the props, be it the body language, be it the vocal variety, be it the audience engagement, be it the inspiration... Yes she delivered all in this speech. She noted an interesting observation -about  1/3rd of the world population eat with silverware, 1/3rd with chop sticks and the rest 1/3rd with hands. A simple but phenomenal observation and I commend her in going out of her way to assimilate the different cultures....

Our next meeting on Sept 17th is a contest meeting. There will be food and wine on the table. It is time to put our 5 senses to use -  taste, smell, listen, speak and talk... And no better venue than the contest night. Please come. There will be many roles available like judges, timers, ballot counters etc etc and of course more member involvement more fun.

We have a Target speaker coming from the greater Hartford and the Audience is the best gift any speaker can have. So please come,  let us put on a good show and make the contest a success.

Goodnight and see you all next Monday.

Chandra