Dear Eagles,
A
new year, a new beginning brings in the promise, brings in the
excitement and brings in the freshness. It is often very difficult to
maintain the balance between the above three important qualities. Often
times, one or the two or all the three qualities are very much
compromised in many of the situations, but surprisingly at our club we
tend to maintain a very healthy balance between all the three - often by
member participation, many times by the quality of the speeches, and
sometimes by alcohol. Of course today we saw all the three things:
member participation, the quality and the alcohol in full display. That
is great and thanks to all of you.
We
had a wonderful meeting with close to 20 members and Mike as our guest.
We started the meeting with our traditional New Year toast of
Champagne. Thanks to Ute for the champagne and the toast. She also baked
us cookies and provided the crackers and cheese along.
Ian
as quote master provided three quotes from Winnie-the-Pooh, Alexander
Graham Bell and the Saint Buddha - three very diverse personnel
belonging to very diverse fields/background and three very different
times in history, but all the three quotes were very inspirational.
We
were all treated with 4 very high quality speeches. Daya gave his
icebreaker titled "Believe it or not" where he somehow revealed his self
by taking us through a journey by cleverly answering the following two
questions: (1) do you believe the established thought as "Truth"? - by
answering he told about what his core beliefs are and how he gave his
children the freedom to decide rather than force and (2) do you think we
should do what we love? - this he answered by telling how he followed
his passion for computers, his grad school, his work and how he has
fallen in love with toastmasters. Great job, Daya. Looking forward for
more speeches from you.
Kate
followed with her speech titled "Man's best friend", where she narrated
a touching story of the relation of Doug and his best friend Buster,
the dog. How Doug in the process of gaining his older brothers attention
had almost lost his life if not for the timely rescue of Doug to
"heaven" by Buster. Kate is an excellent storyteller and she takes all
the audience on a ride as if we are sitting on a simulator and
experiencing in real.... Fantastic job....
Tom
gave the third speech on "a failed experiment", where he realised during
his recent visit to national constitution center in Pennsylvania, how
in early 1900s Government with the help of several religious and other
groups tried to curb the rampant drinking especially in the working
class by Prohibiting Alcohol, how the whole experiment was a big fiasco
etc etc... All this was good, but I liked the ending the most. He
celebrated after the tour by going to a bar and drinking and he brought
all the members champagne to drink on the occasion. Thanks Tom, two
drinks in a night of course multiplies the FUN.
Robin
gave the final speech for the night on "Robots are Amazing", where she
took us through the evolution of Robots and how a 3000 plus-component
controlled robo-tuna with 4 ft long built in 1994 at MIT became a one
foot long robo- fish powered only by 10 components by 2009 again
designed by MIT. By mid 2010 the robo-tiny became a 4 inch long fish
designed by an organization based in Japan powered by magnetic
actuators. It becomes even better, by 2012 we have self propelled Nova
(robo-fish) that can be put in a Fish tank. The demo was awesome and
Elaine, the evaluator, was so thrilled that she is sure of getting one.
Robin ended the speech with a question "what next?" ( of course in my
head the answer was "real fish with flesh and blood", then we will go a
full circle :))
Some Decisions that need to be taken:
We
have $1000 in our club's account. Please send in ideas on what we can
invest in that can equip the club to meet the needs of the current and
future members. One idea is a projector, but please throw in ideas and
we can decide the next meeting.
All in all it was a great night. Thanks again to all of you. Our next meeting is on Jan 21st. Please sign up for the roles.
Goodnight and see you all in 2 weeks.
Chandra
