Meeting 2020-06-16
By Mohammed Salih
Paulina is still our president and there are no coups so
far, it looks like she is going for a home run after a year. One thing she drew
our attention to, and that the post of Club President has be occupied by four
females in a row! What? How come we didn’t have the same thing as Prime
Minister? Well done ladies. We are reminded that so much has changed over the
year; UK left Europe, Covid-19 and Black Lives Matter campaign. But “Life does
not stop, we keep going, we are London Victorians”. Paulina appeals to us to
reflect over a simple question, after all “What would be your contribution?
What would be the legacy you leave behind to people?”.
Agatha is Madam Toastmaster of the evening, on her plate was
three speeches and three evaluations, she still managed to bring to the meeting
her own sister, well done, why don’t we all? It would be nice to learn how to
provide an evaluation to our partners, telling them what we liked and what they
could improve on, maybe not, let’s stick with sisters. Agatha’s moto was
“Learning by applying” this is to improve how to communicate better.
Michelle kept times for us announcing “I will use these
cards, if you pass your time, I will find a way to make some noise”. I guess we
can experiment with screaming, however we did not go there. Why should we stick
to time? Well! There are 3 reasons according to Michelle: –
1-Helps you think about your speech delivery
2-Keep audience focused
3-Everyone get their share of stage time
We are told also that there are mobile apps that we can use
to practice timekeeping during speechs.
Grammarian? Hello? Anybody home? Never mind, Lucy is on the
block so with a split second we had word of the day; Bucolic which describes
the pleasant aspects of the countryside and country life, an example would be “The
villa is lovely for its bucolic setting”.
First speaker Stephine spoke of “This too shall pass”, this
is a phrase so dear to my heart, it unearths emotions when I use it especially
when the whole world seems so tight on me going through hard time. The phrase
echoes in my head to calm me down; This too shall pass. We heard of how a life
crisis on breakup can be so hurtful, drawing the image of the night, outside an
underground station and the news dropped on her like a shell. “I was in an indulging evening with some girls
when I had a phone call”, it wasn’t a normal call because it included “We need
to talk!”.
Annabel stoop up to deliver the second speech “The good, the
bad and the ugly”. This included taking the audience on a trip we are familiar
with; the 13 weeks of covid-19 lockdown. “This little virus that came from a
tiny town, Wuhan in China to spread through all corners of the world!”. Did you
know that at time of hardship and crises, we humans go through and number of
stages? Some of those include (1) Denial, (2) Depression and later one (3)
Acceptance. The good side of lockdown was having extra 122 hours for Annabel
saved through cutting travel times working remotely. The bad side exposed domestic
violence and increase of 24% more incidents. Annabel took us to her childhood
back in Scotland when she was about 13 years old, having lots of free time and
taking care of a fig tree.
Table topics was lead by Jon and his innovative juices
started to flow throughout the meeting. He selected “Home” as the strategic
theme, and all questions were related to it. I love this kind of structure as
it makes us all think together what could be the question? With a number of
questions like
-At home, what would you change?
-What or who do you love most at home?
-For a new home, would you prefer a beautiful porch or a
castle?
-Apart from home, where would be your second home?
Our club meetings became home to visitors from around the world as far as India and America, no barriers at the moment folks, jump online and celebrate your thoughts with us next Tuesday, come say hello.
Join us every Tuesday from 18:30 GMT