| Of ghosts and desert islands |
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| Written by John-Peter | |||
| Saturday, 18 July 2009 16:17 | |||
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Transformers Toastmasters Club has a new committee. At a well attended dinner, the newly inducted Division Governor for Division H, David Preece, released the outgoing committee under the presidency of Mary Burne
Why Area H3, when the club falls into Area H2? With the close of the Toastmasters year, Areas within Division H (NE Johannesburg and Malawi) have been shuffled again as a result of the formation of new clubs during 2008/9. The Area into which Transformers falls is now no longer H2 but, once again, H3 as before the last shuffle. The induction dinner on Monday, 13 July, took place at Mike’s Kitchen in Parktown, in an upper room. We were made comfortable in the upper room after our outgoing Sergeant at Arms, Rod Taylor, successfully had us extricated from the passageway to the bathrooms.
Being the start of things new – a new Toastmasters year and a new committee – Keith offered a toast opportunity as the evening got underway. As this was both a more formal and more social occasion than our regular meetings, no prepared speeches were presented. Our Toastmaster for the evening, Ryan Ebedes, conducted a round of table topics or impromptu speeches in the form of a story that each successive speaker had to continue. Ryan sketched a situation of a scientist on a tiny desert island with a palm tree, two coconuts and a PanAm flight crash landing into the sea within sight. Five entertaining speeches took this scenario and had the scientist turn the palm tree into a raft in preparation for an escape, as explained by Keith, only to have the sea turn into a pond of hungry sharks. Graham discovered that he had better uses for the raft than to escape when a beautiful female passenger from the PanAm flight swan to the island. John-Peter, being gay, found a better use for the mermaid by sending her off in the leaky raft that had sharp spikes in the bottom guaranteed to cause bleeding and attract the sharks away from his escape route to a life raft, only to see the life raft up-ended by a surfacing whale. Lerato decided that the man-eating sharks and whales were certainly a dream and roused herself to catch a flight back to Johannesburg, but found herself staring at the Eiffel Tower when the plane landed. Nchabeng rescued the scientist and brought us all safely to the main course of the dinner.
After dessert, we learned of member’s personal achievements in the last weeks: Ryan received the club award for Toastmaster of the Year for 2008/9, due to his sterling work as Vice-president Public Relations (VPPR) that resulted in him having been awarded Best Club VPPR and Best Club Website in District 74.
Underlying the pomp of the evening and the joys of socialising is the important task of Toastmasters in offering a valuable adult education programme in effective public speaking. Join us for our next meeting back at the Uniglobe offices on Monday 27 July, at 18h00 for 18h30. We welcome guest and visitors. Visit our committee page to view your new team for the Transformers Commitee 2009/2010!
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| Last Updated on Sunday, 10 January 2010 08:48 |
