'ARE YOU PRESENT IN EACH MOMENT?"

Are you present in each moment?

This question can be answered by any of the sixteen members who attended Pania’s meeting on June 9 – that is if they were paying attention to Noel’s speech!

Once more we enjoyed the more innovative layout which was conducive to better audience engagement.

Craig ably demonstrated his length of tenure and experience by running a tight ship as our Toastmaster of the day, inviting Russell to recite the Mission Statement.

After warmly welcoming us and our guest Elise, he asked for apologies by following the correct recording procedure. He then empathetically and warmly told of the sad passing of a Toastmaster (Tracey  from Napier Club) who was known to some of us.

In an unexpected twist in programme timing, Carol led Table Topics, asking six speakers to explain, expand on and give examples of ‘Abundance’, ‘Power’, ‘Passion’, ‘Purposeful’, ‘Freedom’ and ‘Desire’. Each speaker was able to meet this challenge head on using humour and sincerity.

Graeme then demonstrated his experience by introducing first speaker Helen in the most comprehensive way. He left no doubt in our minds as to what we could expect from an advanced speech from the Interpretive reading manual. Answering the question ‘How would we portray our children’s life?’, Carol thoroughly engaged us in a dramatic enactment between mother and child that held our attention throughout and certainly got me wondering about my own children. It was achingly sincere and thoroughly entertaining and deservedly earned Helen best speaker of the meeting.

Closely behind, Darryl conducted a succinct introduction of our second speaker Noel, once again helpfully stating clear expectations and objectives of the speech. Speaking from assignment two of the CC manual, Noel explained his personal journey through the world of mindfulness and challenged us to be present in the moment. In the past we might have referred to this as ‘stop and smell the roses’, but Noel presented a personal perspective of his understanding of the topic. It’s a wonderful reminder that we need to take this on board while dealing with the daily ‘busyness’ of life.

As we know, Toastmasters thrive through effective feedback and suggestions for improvement and we were given an excellent demonstration of this from our evaluators today.

Jane was first to the pace giving a very warm and sincere evaluation of Table Topics – lots of C & C today, awarding best table topic to our guest Elise! Our duo of speech evaluators, Graeme and Darryl were hot in pursuit with two high level and effective evaluations. The strength of their evaluations made me grateful I was not judging a competition, but having said that, Graeme was a nudge ahead and received best evaluator of the meeting.

General Business was conducted between the evaluations. Although started well, we did get off track a little and it may be a timely reminder to keep comments to a necessary minimum.

All through the meeting Linda had been effectively managing and working the lights to keep us all to time, culminating in a succinct report – well done Linda!

As General evaluator today I found it challenging to come up with the ‘R’ of C-R-C due to the high standard of each role owner. Everybody - get present in the moment and congratulate yourself on a job thoroughly well done!

GE - Laurel