21/9/10 Prestigious Speakers meeting report
The purpose is to explain a little bit what happens in each PS meeting. I’m Alvaro, PS Secretary for the period 2010 / 2011, and && is helping my with all those language issues that are so obvious for native speakers but that non native speakers never see.
Tuesday 21st September. Summer or autumn? Looking at the sky, and how wet people got in, not knowing it they were sweating or walking under heavy rain, let’s say that it was one of those Autumn days at the end of the Summer.
Phil, our SAA, opened the meeting with his habitual and natural authority, and Tulia, our President, gave the most important news of the meeting: the welcoming to two new members, Mireia Vives and Daniel Juling. New members are the of TM’s fresh energy!
The meeting was honored with 6 guests from various nationalities. Colombia had the lead this time.
Dima as TM of the day linked his presentation to the next club contest and the wish that people have to compete. “Competition” was the word of the day. He had searched about some weird competitions, (even more weird than TM contest!), and found one about throwing people over the head (like Olympic “lanzamiento de jabalina”), and other about ironing clothes under the sea. People’s capacity to be weird is a never end history! No one in the room seemed to be interested in participating in those extra weird competitions.
Ricardo, as Table Topic master, organized a jury to decide whether an accused of an unknown crime was guilty or not. After strong statements for and against by Girish, Ann and Govind, the meeting decided that the accused was innocent.
Alvaro (project nº 6 CC Vocal variety, “Feelings”) explained a story about the secret life of the feelings, and how it is that the love and the madness are going always together.
Peter (project nº 7 CC Research your topic, “Chomolangma”) made us flying through the Everest and the story about its conquest and previous tries. He explained that one of the heroes who tried the summit on the firsts decades of the 20th Century forgot his camera on the summit, but it was not clear if he reached it or not. May be one day somebody (Peter?) should go there to find it.
Florian (Speeches by management, 4, The Status Report “Demosthenes, School of rhetoric”) reported about a school of rhetoric’s project in Barcelona and the investigations he is taking care about it. He put forward a number of questions, and said that will be happy if somebody could go back to him with suggestive ideas.
It was scheduled a speech by Melinda, but she could not attend the meeting.
The evaluators, Carol, Brenda and Phil, took the stage. Evaluations by members showed that Alvaro “could improve” some of the project’s objectives, and Carol described it in very constructive and positive way. It was more difficult for Brenda and Phil to identify on what point their evaluated speakers, peter and Florian, had to work on for their following speeches.
Dima, as TM of the day, organized a mini in-home meeting contest: Girish win as TT, Peter as speaker, and Brenda as evaluator.
Tulia, the General Evaluator, was very pleased with the meeting. Her team (Jose as time keeper and Mireia Cuesta as “ah counter”) was new on the roles, and did perfect, uderliting that all speakers met their schedules with no “ah”. Brenda, as grammarian, gave concise suggestions and smalls amendments to all participants
At the end, Tulia invited the guests to give their impression of the meeting in one word: impressive and stimulating were the most repeated!
Before closing, Rose informed about the club contest on the next meeting. The call has had a great response, (6 participants for the Table Topic and 6 for the humorous speaker!), and she asked for voluntaries for the several rules to help. Time, schedule and order will be very important.
Phil was able to close the meeting on time, and it made him very happy. It will be one of the objectives of the year for our SAA!!
Till next ..
Alvaro
