Everybody loves the Bumps!

Weds June 13th: A monster Toastmaster Meeting

In attendance: Everyone in the Universe...no seriously... ok, we had: Kim, Simon, Lora, Lora's sister (Sarah?), Rosario, Mahdia, Rob, Geetha, Chris, Russ, Darlene, Basheer, Gaoming, Josefina, Kyle, Julie, Terry, Marvin, Vaughn, Linda, Boyd, and possibly others but I ran out of fingers and toes.

Word of the day: Mewl - To cry like a baby

After spreading the word that we were giving out free money, we had a huge number of attendees this week. Or it might have been that our very own "World Semi-Final Championship Contender", our Hurricane Force, floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee, Darlene Davies, was speaking.

Our theme for the day could have been cherries, or pastures new, for we had a number of Toastmasters fulfilling roles for the first time. Nothing like a packed house for a true baptism of fire. In for the first time in certain roles we had Kim (Toastmaster), Simon (General Evaluator), and Lora (Table Topics Master).

Several of our guests were old club members returning, but we had some new faces and a few veteran guests like Russ "Which Wig will I wear today" Dantu, who is going to coach Darlene for her role in the upcoming contest.

Kyle "Whose line is it anyway" Wilson, gave us Mewl to begin, and we all took turns crying like babes for him.

Darlene then threw down a new speech, taking on speech 6 in the Competent Communicator Manual (rumour has it for the 7,398th time), which concerns "Vocal Variety".

Her speech "A Bumpy Ride" was about dealing with the mother in law, and the gist I got was, if you wait long enough, eventually they pass away. Ok, I take that back, Darlene related a touching tale, with swings of pitch and excellent comic timing, which showed us that the worst of enemies can become the best of friends, if only we leave the door open just a crack.

Personally I think she was giving Lora a hint, since our dear Table Topics Mistress is getting married this Saturday... CONGRATS LORA!

After this Lora gave us some Topics ala Table, and her willing victims were Terry, Rosario, Marvin and Simon.

Terry told us he always wanted to be a pilot, Rosario set her stall out for world peace, Marvin loves Toastmasters, and Simon as always, refuses to be embarrassed by anything.

Despite being accused of not answering the question directly (a career in politics surely awaits) our winner of the topics was Simon. It should be pointed out, that despite having no shame, Simon did give a veiled reference to having partaken in some Frank the Tank type behavior...and promised a further tale for those with enough bribery...

Proof again...that CTI ROCKS!