Daffodils and the Muppet show!

Our most recent Toastmasters meeting was held last Wednesday, and was this time opened by our stand-in President, our VP of Education Declan, as Sarah was out on other presidential businesses! After the introduction, Annmarie then took over as the Toastmaster for the evening, who in return had the different officers to present their roles for the evening. She did a splendid job as tonight's Toastmaster; fair play to ya!

There was a lot of laughter during the widespread topics session, led by the Topics master for evening, Eugene. Everything under the moon was up for discussion this evening, everything from what kind of music would you bring to a deserted island (if you had to), to the story of the unchallenged camel race winner in Claregalway! A good discussion topic was to hear what you do, if you are down and want to pick yourself up..? Meditation, relaxation, walks in the forest, running and exercise was widely discussed! The final session was regarding which muppet would you team up with, if you were a guest on the “Muppet show”? Kermit, Animal, and the Swedish Chef were just some of them being pointed out!

Our first speaker of the evening was Martin, in “Building for the future”, talked about the mentoring program within Toastmasters. For a mentor, it is a way of helping others to be successful, and a good mentor can help new members and raise the level of the club. For a mentee that is focused on improving his / her public speaking skills it is a great opportunity to quicker get more experience through feedback and tips.

Second out speaking was Jennifer, “Are friends electric?”, telling us the story about synth music; what it is, where it originated from, and some of the contributors by musicians to this genre of music. During the weekly “Top of the pops” in the 70's she heard and learnt about the top 30 songs in Ireland and UK, they have guest and groups performing. It was called the “new romantic scene”, a kind of going from post-punk to glam-rock, and they played synthesizer music! Gary Numan was one of the front figures for this music scene and to bringing synth music to the masses, while Kraftwerk popularized the genre! We learnt a lot about synth music this evening!

Declan, our third speaker with a speech called “Work recovery” brought up some interesting studies around how we work more and more these days, while not having enough time to recuperate. Some good ideas around recovery from massive work were brought up; four steps going through psychological cut-off from work, then do relaxation, going towards mastery experience (to learn something completely different than work related stuff), and finally being in control; deciding and choose what you do with your time.

Forth speaker of the evening, Shane, talked about the “City in the forest”, an interesting deep dive into a possible new frontier for human exploration – the Amazon rain forest! They have found structures in the Amazon rain forest, that “shouldn’t be there”! He shared some interesting facts and findings, with a theory around how it actually might be an “overgrown” garden and not a widely grown forest from the start. Maybe we will find a group of explorers from Galway going there soon!?

Last speech of the evening, Pat with “Climate change; down with that sort of thing”, was an interesting look at facts around how GDP and GNP are representations of a nation’s wealth but also how it impacts climate change. As more countries look to increase their growth and wealth, the more the likelihood increases of climate change to happened. It might be hard to ask countries to want less, but perhaps we can do what we can to minimize the consequences..? Food for thought!

After the tea break our General evaluator Jamie took up the second half the meeting, asking the evaluators one after the other to present their evaluation of the speakers. Great feedback!

Jennifer finished the Creative corner by reading the beautiful poem by William Wordsworth, “I wandered lonely as a cloud”, about the daffodils! Directly afterwards Declan wrapped up the meeting and welcomed everyone to our last meeting for this season; Wednesday 12^th June at 8pm, in Menlo Park Hotel. All are welcome!