01132007 YZU TMC: We Were On Fire－六星級傷心酒店

01132007 YZU TMC

Sammy

A chaotic start

In a Toastmaster's meeting, when we have someone who commits to an assignment but can't show up for the meeting, the EVP will find a 'fire-fighter' to take over the assignment and make sure the meeting runs smoothly. For the fist meeting of 2007 in YZU TMC, I have to say that I have never seen a meeting with so many fire-fighters in my four-year TM life. And boy, we were ON FIRE!

A few days before the meeting, I got a call from Carol, our EVP, asking me to deliver a speech, because our president, Hecate, was going to run away AGAIN as a prepared speech speaker. So I swapped assignment with Hecate. I was originally scheduled to be her evaluator.

Then when I showed up at the meeting TOTALLY LATE, I realized that several members couldn't attend the meeting. First of all, Carol ran away from her C9 for the 8,000,000th time. Luckily, her evaluator, Brian didn't show up either. (Probably the military finally realized this guy hasn't been informed to join the army and has been picking his nose since his graduation last summer.) And also, our general evaluator, Susan H, had to miss the meeting for a personal reason. The AH counter, Rita, had to make a trip to the impound lot (拖吊場) to get her scooter back. As you can see, our first meeting 2007 was a total chaos!

A meeting full of fire-fighters

Well begun is half done! (Not!) OK, we are not following most people's New Year's resolution. Instead, without the EVP, we were just taking a toally relaxing and completely spontaneous approach. As a result, I found myself reading an agenda with 60% of change. To make the matter worse, Bridie showed up and announced that she SHOULD be the timer, because she said so. Frankie managed to get a holiday from the army and made it back from Ja-Yi to be the fire-fighter as the AH counter.

To sum up, we had:

1. A fire-fighter TM of the Day, Josh, because Justin ran away. By the way, Josh was doing a fabulous job, as usual.

2. A fire-fighter GE, Hecate, who was also an evaluator for Ivonne.

3. A fire-fighter speaker, Sammy (myself), bcause Hecate decided to run away.

4.A fire-fighter evaluator, Grace, who was just amazing in evaluating my speech. She was the first one in our club to show the audience how to enjoy my speech. Although we both went over-time and got dis-qualified for the best speaker and the best evaluator, we were the de facto center of the attention in that meeting.

5. A fire-fighter AH counter, Frankie, who got caught idling and not doing his job, because his first AH counter report was, "All speakers were perfect with no AH's." (Yeah, right!!!!)

6. A mafia-like timer, Bridie, who robbed Pearl's job and dis-qualified me and Grace. On top of all that she was correcting people's spelling in the meeting. Even the "god mother" of this club, myself, got a chill in my back bone. Who could IMAGINE that a sweet angel 2006 would turn into the big-time intimadating and job-stealing language police in 2007? Attention to all members, maybe it is time for us to clean up our grammatical errors! Make it a new year's resolution!

7. A pair of missing speaker and evaluator, Carol and Brian.

We were on fire!

Enough of my joking around, our first meeting 2007 was so HOT that everybody was ON FIRE! I would like to point out the salient quality of the meeting.

1. Thanks to Carol. Our website is finally updated after being deserted for, uh, 2 years, and is looking marvellous! And the newly refreshed website attracted 10 guests. Most importantly, they all liked us.

2. Two virgin session masters, Julia (hosting the variety session) and Kevin (hosting the table topic session), were just absolutely wonderful. We had so much fun guessing words and we all spilt out our New Year's resolutions.

>> Susan Y, the MVP, would like to lose 20 pounds in 2007 and recruit 20 new members in her term. (Good idea! A member a pound!)

>> Kevin never wants to have any LONGGGGGGGG pauses in his speeches any more!!!!!

>> Other interesting ones include coming to the meeing more often in 2007 and practicing yoga until the feet can touch the head....

3. Vicky won the best speaker with her C1 speech! (Congrats!)

4. Teresa won the best evaluator and was thought that she was sounding like Samantha these days. (And she was happy about it! I felt totally flattered!)

A kiss for the best table topic speaker

Now it comes to the most important part of this newsletter, my New Year's resolution. Every year, I would make a list of my resolutions on New Years Day.

1. Exercise every day!

2. Lose 20 pounds!

3. Never yell at my husband again.

4. Come to the meetings and go visit sister clubs.

5.....

By the end of the first week of the year, I would have gained 3 kilos and never have exercised once. Of course I would have totally yelled at my husband in the car on the way driving to the new years party. So, I decided this year, my new years resolution is to let life surprise me.

I know you all are laughing at me. However, it is not as simple as it sounds. Life can be full of nice surprises. You can get a promotion or you can win a championship. But the point is, when the moment comes, are you prepared? Ladies and gentlemen, this year I am going to be SO prepared in every way for the surprises and gifts that life is to throw at me. When that precious chance happens, I will be celebrating with all of you.

Dear YZUers,

Happy New Year, 2007!