December 7 Meeting (Potluck Event/Pre-Holidays Celebration)

Hello Fellow Toastmasters,

I want to say thank you to all that attended our Dec. 7's very special Comfortably Speaking Toastmasters Meeting.

Just a little re-cap of what went on:

We had 7 guests: Neeru, Shavon, Hamza, Ackter, Helen, Roshan, Tri

We had 14 CS Toastmaster members that attended: Jason, Connie, Samantha, Amar, Richard, Euna, Priya, Avi, Nadia, Rafiq, Odecca, Kyla, Sharon and myself.

Theme of the Meeting: Materialism. Rafiq, our Toastmaster/Chair of the day, did a great job in expanding with the theme of the day by exploring how Bhutan measures their quality of life or social progress. In fact, Bhutan is the only country that uses GNH, Gross National Happiness, officially. GNH value (versus GDP Gross Dosmetic Product) is proposed to be an index function of the total average per capita of the following measures (source Wikipedia, sorry Raf I wasn't able to write everything down :) ):

1. Economic Wellness: Indicated via direct survey and statistical measurement of economic metrics such as consumer debt, average income to consumer price index ratio and income distribution
2. Environmental Wellness: Indicated via direct survey and statistical measurement of environmental metrics such as pollution, noise and traffic
3. Physical Wellness: Indicated via statistical measurement of physical health metrics such as severe illnesses
4. Mental Wellness: Indicated via direct survey and statistical measurement of mental health metrics such as usage of antidepressants and rise or decline of psychotherapy patients
5. Workplace Wellness: Indicated via direct survey and statistical measurement of labor metrics such as jobless claims, job change, workplace complaints and lawsuits
6. Social Wellness: Indicated via direct survey and statistical measurement of social metrics such as discrimination, safety, divorce rates, complaints of domestic conflicts and family lawsuits, public lawsuits, crime rates
7. Political Wellness: Indicated via direct survey and statistical measurement of political metrics such as the quality of local democracy, individual freedom, and foreign conflicts.

An interesting theme which goes to say that money can't always buy happiness, and that happiness is dependent upon many other factors. We should all pay less attention to material things and spend more quality time to improve our relationships with our family, friends, and love ones.

Grammarian/Ah Counter: Samantha, with word of the day being 'Bumfuzzle' meaning to confuse

Quizmaster: Odecca

Timer: Jinky

General Evaluator: Connie

We had two speakers:

1. Priya delivered her third speech project (Get to the Point) and talked about Building a Successful Mentoring Relationship. Her speech was 6 minutes 47 seconds.

2. Kyla delivered her fifth speech project (Your Body Speaks) and talked about her experience doing the triathlon in 6:56:20 To Personal Victory. Her speech was 7 minutes and 10 seconds.

Our two evaluators were:

1. Neeru, a guest and a member of another Toastmasters' club in Burnhamthorpe, evaluated Priya's speech. Neeru's evaluation time was 3 minutes and 3 seconds.

2. Avi evaluated Kyla's speech. Connie's evaluation time was 2 minutes 22 seconds.

The 5 new members inducted during the meeting are: Avi, Priya, Richard, Sharon, and Amar.

Excellent Table Topics session by Rafiq. We had 9 table topics participants, both guests and CS members:

• Richard finishing at 1 minute 1 second
• Neeru finishing at 1 minute 13 seconds
• Ackter finishing at 59 seconds
• Amar finishing at 48 seconds
• Roshan finishing at 43 seconds
• Jason finishing at 59 seconds
• Shavon finishing at 1 minute 7 seconds
• Avi finishing at 1 minute 4 seconds
• Euna finishing at 1 minute 12 seconds

The awards went to:

Best Table Topics - Euna

Best Evaluator - Avi

Best Speaker - Kyla

We also collected a good amount of non-perishable goods to be donated to the Food Bank in support of our fellow Toastmaster Mark McKenzie's fundraising effort.

The meeting started a little bit late at 9:20 am, and finished early at 11:10 am.

We hope to see you on our next CS Toastmasters meeting on Dec. 14, which is our last meeting for the year 2013!

For those who have taken up roles last meeting and didn't get evaluated, please bring your CL manuals on December 14 and we will be happy to complete your evaluation for you.

We encourage you all to also sign up for roles and sign up to do your speeches for our upcoming meetings. If you have any questions, please feel free to email any of our executive members.

Have a good week everyone!

Jinky