Meeting Snippets (for 2006)

See also meeting snippets for 2007, 2005, 2004, 2003 or 2002.

7th November
WOW - Terrific Tuesday was AWESOME. Our chair (Sebastian) really created inventive opportunities for club members to speak. We had a Bullrush involving Chuckles the Clown, 5 talking French monkeys, webcams and fireworks!!!!
Then Cecily took us to "The Wild" with her IceBreaker about her home town in South Africa.
And Amanda continued the travel theme with her S2 where she recounted a 48 hour adventure she hosted to the top 3 spots in the South Island.
Julie wrapped it all up with a great Tabletopics session which involved club members having to reveal a bit about themselves by doing the following:
Miranda had to describe what household appliance she was most like (she chose a PC-tablet)
Pete had to describe what animal he was most like (he chose a chimpanzee)
Gus had to describe what food he was most like (he chose spaghetti bolognaise)
Li Ling had to describe the musical instrument that she was most like (she chose a piano)
Tiri had to describe a metrological condition that she was most like (she chose the perfect storm)

31st October
Did we have fun this morning or did we have fun??? Today we had an Educational on Tabletopics and then everyone got to try out these tips in a Tabletopics Marathon. The challenge was to speak as if you were the CEO of one of the following organisations... so:
Henry was the CEO of Colgate Palmolive and told us about his new product called SQUIGGLE
Sanjiv was the CEO of Ford and described how his company had developed an eco-friendly car that ran on water
Leanne as CEO of Lion Breweries rev’ed up to maintain their #1 spot in the market
Cecily as CEO of Telecom released their new market line of Baboon monitors for South Africa
Chris was the CEO of Wellington Combined Taxis and he gave an update on their new look
Tiri sold us on the concept of Cocacola Water as her vision as CEO
Gus as the new CEO of Microsoft announced the new product set for 2007
Miranda as CEO of AirNZ posed a challenge to the Apprentices.

19th September
PEACE, LOVE and HAPPINESS (Yeah Baby) - that was the "hippy" theme of today’s meeting compliments of Tiri (our Chair). Add a "Fly on the Wall" challenge from Greg (the Toastmaster) and what do you get? A fantastic, fun filled, fabulous meeting!!!! On top of that, we were treated to two terrific Project 7’s. Sanjiv explained how to be the "Ultimate Communicator" and Sebastian gave us the truth about "Organics".

12th September
September means different things to different people - such as the start of spring, lambing season and the Sept 11th terrorist attack. Hirata (the Chair) shared these meanings with us today in between an action packed agenda!!!! Mark (our Table Topics master) made us speak from the heart about the following emotions - Love, Stress and Fear. Then we had three excellent speeches.
Pete talked to us about kids being our future with his Project 2. Julie poised an interesting question with her Project 5 regarding have the rules gone too far? And Tiri entertained us with her Advanced speech on how to make a persuasive sale.

5th September
On behalf of our Area Governor (Glen Houlihan), I just wanted to thank everyone who assisted with the Area E2 Tabletopics contest today. We had an awesome turnout, great food, the room set-up was excellent, the Table-topics session was fun and all our visitors enjoyed themselves.
Miranda and Leanne were our club representatives but unfortunately did not get placed out of the 8 contestants.
The topic was Steve Irwin: The Crocodile Hunter is dead - what is his legacy?
The results were that first place went to Warwick Walker (Chartered Chatterers), second place to Stuart Marshall (Harbourside) and third place to Kevin Plant (Capital Breakfast).

29th August
Dispelling the Myths around Beer was the theme for today’s meeting and John (The Chair) set a cracking pace by bridging speeches with interesting "beer" facts. Henry helped out by serving up three beer related Tabletopics
Leanne explained why beer was more suited to men than women
Sebastian promoted the many favorable properties of beer
Miranda highlighted the effects (both positive and negative) from drinking beer

Then we had ourselves a talkfest - with three great speeches
Glen delivered an Advanced speech from the Technical Speeches manual
Hirata gave an Advanced speech from the Entertaining Speaker manual
Henry presented an Advanced speech from the Special Occasions manual

22nd August
Imagine....a dark, cold, chilly morning. You struggle out of bed and ask yourself why are you a member of a breakfast Toastmasters club. You walk into the meeting room and are greeted by the delicious smell of freshly baked muffins and perked coffee. The murmur of laughter and great conversation fills the room. You are suddenly very, very happy......and you know why you are a member of a breakfast Toastmasters club.
Many thanks to Loren (a first time Chair) who really set new standards for running a meeting today!!!
The agenda was entertaining, to time, packed with great speeches and the muffins and coffee were superb. Pete grabbed our attention with his very risqué (but pure) joke. Chris (our Tabletopics Master) gave everyone dishes to talk about today:
Glen explained how he associates Eggs Benedict with teaching his son to stand up to bullies
Miranda described a mouth-watering experience with Spanakopita in Australia
John took us throw the many ways that Coq-A-Vin could be prepared
Leanne warned us of the dangers of women learning how to cook and being trapped in a kitchen forever
Sanjiv shared his children’s dislike of whitebait fritters with us (much to his joy).
Then Henry gave us a Toast (from the Advanced Manual) and John took us through the Greatest Race and the Greatest Athletes with his S2 Project.

8th August
James (the Chair) challenged the club to make "their presence felt" as the theme of the meeting. Hirata (The Topic Mistress) encouraged this by dishing up some intellectual challenges:
-Chris explained the importance of a doing a BA in Japanese
-Sanjiv extolled the virtues of a tertiary qualification in political science
-Leanne demonstrated that a degree in religious studies was the new way to fame and fortune
-John preached the virtues of becoming a primary school teacher
-Greg blew us away (so to speak) with his praises of studying geophysics
Stephen delivered a well crafted S2 entitled "The Pen is mightier than the Sword". Scott followed this up with a though provoking Advanced speech entitled "Let me Entertain You" on the pros/cons of computer gaming.

1st August
Leanne (the Chair) started things (literally) with a BANG this morning....and continued to add BANGS to the meeting (with a series of guns, balloons and paper-bags). Stephen (The Topic Master) had:
-Glen explain why he should be picked for a Nobel prize rather than JR Tolkien
-Chris spin a story about how he influenced Elijah the Prophet to perform a miracle
-Eamon try to crash Willy Wonka’s party - (and manage with the help of a golden ticket)
-Mark also try to gain entrance to Charlie Chaplin’s party (and fail)
-Sanjiv square off against TinTin for a crack at the Nobel Prize
Then we had two excellent prepared speeches. James told us about World-wide grid computing and Pete broke the Ice with his speech entitled "The Seedling".

27th July
The winner of our Club Humorous Speech contest for 2006 is Leanne Gibson with her speech "Nursery Rhymes for the 21st century". She will go on to represent Business Breakfast at the Area Contest in September. Runner up was Henry with his anecdotes about a family skiing holiday. A fantastic evening was had by all with great food, great company and great speeches from Tiri, Sanjiv and Henry. A big THANK YOU to our president Chris for organising the venue (The Yangtze) which was perfect for the contest.

18th July
Chris (our Chair) ran a great meeting today. The tabletopics challenge was to defend a position and Stephen, James and Loren all delivered excellent speeches that met that objective. We had an S3 from Loren called Choices, an S6 from Sebastian about how the ipod evolved from the gramophone and finally an awesome S10 from Miranda entitled "Life is like a box of chocolates". Miranda joins our CTM hall of fame and is the first person (in our new club year) to contribute towards our Distinguished Club Programme.

11th July
AND THE WINNER OF THE 2006 BBC Club Table Topics contest is Leanne Gibson. Leanne took out the title by telling us "What Bill Gates and Warren Buffett should spend their $60billion donation on". Miranda and Julie tied for 2nd place.  This means Leanne and either Miranda/Julie progress to the E2 Area competition to be held in September. Scott demonstrated his adaptability and creativity as a chair today (particularly when no judges turned up!!). A big thanks to the 6 contestants today who made this competition special. The audience really enjoyed listening to the variety of speeches you delivered. I hope you all enjoyed the adrenalin thrill that only a contest can give.

4th July
A big thank-you to all club members who got up on this very dark and wet winter morning.
I hope you were well rewarded by the fantastic meeting that Henry (our Chair) dished up. He challenged us to take it to the Edge today and experience some perturbation (Word of the Day). Tiri took up that challenge (as Tabletopics Master) and served up an interesting assortment of topics
Miranda had to share a childhood belief with us
Sanjiv explained the pros and cons of Santa
Leanne had to express an opinion on whether nursery rhymes were relevant in the 21st century
John had to be a reporter at the site Humpty Dumpty crash landed
Glen gave us the rapper rendition of Little Miss Muffet
Then Eamon took us to THE ROCK (Alcatraz) with his S2 Project. Sanjiv continued to explore the United States with his S4 Project entitled Barrels, Mules and Helicopters.

27th June
The World Cup came to Toastmasters today - thanks to our very talented Chair (soccer-mad Sebastian). He managed to educate us on the finer points of the game all through our session. Then Eamon (Tabletopics Master) posed an intriguing challenge - we had to be lawyers defending cases from the Stellar awards.
Then we had an amazing IceBreaker from Stephen entitled "A Brief History of Tye" by Stephen Tye. We can’t wait to hear further chapters!!! And Mark illustrated why chocolate was a better motivator than sticks or carrots - with his highly entertaining Educational entitled Motivation.

20th June
Today Sanjiv (as Chair) wove a teaching tale called "THE ONE-EYED KING" through the meeting. It was an excellent technique which had club members hanging on their seats to hear the end of the tale (and learn the morale). Then James (Tabletopics Master) provided challenging headlines from newspapers, so:
- Chris described why he as a salesman was A POLISHED AND MAGICAL SPECTACLE
- Tiri shared klingon with us as a way to illustrate why THE YOUNG ARE LOST TO THE DARKSIDE
- Leanne debated strongly for that Knowledge Management was A GREAT WAY TO SHARE INFORMATION IN BUSINESS
- Sanjiv took the opposite point of view and Glen gave us the final word on this particular topic.
Then John undertook his Project 1 speech entitled "My IceBreaker" and explained how he got from England to NZ. Greg wrapped up with an excellent Educational on "Evaluating to Motivate".

13th June
We had heaps of fun today trialing a potential new venue which Greg (The Chair) ensured that we rigorously tested. Sanjiv (Tabletopics Master ) got club members to share a "BEST" moment, so:
- Eamon described his BEST meal
- Amanda explained why Gone with the Wind was her BEST movie
- Scott took us to Dubai for a camel ride with his BEST holiday
Then James "thawed the Ice" with his Project 1 speech. Loren followed this up with her Project 2 speech entitled "Hormonous Monsterous" and Mark wrapped up the session with an Educational on "Mentoring".

6th June
Miranda (The Chair) skillfully arranged the agenda today to include Tabletopics, an Educational and two speeches (all within 1 hour)!!! As Tabletopics Master, Leanne requested that:
- Glen discuss whether marriage was an outdated concept for the 21st century
- Chris explain why the Property Relations Act was useful for couples in relationships. He went on to compare it to rugby and described it as a game of two halves.
- Stephen defend why engagements parties are still a valid way of celebrating commitment.
Then Sanjiv gave a riveting Project 3 speech entitled "Protecting yourself from fraud"
Sebastian’s Project 5 speech explained the irony of having middle class teenagers extol Che Guevara as an icon.
And Greg wrapped it up with an Educational on "How to keep the ToastMaster Commitment".

30th May 2006
Mark (the Chair) cleverly wove Deepak Chopra’s 7 Spiritual Laws Of Success through the meeting today. And it was a meeting which celebrated success. Henry completed the requirements for his Advanced Toastmaster Silver award with his very humorous speech called Technical Support. Glen (the President) then ran the club’s AGM and took us through the successes and goals achieved by the club in the 2005/2006 year. The new committee was elected and they are:
President: Chris
VP Education: Leanne
VP Membership: Tiri
VP Publicity: Sebastian
Treasurer: Sanjiv
Secretary: Julie
Colonel at Arms: Hamish

23rd May 2006
Goodbye - Farvel - Sayonara. That was the theme chosen by our Chair (Leanne) as a way of saying farewell to Helen (a long-standing member of the club). Loren as Tabletopics master - held a lucky dip and club members had to thank the community for the gifts they received. Needless to say, this proved very entertaining with Tiri getting a Sponge-Bob Square pants, James got some fluffy dice and Helen was thrilled with her Russian fluffy hat.
Eamon then broke the Ice with his first speech about his life, family and passion. Julie followed this up with an extremely humourous S4 speech called "Morning People" and Mark wrapped up the session with an Educational on how to handle the press.

16th May 2006
Glen (our Chair) chose TODAY IN HISTORY as the theme for the meeting. He then gave us interesting bits of information between speeches about important events that happened on the 16^th May through history (like Napoleon being declared Emperor of France). Sebastian (as Tabletopics Master) wanted club members to show how they handled tricky situations so:
Chris became the mayor of Hamilton and explained why having Godzilla attack the city was a good thing
Eamon had to explain to his partner the positive aspects of him crashing the car through their garage door
Miranda as Prime Minister outlined the advantages of aliens destroying the Beehive
Then we welcomed Hamish to the BBC Hall of Fame, as he completed his CTM award with his final speech "Speakers I have known". Scott gave us an intriguing Advanced speech called "Leonardo" which gave us a different spin on the De Vinci Code. And then club members were invited to be provocative so that Henry could sharpen his skills for handling difficult audiences.

9th May 2006
SUPERHEROES were the theme for the day selected by our Chair (Tiri). This was reflected in the Tabletopics Marathon (held by Henry) which focused on the concept that "Imagination is more important than knowledge". This resulted in
Stewart becoming superscientist-geeknerdboy and practicing the art of procrastination
Loren taking us (by super flying powers) to her utopia
Andy introducing us to the Dockerty-mobile
Sebastian taking us 10 years into the future to examine his destiny
James sharing his ideal day with us
Leanne becoming Superwoman and freeing wives from the tyranny of rugby-obsessed husbands
Then Sanjiv gave us a thought provoking S2 speech entitled "Your Thinking Faculty".

2nd May 2006
Leanne (as Chair) used today’s session to promote the Toastmasters International Magazine. She highlighted the different articles and sections that might be useful to club members....such as overcoming Table-topic phobias. But our club-members had no issues with the Table-topics served up by our Table topics Master (Scott). They were each given a Microsoft product and asked to sell it their target audience.
Sanjiv promoted the "Age of Empires" game to a young, vibrant, teenage audience.
Tiri had people queuing for her Virtual Server in a CD Box.
Henry had the men of the audience convinced that they needed to purchase the game Perfect Dark Zero
Stephen not only sold his audience Ridge Racer 6, but the Xbox and peripherals to run it on as well!!!
Then we had an awesome Ice Breaker from Loren entitled ME. This was followed by a very humorous S4 from Sebastian about the 1905 Olympics and Henry wrapped it up with an Advanced speech from the Humorous manual called "Mistakes made, lessons learnt".

4th April 2006
Did You Know??...was the theme picked by Mike (our Chair) for this week’s meeting. He then went on to pack a myriad of trivia into an amazing agenda.
Glen (as Table Topics Master) set giving an award speech as this week’s challenge
Tiri accepted an award for McDonalds team player of the month
Helen accepted a community award for keeping Oriental Bay rubbish free
Hari graciously accepted the Academy Award for best actress
Then we had three riveting speeches
Greg gave us an Advanced speech from the Entertaining Speaker manual, called "40 hours a week". He outlined what technical analysts REALLY do for a job.
Julie had us horrified with her s3 speech called "Food Safety in the Home". I don’t think any of us will ever look at a sandwich in the same way again (they collect 2million bacteria within 6 hours of being made)!!!
Henry gave a masterly and moving Advanced Speech (from the Speeches by Management manual) about his 5 year journey as an entrepreneur and about how he has learned to master time management.

28th March 2006
SLEEP - was the theme of today’s session as it was right at the forefront of the Chair’s (Helen) mind - as she isn’t getting enough shut-eye after moving into an apartment over a nightclub!!!!
We had a tabletopic-fest served up by Julie - who dished out newspaper headlines
Sebastian had to explain "WHO KILLED BAMBI"
Leanne dealt with SNOOZING JURORS
Hamish was A BREATH OF FRESH HAIR
Chris reminded us THAT THE SHOW MUST GO ON
Glen staunchly advocated that we BE PREPARED
Loren won our hearts (and the best Table topic of the day) with WE ARE FAMILY. 

Then we had our first BULLRUSH for 2006 - which involved a convoluted tale about a man who lost his season tickets to a gorilla, who then took us on a tour of all the New World supermarkets in Wellington, before purchasing a pair of pink shoes and awaking to find it was all a horrible dream!!!

21st March 2006
The theme for today’s meeting was the 18th Commonwealth Games.  And Julie was an inspirational Chair. As an Australian, she did her very best to find a way to break it to the NZers in the club, that Australia was top of the medal charts any way you cut the statistics (eg medal count by GDP, Medal count by head of population, medal count by square foot, you get the drift....)
Miranda, the Table Topics Mistress - continued this theme with challenging topics involving
Hari as Sam Warriner (Silver Medal winner - Triathlon)
Chris as Gordon Tietjens (Coach of the Sevens - who won Gold)
Mike as Moss Bermester (Gold Medal winner -100m Butterfly)
Greg as Hamish Carter (the flag bearer for the NZ Commonwealth team)
Sanjiv as Bevan Docherty (Silver Medal winner - Triathlon)
Then we had a sobering S3 from Sebastian called H5N1 - what you need to know about the bird flu and an Educational from Glen on Building a Team

14th March 2006
INSPIRING was the theme of today’s session (arranged by our Chair Hirata).....And inspiring speeches were certainly plentiful today. Henry (the Table-topics Master) set some interesting topics based on heroes.
Mike spoke about his great entrepreneurial hero - Donald Trump
Julie describe her musical hero(ines) - Barbara Striesand and Bic Runga
Greg shared his wisdom hero(ine) with us - Ophrey Winfrey
Then we had three GREAT speeches
An Ice Breaker from Sanjiv called "Serendipity"
An s9 from Miranda called "The Best Anti-depressant in the World"
And we welcomed Mark to the BBC Hall of Fame because he obtained his CTM today with his S10 entitled "Kiwis can fly".

28th February 2006
Do you know when the first nylon toothbrush was produced? We do - 1938. And that is because Sebastian (our Chair) shared an assortment of interesting tit-bits with us at today’s meeting. On top of that, we had an Advanced Speech from Glen from the Technical presentations manual and an educational from Henry on great beginnings for a speech.

21st February 2006
Ladies and Gentlemen:
Today our guest speaker in our Club Evaluation contest - Andrea Houlihan gave a great speech called "As a defendant - I stand before you". This speech gave her side of the story to "What Happened to Peachy". A year ago, Glen (her husband and our esteemed president) gave a speech about Peachy (his canary) and about his suspicions that Andrea had murdered him. The BBC club was highly entertained and we were able to draw our own conclusions about Peachy’s untimely demise. We had three contestants in the contest today - Henry, Hamish and Leanne. The winner of our Club Evaluation Speech contest for 2006 is Leanne Gibson. Leanne will go on to represent Business Breakfast at the Area E2 Contest in March.

A BIG THANK YOU to the Contest Chair, Greg, who ran his first professional competition. Chris also treated us to a Table-Topics session focused on strange words from the Dictionary Doctor website.

14th February 2006
Ladies and Gentlemen:
The winner of our Club International Speech contest for 2006 is Leanne Gibson with her speech "FTE". Runner up was Hamish with his speech "NZ - its time to grow up". Leanne and Hamish will go on to represent Business Breakfast at the Area E2 Contest in March. Please join me in congratulating Leanne and Hamish on their achievements. It was a hard fought battle against worthy competitors - Mark Robotham with "Coming Out" and Greg Rogan with "Is Software working for you".

A BIG THANK YOU to the Contest Chair, Glen, who ran a professional competition. Alice also treated us to a Table-Topics session focused on Valentine ’s Day. Sebastian told us that women were better than men at being sentimental, Helen rejoiced at getting a toaster for her Valentine’s present and Julie shared her most romantic Valentine ’s Day with us.

ALSO A BIG CONGRATULATIONS TO GREG WHO BECAME A CTM TODAY!!!!!!

7th February 2006
Many thanks to Henry (our Chair) who organised the meeting today. Club members were actively encouraged to use their imagination during Table-topics resulting in:
Scott going to Woodstock (when asked where he would most like to visit)
Hamish spending the day in Parliament (if he had the option to be invisible for a day)
Mark choosing the power to understand women (if he was able to possess a super power for a day).
Then we were treated to two excellent speeches from Sebastian (S2) and Scott (Adv).

1st February 2006
Its 2006 and NOTHING IS GOOD!!!!!
This seemed a strange theme for our session today. But our Chairperson (Glen) was quick to explain that the aim of today’s session was to avoid the use of that much over-rated word - good and instead use other adjectives (such as Magnificent, Amazing and Glen’s personal favourite - Corker).

On top of that challenge, the Table-topics Master (Hirata), gave each selected club member an item to use when they described their most memorable holiday. Hamish got a bikini but ended up talking about skiing in the USA. Sebastian wore a hat and took us on a tour of LA, Europe and Hong Kong. Scott became acquainted with a lavalava and shared his experiences of the New York burbs. Mark used a ball to inform us of the courage he acquired to do a motorcycling racing holiday. And Greg wove a tall tale about spending time with the Toastmasters International president on his holiday.

Then we were treated to an excellent Ice Breaker speech from Julie called "When I was born I was the only child". She captivated us with her life story - which had an unexpected twist resulting in her becoming the 2nd child of 6 (despite the title of her speech).