March 3, 2014 Club Meeting

The following is a summary of the minutes from our March 3rd meeting.

Meeting Location:   San Mateo City Hall, San Mateo, CA     6:00 p.m. – 7:15 p.m.

Attendees:

Present at the meeting were: Samya Boxberger Oberoi, Eric Jones, Randy Lee, Lara Miller,  Aditi Mishra, Suzanne Mulcahy, David Nazzaro, Sharon Pappas, Martin Quan, Venkat Senapati, Xin Tang, and Trey Zhou.  There were four guests:  Brenda Chung, Fernando, Daniel, and Terry.

Samya as our president opened the meeting and discussed the contest on 3/17/14.  The roles were confirmed and the rules were announced.

Xin was the Toastmaster; Martin was the General Evaluator; Samya was the Timer, David was the Grammarian, and Lara was the Ah Counter.

Speaker #1:  Aditi:  “Me 2.0”  Project #1 “Ice Breaker”

Aditi began her speech by sharing her experience in discovering or creating her identity.  She stated that one of her most stressful experiences were in filing out applications that required her to talk about her life.  She said that “she was so normal”, thinking this meant that she had nothing to talk about.

As Aditi thought about this, she thought about her life in the form of building blocks, which would build a tower.  She was born and brought up in India through the age of eight.  In India, she lived a vibrant and social life and was surrounded by people.  She began as an introvert but found her voice.

Her family then moved to Belgium, a country where people lived quietly within themselves.  Aditi learned composure and patience while living there.  She also learned to give back to her community. 

Aditi concluded her speech when she moved to America, where she discovered that she could be constantly growing and discovering more about herself.  Aditi learned that she would be always adding new building blocks to her tower and it would never be completed.

Evaluation:  Trey evaluated Aditi.  He began by saying that he could not tell that it was her first speech.  She had a great opening.  Aditi went through her childhood and described her building blocks.  She was able to guide the audience into her life and had us experience her life with her. 

Trey had one suggestion that Aditi could perhaps focus more on one of her experiences and go deeper into it.  It would have drawn us even more into her life experiences.  Overall Aditi gave an excellent first speech.

Speaker #2:  Sharon:  “Magician Intention”  Project #9 “Persuade with Power”

Sharon began her speech by showing us a poster of 22 Arcena Cards.  She explained that there were 78 cards in the Tarot deck.  Sharon introduced the Magician card and described each facet of the card in detail; for example, the snake, which represented reincarnation.  The yellow represented “intellectual buzzing” and the head band, the spark of source from the divine.  It is important to cultivate our knowledge before we act. 

We need to develop the technique of thinking carefully and define what we want.  This evokes the “power of intention”.  We need to define what we want and state it in clear terms.  Visualize it, and act like you already have it.  This is the way to actualize your desires.

Randy evaluated Sharon.  He stated that her enthusiasm for this subject was contagious.  Her enthusiasm seemed to go in and out as she went into her speech.  When Sharon used her notes, it distracted the audience from the speech.  Sharon seemed, however, very knowledgeable of her subject and spoke of it with authority.  It was clear that she had a great love of this subject.

The theme of the meeting was: “City Hall”, and the word of the Day was “Bureaucracy”.  Venkat was the Table Topics Master.  Since it was a last minute assignment, he called upon a participant to answer the first question, and then this person would ask the next question and call a new participant.    

Samya asked for the guests remarks and then closed the meeting. 

Meeting was adjourned at 7:15