On Wednesday 30th September we had a change of venue to our regular meeting at Friends House and met with family, friends and partners at Piccolo Restaurant. At Mt Vic we try to have a restaurant meeting at least every quarter eating at a local restaurant in Wellington. Sarah Harper, our Sergeant at Arms, had organised and booked the restaurant for 30 of our members.
The meeting was chaired by Anna Potts who set the meeting theme of ‘Spring has sprung’ in reference to the Spring Tulip Festival in the Botanical Gardens the weekend before.
Tom Stacey, restaurateur and owner, spoke during the meeting about the
early beginnings of Piccolo and introduced the ordering system as plates of
fresh olives and bread and hummus were being carried to each table.
Gareth, one of our newer members, took the grammarian role and introduced the word of the evening to the club. This was closely followed by Sarah B. who introduced table topics with a set of thought provoking questions. We had a variety of guests and members participate with great enthusiasm and humour in this session.
As our entrees were cleared away and orders were being prepared for main
courses, our first set of prepared speeches got underway. We were in for a
treat as we had two icebreakers (i.e. two new members who were giving their first prepared speeches from the Competent Communicators manual) – Oliver and Victor.
Oliver introduced himself giving us a non-technical explanation of what life is like as a testing manager in a large IT company in Wellington. He spoke with humour and obvious enjoyment about his day job and gave us an insight into some of his other passions in life.
Victor gave an insightful speech on the importance of having a voice and a
good command of English. He spoke about starting school in New Zealand with no English as his parents were both Polish and had only recently arrived in New Zealand during WWII. It was an upbringing that was to influence his life in a variety of career paths that he has held up to now.
Peter W got up and delivered his fourth speech from the Competent Communicators manual and spoke about his recent adventures in Latin America and some of the etiquette and unspoken rules (or looks!) involved in asking a girl to dance in Brazil. Who knew the complexity of signals you could possibly be sending across the tango floor.
Tom and his staff then delivered our tasty main meals – which were well received. As we were finishing our sumptuous main meals Tom introduced the dessert menu, for those of us that had room to fit in a little something sweet.
Stephen P, our Area Governor got up from the floor and delivered an educational – a speech on leadership opportunities that Mt Vic members
could get involved in at club-level. He explained how participating in a
wide variety of club activities could lead to achieving a competent leadership award. Inspiring us to cross the chasm with two planks laid out supporting each other, he took us through the areas in which we could grow and develop alongside our speaking roles.
Bronwen delivered a humorous and diverse set of listening post questions in which we all participated – all of us trying to recall different areas from the evenings’ proceedings.
As the evening drew to a close, the Chair thanked all the guests, family,
and friends for coming along and participating in the evenings’ festivities. We hope you can join us at our next Mt Vic Toastmasters meeting. Ciao!
