District 83 Toastmasters | Metropolitan New Jersey, Rockland County, Staten Island

The Toastmaster for the evening was Uday Bhoopalam. Uday and the rest of the club were very welcoming and immediately made us all feel at home. Congratulations to Elise Lenhart on completion of her Ice Breaker speech! James Meredith agreed to evaluate Elise's speech about her recent move to NJ and her line of work, which is to help people get in touch with their inner self through flotation tanks.

Eric Moss gave us the word of the day, OPTIMAL, then shared the quote of the day, "Never inhibit yourself by the seemingly impossible."  From there he put his words into action by doing the seemingly impossible, which was to bend a metal rod employing his physical and mental strengths to show us that through inner strength humans are capable of amazing things.

Uday then shared some additional quotes, one of which was, “Love is for the heart, as the sun is for the flower. “

Uday then decided to put us through the agonizing, “Who am I?” routine where we had to tell The Carpe Diem members about ourselves. Of course, this is really fun as we get to learn more about each other than we would have just by attending the meeting.

Bin Zhao led us through the Table Topics session with questions such as,”What kind of trouble did you get into as a child that you feel is funny now?” and “What career would you recommend to someone going off to college?” Rajendra Nath gave a very nice speech on the person he most respects, his father, and why.

Raj kept track and shared the times of the speakers, all of whom were within the allotted times. Patricia Wecht explained to the various speakers where they went astray with their ”ah”, ”um” and so and “you know” Overall, the night’s speakers did very well.

The meeting’s General Evaluator, Mary Eckel, wrapped up the formal part of the meeting with a big “Thank you!”  to the Carpe Diem Toastmasters club and stated how much she enjoyed the visit.

The meeting ended with Uday calling the evening’s guests to the front and unexpectedly threw a question at us saying he would hand over the gavel if we answered correctly. This really got the nerves jumping. The question turned out to be an easy one to answer after which Uday gladly handed over the prize, the Traveling Gavel.

In all, the evening spent with the Carpe Diem Toastmasters was full of laughter and inspiration. It was interesting to see how another club operates, what we have in common as well as the differences.

We look forward to welcoming the Toastmaster club who comes to Flanders to Grab the Traveling Gavel!