h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've had a couple of things go wrong in the last two days. My washing machine has more or less packed up - I think the pump has gone - last time that happened it cost £185 and that was in 2000. And today, my computer printer appears to have packed up too! I've spent a couple of hours (and the rest) trying to sort it out as I have some urgent things to print for a Toastmasters meeting tomorrow. I'm the Toastmaster, so I'm supposed to be organised! It's w-a-a-y past my bedtime now.

Best of luck with your meeting - I hope everything goes well. I'm the Toast Master for our first meeting also. We've been busy doing promotional work for the club's new season (meetings don't happen during the summer) and getting a website put together.

Hi Woodpigeon!

At our club, meetings happen all year round. Tonight's meeting went well and there were a lot of people there considering it is holiday season. Apart from knocking the music stand thingie over (twice!) during the meeting, I think it went well.

When do your meetings start? One of the General Evaluator's comments about our meeting was that our website could do with some improving. I hope that your marketing is successful and that you get a good input of new members.

I've ordered a replacement washing machine, which is coming next week. I'm not sure what to do about my computer printer yet. As far as I can see it's well and truly up the chute and I've no idea why. Maybe I'll get the instruction book out to see if it tells me what it means when two lights flash on and off together and it stops working. I've just bought a load of toner for it, so I don't want to have to replace that as well.

Greetings

Afraid I don't have any helpful suggestions for your current dilemmas therefore, Silence is Golden...

Congratulations on your successful Toastmaster's meeting, and the way you got right back up with the grace of an Olympic athlete after performing that minor "double-klutz" with the music-stand thingie

and blessings to you and little

AV

Greetings, AssondriaVger!

"with the grace of an Olympic athleteThe General Evaluator of the Toastmasters meeting suggested that I have a 'glasses management policy'.

As to the other things, I've bitten the bullet and ordered a new washing machine. It's coming on Tuesday. It will be nice to be able to wash again - and the new machine will be able to spin faster, so my clothes will (in general) take much less time to dry - and the machine is more energy efficient too.

You can do without much in life - but don't take away the washing machine! I know the feeling. Ours broke last year, and before the day was out we had a new one pressed into service...

We start on Sept 6th. A lot to do before then but I am very optimistic. The website is free for all Toastmaster clubs so I didn't have to learn any HTML or Javascript or suchlike (yippee!). It's a fantastic idea, I have to say. Everything is set up for you already - all you have to do is customise it a bit. www.freetoasthost.com

The meeting last night went well - 16 attendees and 3 guests, so not bad. A new location too, which actually worked out well. The new room (now in a pub) has a huge amount of character: much more appealing than the hotel we were in. I hope our guests enjoyed it - sometimes I get a bit worried that our guests might find us a bit "too good": many of us have been at this for years, and so have little problems speaking in front of large groups.

So, fingers crossed for the new season. I'm no longer the prez, but I think I'm going to be busy with marketing stuff this year. My aim is to get them interested!

Take care,

W

Oh, I am so pleased that your Toastmaster year has started well, Woodpigeon.

I had a look at the Toastmaster hosting site and it looks good. We're paying £10 a month. I will bring it to the attention of the rest of the committee - probably at the next meeting - I'd intended e-mailing about it, but for some reason I didn't.

We're doing well at attracting new members still. There's a really nice buzz about our club and it's very diverse. At the last meeting, two of the speakers were English as a second language. One French, one Turkish.

Good luck with the marketing.

Mercury still appears to be retrograde though - things are still going a bit amiss. My new mobile phone keeps switching itself off for no apparent reason and my landline is misbehaving too.

Can I ask a question - sorry if I missed a relevant post on the subject, I'm sure I ought to know this, but which of you two, Woodpigeon or ZSF was a Toastmaster first and did "A" inspire "B" to join/found a unit or was it a coincidence?

Are there any equivalents world wide; is is a good way to boost self-confidence; is there a worldwide organisation?

Easy one this - Woodpigeon has been a Toastmaster for at least a decade longer than me. Did he inspire me? Yes - in large part. Roy first mentioned Toastmasters to me and then shortly afterwards I saw Woodpigeon's entry and that made me search the net to find a club, which led me to e-mailing Toastmasters HQ in America to find how to start a club. They put people in touch with me and I had a meeting at work to see if they would be willing to sponsor a corporate club. The people we met were interested in setting up a club and bingo - it happened.

Are there clubs worldwide? Yes, about 10,000. http://www.toastmasters.org/

Let me see if I can find a club nearby. Are you near Munich, TC? There's one there. But in case you're not - have a look at the drop-down menu:

http://www.toastmasters.org/find/default.asp?Country=Germany

Now that's odd! When I looked at the drop-down menu, it showed only one club in Munich, but when I looked down all the clubs in Germany (there are 40 in total), I found two.