New Year's Serendipity

After four days New Year Holidays, most people were obviously tied up with pile of work on desk in the office. The attendance rate at Grand Toastmasters Club's first meeting in 2013 was extremely low Wednesday evening, January 2nd. Only thirteen people came to the meeting, including 10 members and 3 guests.

Dr. Richard Fang arrived early as usual. He has been a regular guest to Grand's bi-weekly meetings after Grand moved to the new meeting venue in 2011. Toastmaster LJ Lamb brought a young lady friend with him to bring a lot of joy and laughter to our meeting.

I was invited to be the joke master the moment I walked in the meeting room to replace our club EVP Sharen Chen who was caught up in her office. Wearing a traditional Hakka Blue loose shirt and a pair of embroidered padded blue trousers, I was more than delighted to take the last-minute assignment to be seen in my new year outfit plus ♥ 2013 written on my manicured fingers! In order to lift up the new year atmosphere, I changed the joke session to variety session. I asked all participants to write down three new year resolutions on a piece of paper.

After pooling 13 slips of new years resolutions in a lucky draw bag, I called upon as many participants as possible to read aloud the new year resolutions of members and guests. It was said that new years resolutions read alout in public would be realized! We could almost figure out who wrote the resolutions before the second resolution was read. Guess who wants to become a billionaire? Guess whose resolutions were hard to read? Guess who wants older whisky, faster cars, younger women, and more money? As for mine, I want to lose 5 kilograms, save NT$500,000, make friends with five handsome young men in 2013!

President May was the Tabletopics Master. She was on the airplane at 12 midnight from India to Taiwan on New Year Eve. She prepared five questions about countdown experiences. Toastmaster Jennie Chen talked about her countdown at Victoria Harbor in Hong Kong in 2012. Ms. Stephanie Pan, the lovely guest accompanied by LJ, talked about her dream countdown at New Year Time Square. Toastmaster LJ wanted to see the fireworks at London Eyes. Toastmaster Gina Cheng wants to take the high speed train directly to see the sunrise in the south after viewing the fireworks at Taipei 101. I would give a voucher of NT$100 to residents in the borough who participated in the community countdown event, to encourage everybody to say "I ♥U" at 12 midnight to family, friends, and strangers in the community, if I were Mayor of Taipei City.

After Grand's first club meeting, LJ, Stephanie, Jennie and I hung around for the second party at McDonald's. Four of us also went to Excellence Toastmasters Club's Christmas Party Friday, December 21st. When Stephanie complimented me again about my sexy long legs in Mrs. Santa Claus' costume at the party, I was thrilled to know about the unforgettable impression I left upon Toastmasters and friends. Maybe I should try on Victoria's Secret to Excellence Christmas Party in 2013!

I didn't know that Stephanie and I actually worked for the same pharmaceutical company till the last minute. What a sweet surprise indeed! Stephanie and I shall definitely meet again at our company year-end party next Friday, January 11th.