Five Golden Flowers

Mencius said, "the right time is less important than the right place, the right place is less important than the right people". When people are right, they are in paradise regardless of the place and time. That's exactly what five golden ladies Toastmasters experienced in China from June 20th to June 25th, 2009.

Despite two and half hours delay due to the bad weather in Shanghai Saturday evening, Pamela greeted us at Pu-dong Airport with three boxes of big juicy waxberry(楊梅) from Yuyao(浙江餘姚). Five middle-aged women caught immediate attention from the crowd and tour group members. Our local Chinese tour guide gave us a matching nickname "five golden flowers", because we were at our golden age and we stuck together all the time.

No matter where we went, when one golden flower started doing something, the rest four would follow the suit at once. During the day, we spent thousands of RMB on silk bed spread, pearl, tea, jade, took hundreds of group photos of five. At night, we held impromptu toastmaster meetings and practiced clogging dance at the hotel room. We were like toastmasters quintuplet.

The trip to China is only the beginning. Some golden ladies are enthusiastically planning a summer cruise on Mediterranean in 2010. Imagine that golden ladies convert the whole cruise of 400 passengers into toastmasters in ten days. That would be awesome! Like attracts like, it is not an impossible dream!