Spice up your meetings with country themes and national food potluck parties

SPICE AND FOOD THEMES

I can spice up your meeting just by being there. Meanwhile, spice up by making:

 A potluck at every meeting, on a theme, and print out a flag, and add a quotation, 

Display a year plan, which you show every meeting of all the upcoming meetings themes and the flag and food to be featured. Note national holidays through the year, especially those of your members, Chinese, Indian, Malay, Indonesian, Spanish-Venezuelan, and so on, and have food potlucks asking everybody to bring suitable food. I doing’ think it spoils the surprise. It adds to the anticipation, and enables people to plan for a potluck by bringing back traditional foods and funny hats and t-shirt and traditional costumes from foreign countries and second homes when they are  on business trips and holidays.

August

Aug 1-7 International Clown week - adding humor to speeches - 

Peach month - failing all else tinned peaches but somebody can go to a wet market and use club funds to buy peaches or if generous just buy them to donate to club. Divide leftovers up, for committee as reward or if enough offer to visitors to take home as a party bag gift. 

Water quality month 

National picnic month - potluck picnic food at meeting; speech on picnic places in Singapore; mosquitos; humorous speech on picnic from an insect’s point of view, litter, compare a typical British picnic with a Chinese picnic and a Malay and an Indian picnic, ask two local shops what they think about picnics - you might get a supermarket suggesting food on special offer, a restaurant angry about people bringing their own food in and pointing out perfectly good place to eat in a local park, and another saying we are happy for people to bring in their own sandwiches so long as they buy one drink an hour. 

PICNIC DISASTER STORY

I have a humorous story about a disaster picnic in the park organised in England by Harrovians Toastmasters. It rained. We ran to the shelter where we gave our speeches, until we were forced to leave when we were constantly interrupted by a drunk who wanted us to believe in Jesus, and his dog wanted to eat our sandwiches.

September 24 2018 Mid Autumn Festival Mooncakes

This is Chinese, Malay, Vietnamese, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Chinese restaurants worldwide and online. Don’t keep it a secret and a surprise - get everybody excited for a month in advance, researching and asking friends and family, for recipes, photos, stories. 

October

All month meetings and speeches on Hallowe’en giving people time to use the ideas elsewhere. Party shops and supermarkets sell loads of goods and multipacks. Lucky dip topics on spiders, pumpkins, ghosts.  USA teachers’ websites have inexpensive paper cut-outs of ghosts to cut out, or spiders to print, and recipes to share on your smartphone. Decorate the room.

31 Hallowe'en and carved pumpkins, apples and apple bobbing, ghost stories, ancestor stories. For the practical person, a speech on apple varieties: Cox, Granny smith, Giant Japanese apples.

November

Nov 7 Diwali - festival of light

Nov 11 Armistice Day UK, WWII.

December

Dec 2-10 Jewish Hanukah - make a giant h a n u k i a h - eat hanukah foods.

 https://www.thespruceeats.com/traditional-symbolic-foods-for-hanukkah-1808125 - One of the modern USA surprises on this website is cake or bun cut to reveal the blue pattern of six-point star or a spinning top called dreidl 

Xmas - mince pies, Xmas cake, Xmas pudding, French y u l e log, German stollen, European carp, Xmas poems.

If you have any other suggestions, please let me know.

ADD PHOTOS TO YOUR WEBSITE

Your Chengsan Toastmasters International meet our members webpage has only one member, and no photos of them or anybody else. Add some photos. If you want to be incognito, wear a hat or mask or microphone in front of your face - not a good photo but anything is better than nothing, eg stand back view holding a map of the country you come from, or your national flag, or Toastmasters ribbon, or a group photo of the committee without saying who is who. Better still, list all the committee. 

All good wishes from

Angela Lansbury ALB ACG

Secretary of Harrovians, London.