Life Hacks: How to Open a Can Of Food Without Openers in an Emergency, and a wine bottle with t a corkscrew and tell Irish Jokes

The comments are hilarious.

When would you have a can and no can opener?

Your budget allows for buying a can of tinned food from a nearby shop but not a can opener.

Hotel
When travelling to a hotel where you might arrive after the restaurant has closed. If you are lucky you may be in a five star hotel which has 24 hour room service. But if its late and you are tired you don't want to wait 30 minutes whilst they cook up a meal. You may also be unwilling to pay their inflated prices and risk getting spicy food or food not meeting your diet requirements.

Moving House And/Or Overseas
When moving house which may be overseas and your kitchenware will take 3 weeks to arrive.

When popping down to a corner shop when you are in a guest house and the corner shop sells cheap cutlery but no can openers.

Hotel
You are in a hotel and have a can of food. The hotel has cutlery but not tin openers.

Emergency Bag
In Japan which is prone to earthquakes I am told everybody keeps an emergency bag by the front door to grab when they rush out in an emergency.

Swiss Army Knife
We used to travel with a Swiss army knife which includes a can opener.

Then planes started banning knives.The first time we lost a knife. The second time we were carrying a stamped self addressed envelope just in case we accidentally took something we needed to post home. Sure enough we did. The Swiss army knife still in the suitcase from the last trip by train within the country and the trips in the car.

We were able to go back through security and post it and then come back through security.

Granny's Tips
I plan to be the perfect President of the club and the grand granny who has an answer for every question. Here's one of those 'I wish I had known this earlier' moments. How to open a can without a can opener. Holding a meeting and buying a can of fish to provide a quick nutritious protein meal. Arrive at a hotel after the restaurant has closed. I wish I had known this when i moved house and unpacked the tins of food but a half hour wait before we found the can opener.
Another tip - always keep an old knife, for and spoon in the bottom drawer of your kitchen. Then you have something to hand out when your spouse or handyman (or woman or person) asks do you have a knife, or fork or spoon, without damaging your best crockery.

Open Champagne And to go with the food, several, seven, ways to open a bottle of wine or Champagne without a corkscrew!

Tell Jokes Whilst you are waiting for somebody else to risk damaging their body or their clothes, here are some Irish jokes:
An Irishman take his car into a garage. The mechanic says, 'I'll put my head in here and try to fix. You tell me if the indicator is working or not.
The customer replies, 'it's working, it's not working; its working; its not working.'

https://www.irishcentral.com/culture/craic/irish-jokes-best

Useful Websites
https://vinepair.com/articles/7-ways-to-open-a-bottle-of-wine-without-a-corkscrew/

About the Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

What to do when committee members are away travelling - or gone back home

Two members of a club committee in Singapore are going home in the summer. One is going to the USA. the other is going to England. It is hard to do a voice call. They are on different time zones.

Flag of UK

The President of the club is going to England.

Flag of the USA

The VPE is going to the USA.

 The president gives the opening speech. The VPE prepares the printed and / or projected onto a screen and/or on members' phones meeting programme.

I used to be shy about admitting a problem. Now I find the quickest way to solve a problem is to tell the world. Somebody, somewhere will be keen to share their knowledge and share the knowledge to reduce the worry and vaorise the stress.

One solution to not being present is to pre-record a speech, or a standing for office speech. What I have done in the past and what I hope to do.

Absent Committee Members
This is a frequent problem. Vital people disappear. The president who should open the meeting and oversee all the others. The treasurer who should be banking the renewed subscriptions, paying the rental of the room, keeing us all informed. What do do?

President's Ultimatum
I had advice a year ago from forthright president 'Sue' (I am anglicisng the names to make this more readable and so I can publish my blog straigth away without spend time emailing everybody for permission and accuracy in the quotes and waiting a week for replies).

Sue told me:
1 I told them: "I am the president. I am not the VPE or the treasurer or the PR or the membership secretary. I do my job and you do yours. I can't do six people's jobs and I won't. You have to pull your weight or you are out and replaced by somebody who wants the job and is prepared to do it."

2 You don't have to do every job yourself. You just have to see that it gets done. If you are away, find somebody to replace yourself.

One thing I noticed when I came to Singapore. I had a friend who kept phong me to say that she could not attend a meeting as a speaker or evaluator or time or another role. She asked if I would go in her place.

I was very grateful. I found it hard to get a speaking slot or a role at the last minute.

I wanted to know half a day in advance. Then if I had a speaking slot I could take along my props. I did not want to carry heay items around all the time in hopes, nor get caught out wthout the props.

If the speaker finds a replacement, that makes much everything easier for the meeting organizer.

More recently, Lee told my committee how he organizes his club's commitee:

I told him that in some clubs we have members who are away. And now two of our key members will be way at a meeting.

You risk the people who attend resenting the people who are away, thinking they don't care about the club and might never come back. The takeover people might compalining that he left me to do his job, or he gets the credit and does nothing, or he is never here, or where is he and will he ever come back.

Lee told us: "We have a roster. When anybody is away, we move the next person on the list into that peosition. We change the roles every meeting so everybody gets proace at sdoing every role.

If the role holder is around, they can train up the other member, or all the oter members, with what needs to be done.

Less Stress
When we have an 'emergency', it is never an emergency. Somebody already trained can take over the role with no stress to the absent person and no stress to the person suddenly porpelled into that role.

It increases everybody's confidence. It makes for teamwork. Everybody knows exactly what everybody elese is doing and how it should be done.

If somebody falls ill and a member has to do two roles, it is only like doing two half roles because they are condient and quick at doing both roles.

When somebody is away for a meeting they are still involved. They can work from home or overseas to pepare the meeting programme or do a role which does not requrie eing there. The people who are there to give the opening speech do not have to worry about preparing the agenda because the stay at home members is looking after it.

The person who is missing the meeting still feels they are involved and know what is doing on and what happened. The person who is absent is acknowledged on the metting programme of the committee meeting agenda.

The Absent Member Gains
You are not paying a year's membership and getting nothing because you cannot attend. You are still in contact for networking or making friends by phoning and whats apping and emailing. Win-win al round.

Useful Websites


Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Why has the president disappeared? How do you keep track of travel contacts?

Problem
You go to a club or organization and last year;s contacts have moved on. Why?

Toastmasters attempts to give the previous president status with the letters for Immediate Past President, IPP.  The IPP can usually be relied on as a backup to give the opening address to the meetings when the President is away on business trips or holidays or family birthday parties.

I was discussing this with a senior, experience, long-standing member of TCS, toastmasters club of Singapore. He asked, "Does the president have real power? Or is a senior person from the old days the one who always has to be consulted first? Maybe the president feels they have no power, no authority."

That explains it. The President will resign early if he or she has all their aims and hopes and plans thwarted.

At a meeting, discussions can go on for hours when the veto people refuse to give way. Eventually, or at a pre-arranged time (five minutes for each item on the agenda), the President has to End the discussion.

He/she might say, either,
'We have heard arguments for both sides, the committee will now vote' or
'We won't spend any more time on this, I am appointing you three to form a cub-committee and reach a decision within a fortnight. So and so is head of the committee and has the casting vote. He/she will report back what you have done at the next meeting,' or
'What we tried before didn't work. So we'll  give the new system a try and see if it works.,' or
"Since you can't agree, I am making the decision. We will do ..."

If the president resigns suddenly, before the end of the term of office, possibly:
The backup committee is leaving too much to the President
The President has not been allowed to make decisions.
The President does not know how to make decisions.
The President does not or will not delegate.
The back up committee needs to be changed so the President has support.
A system needs to be set up so that a committee member absent for three meetings in a row must either appoint an assistant as backup, or their role will be taken over by another who has more time.

We had a committee member whose husband died and another who lost their grandmother. After weeks of deliberation I found what I thought was the polite wording. Could you devise a variation on this?

'Dear (name)
We all missed seeing you and are concerned for your well-being.
We would love you to come back to a meeting so we can offer you our friendship and support and help you to get away from your cares with a change of scene.

'We want you to be able to come back without the burden of having to take on responsibility.
We propose to temporarily appoint (name) to take over your role until you feel well enough and have the time free to resume the role.
The role will still be open to you this session or next when you feel ready for it because you were so good at it in the past.

'We hope as soon as you are feeling a bit better you will come along, even if it's only for the first half of the meeting, or just the break, or just the second half, as we would love to see you again and want you to know that we all care about you.'

I wrote this to one of our committee members. She wrote that she was very pleased to hear from me and thanked me for my concern. She came back and resumed her role.

The important thing is to provide support for all the committee members and be sure they are all supporting the President.

Keeping Track
I keep in touch with a lot of organizations.I end up with assorted cards and don't know who is or was who when.  I have started writing the year on the back of business cards. That way I can keep track of the most recent president and committee. if I am emailed that so and so has been voted in as president for a second term, I can add the new date and if possible write to congratulate them and be sure I am still on their mailing list.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer.
See my previous posts on visiting Hong Kong, Kindertransport monuments in Europe, and Titanic exhibitions in Ireland and elsewhere.

How To Improve Club Photos And Increase PR And Goodwill (Part 2)

Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Look at this picture of Harrovian Speakers. I like it because it makes a change from the usual standing still pictures.

 I could chop the distracting chair on the right. Sometimes foreground objects and people are a distraction. At other times they help create a feeling of depth.

I could remove the blank floor in front to make people bigger. If I make the people bigger, if it's taken just on a smartphone, not with a professional camera on a tripod, I might find too few pixels (dots) and blurry faces. Removing the blank floor is what I usually do. However, in this instance, I left it because cropping made the picture look too crowded and busy. You can slide a piece of white paper or even your forefinger over the photo to see how cropping will affect the composition.

Sharing With Subjects
Sometimes a club requires you to submit all your photo to the President or video master or whoever manages the club website. They might put up all your photos unedited. Or select only the winners of competitions.

The video master might be away on holiday or busy with work. Meanwhile, club members are phoning you and asking, Where can I see my photo?

This involves you in chasing and hassling the video master. It wastes your time.

An alternative is to send each photo individually to the video master and the subject. You might do this with half a dozen excellent photos, such as the VIP of the evening (the secretary might forward this attached to the thank you to the mayor).

Sending Individual Photos
You might send the carbon copy to a member of your family who is a speaker. You might send yourself a copy, in addition to the sent file, to keep track of what has been sent if you have to send photos intermittently.

Sending Photos In Bulk
Some recipients won't want to be sent photos one by one, because this clutters up their email inbox. They will want the whole lot together, such as in Dropbox.

Audience Photos
If there's a lull in proceedings, for example, whilst a speaker is trying to set up the projector, you can fill the time, save time later, and keep the audience entertained by taking audience photos.

First picture. Too many front seat gaps. One person in front row looking down at notes

On the other side of the aisle, I have vacated the seat on the right but somebody has leaped in to fill it. But we have a gap.

I could crop the photo to cut out the empty seat in the front row - but we would lose the lady on the far left. Maybe we can crop the photo to make a picture just of her. Let's tidy up those bags on the floor. Push them back and make them parallel to the chairs. 

The left is perfect. The centre is perfect. 

We have an empty chair on the right, but lovely smile from the girl, Satya, behind the empty chair.

Now I am back in my chair and somebody else is taking the photo. 

Next time I shall make sure the entire front row is filled, or ask the person sitting on the far left to move to fill the empty seat.

I don't have a wide angle lens, so I have to take a photo first of the audience on the left, then on the right, finally the centre to catch those in the centre aisle and get a duplicate of some members of the audience.

Filling Front Rows
I have lots of audience photos which look like gappy teeth. Seats in front are empty. People at the back are too far to be seen. The members of the audience look small. Better to have people at the back come forward.

Why do people sit at the back? Those guarding the door may need to leap up to welcome latecomers. Anybody who needs to leave early might choose to sit near an exit at the back. Some people are just shy.

If there's an empty chair in the from row, such as the one you have vacated, ask somebody on stage to step down and take the chair. Or ask somebody behind to take the seat in front.

The more you communicate with the subjects of photos and the club, the more you can keep everybody happy and learn new ways to take even better photos to please more people.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer.

Embarrassing Moments When Speaking And Teaching English

Problem
How do you cover up your own mistakes and those of other people? Several speakers' embarrassing moments come to mind:

UN - Wrong Speech
The Greek Rep who read the Portuguese Speaker's speech. The previous speaker's speech was left behind on the lectern, so the next speaker, forgetting to check, just started reading.

Mark your speech with your (speaker's) name and the speech title.

Apple and Technology
Steve jobs and technology failure. You might wish to have a presentation which includes slides. Nowadays slide presentation options include sequences of numbered slides, with hidden comments appearing only to the presenter. Three systems I know of include:
Powerpoint,
Keynote on Apple Mac devices, or
Mosaic - which instead of slides in numbered sequence shown in a side bar down the left hand margin, presents your slides like a chess board so you can move slides around.
A system for structuring thoughts before you start is to draw a sun and rays effect, radiating out from a central theme slide, or a spider diagram.

Wrong Pronunciation
Etiquette expert - I was introduced as, "Angela Lansbury, an expert on 'Etiquay'."
Looking back on it, to save the face of the person introducing me, I could have pretended it was a standing joke between myself and the speaker, who is always teasing me by saying the wrong word. Instead I avoided the word, until a few minutes later when I started automatically using it correctly. Later somebody in the audience who was puzzled asked me the correct pronunciation. I demonstrated on the board the French endings et as in ballet, bouquet, pronounced with an AY, and etiquette, silhouette, as in the word better, pronounced ET.

Correcting Your Mispronounced Name
This often happens.
The name is mispronounced,
the introducer can't find the speaker's name ,
the speaker has been changed and the introducer reads the name from a programme which has not been corrected.
The credentials are wrong.

The speaker says,
"Actually, I am not Sil-var - I am Sil - ver.
"I am no longer the president; I am the past president."
"I am not the President; I am just an ordinary member."

The trick to maintaining the aplomb of both introducer and speaker and confidence of the audience is to be confident and positive. Firstly, say your own name clearly and slowly. Many people mutter introductions to themselves, racing over their own names, their job description and their company name which may be unfamiliar to listeners. Do not mutter, "I'm-slvr-n-I'm-projmgr-a-PXK."

"Welcome to you, Mr/Mrs/Miss Doctor ... - what a pleasure to have you with us. Please welcome .... Mr/Mrs/Doctor ..."

When you are introduced, ideally smile and say it three times so help the introducer and audience: "I am the expert on the pronunciation of my name. It's Sil- ver! My father was Mr Sil-ver, my mother was Mrs Silver, and I am Sylvia Silver."

Author
Angela Lansbury,

Photographing Groups So All Are Seen - including the photographer

How do you photograph a group so everybody can be seen, with VIPs in the middle?

First take the VIPs or prize winners alone. Then the committee. Then photograph the whole group.

You can't ask visitors or ordinary members to stand at the sides. But you can ask the VIP such as the mayor or president, or visiting speaker to stand in the middle.

You can't tell one person to move back. You can ask the smaller people to stand at the front. Or ask the VIPS or prize winners to sit on chairs at the front holding their trophies.

Sometimes the VIP or President is the person keen to have a photographic memento and also the person with the clever camera or the camera kept handy. In order to get them in the photo, somebody else should swap places with the photographer to take another photo including whoever took the first photo.

An alternative is to use a tripod and a time lapse. The photographer then sets up the camera, on time lapse, makes sure there is a place to stand in the group, warns the group the countdown and dashes into place - reminding everybody to smile.

If you are planning to do this for the first time, practise taking time lapse photos of a group of chairs and rushing into place.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

News, Newspapers, Singapore's late President, S R Nathan, honoured

You can consult your country's newspapers whilst away from home - I read the BBC news online and the Daily Mail online. I can also read on line the news from Singapore Straitstimes.com ;

This week's news featured two main personalities. Singaporeans are celebrating the success of Jacob Schooling who won the 100 meter butterfly swimming event.

The other life being celebrated was the President.

The news from Singapore is about S R Nathan, former president, who died this week. I discussed this with a Singaporean Indian friend. As in many countries with minorities, a minority VIP is appointed as President when the Prime minister is from the majority group (in Singapore the Chinese are the majority and the Malays and Indians are minorities with English speaking groups).

The president has to be a Singaporean, I think a Chief Justice. As my Indian friend humorously said, "You have to to be a citizen and to have worked hard helping the government and the people for many years. You can't be The President if you're a recently arrived Filipino tap dancer or a tightrope walker!"

In Little India a picture of S R Nathan is in the street alongside a tented area with seats for speeches and homages.

I go back to the Singaporean newspapers with renewed interest. To my surprise I find that S R Nathan is a great example of the rags to riches story beloved of motivational speakers at Toastmasters International meetings all over America, England, Singapore and the world. S R Nathan lost his father at an early age, did badly at school, but in later life through hard work and determination rose to prominence.

(Photo to be added shortly.)
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and

Travel Quotations on travel, food, drink, wine, cities, countries

What can you do with these quotations? Write one or more on your travel notebook or diary.

Frame one for your second home or holiday home.

Print them on a tee-shirt to start conversations with people when travelling.

Hum them along to put yourself in a good mood and pass the time when waiting.

Write a travel quiz for the children or family to keep everybody quiet and busy when waiting in a restaurant.

TRAVEL
It is better to travel in hope than to arrive.
R L Stevenson
Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye (WWII)
We'll meet again (WWII Vera Lynn)

FOOD and DRINK and DINNER
If this is tea, bring me coffee. If this is coffee, bring me tea.
American President Abraham Lincoln

WINE
Life is too short to drink bad wine.

CITIES
USA
New York, New York
Take me back to San Francisco
Chicago - my kind of town
Galveston Oh Galveston
All my exes live in Texas - That's why I leave my hat in Tennessee (Country song)
There is a house in New Orleans
I get my kicks on Route 66

COUNTRIES
USA
I want to be in America
Song from West Side Story

MONEY
Money makes the world go around
Song from musical

WELCOME
Wilkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome
Song from musical film Cabaret

Angela Lansbury, B S Hons, author and speaker.
Author of
Quick Quotations
Who Said What When.