Five Reasons Why You Should Visit Travelmasters Online

Angela Lansbury, member of Toastmasters clubs in the UK and Singapore and online LILT languages club (every Sunday; top right Sarah Cossette, Vice President of Education of Travelmasters Toastmasters Internnational Club, and Leesa, Vice President of Membership of Travelmasters Toastmasters Club.

Travelmasters is an online club for speakers, speech trainers, would be speakers, part of worldwide Toastmasters International which started in the USA a hundred years ago and now has hundreds of members and clubs worldwide and exciting, inspiring speech contests.

Why go to the Travelmasters club? Where and when is it? The second and 4th Wednesday evening every month, at 7 pm Eastern Standard time (New York time) on zoom. If you miss it or want to see a past meeting, you will be able to see the recordings

If you are already a Toastmasters you might want to give a speech on your travels overseas or travel in your country, or to take a role in a meeting, such as a timer, timing the speeches and signalling to the speaker how much time they have left and when to finish. Or as evaluator, give them encourgaing feedback and why you loved their speech, what they sid well, and useful suggestions on how they could improve and what to add. 

But this club doesn't just have a niche, a theme, of travel. The policy of the Vice President of Education, Sarah, who organizes meetings (she;s top right in the photo above) and of Leesa (lower in the picture) is to make the meetings fun. Instead of the usual, conventional titles for their role holders, each one has an amusing name on the theme of travel.

 1 You are bound to learn something interesting about travel because all the speeches are about travel

2 The meetings are fun. 

3 You have an opportunty to meet well-travelled, interesting people.

4 It is a fantastic networking experience - they link you up with lots of other groups, such as the Gastronomy Toastmasters Club.

5 They can tell you how they transformed from a physical meeting to online meetings, and rescued and rebranded a club to make it a successful club .

Network, get new ideas, and link to other clubs such as Gastronomy.

Sarah is a member of Travelmasters TMC US based but online, and Gastronomy, US based which meets for meals out with members. 

Leesa is also a member of Travelmasteeers TMC and Gastronomy.

Leesa met Angela by attending a meeting of Singapore Online Dynamic, whose meetings Angela posted in the WhatsApp group of Global (toastmasters) which has a large number of clubs in Asia, especially India and Singapore.

Angela is a member of: UK based clubs Harrovians (in Harrow) which is hybrid, one meeting a month on Zoom, another in person at a church hall in Harrow. HOD meeting at a library in North Harrow, London. Singapore based Tampines Changkat Advanced (in prson meetings, hybrid just for travelling and overseas longterm member Angela who was a former Area Director of Area S), and two online clubs LILT languages club meeting every Sunday, and Singapore Dynamic meeting every Friday   

Travelmasters and LILT are also on Facebook. Angela Lansbury is on LinkedIn, Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram.

If you ever lose track of a person in a club or the club itself, you can track them down through the Ttoastmasters International websites

Look on Facebook for Travelmasters, also WILL (before we rebranded as LILT), and World Travellers. Sarah is not possessive nor confrontational. On the contrary, she welcomes the idea of travel clubs multiplying, one in every continent, one in every country, with pods or subgroups of particular interest. What a lovely, lively, warm, well-travelled woman. 

Useful Information

toastmastersinternational find a club. 

https://www.toastmasters.org/find-a-club

https://travelmasters.toastmastersclubs.org

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYrf-qrrj8iHdCGM3FlI6jgudQ2cNRLvO1X

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Moshe Schulhof Sings Best Yiddish Song Rumania Rumania Excellent!!! To...

Wonderful song about Romania. Also great if you are into Yiddish. Finally, so catchy it makes you want to tap your toes and wave your arms when sitting down at your office or study desk. I thought of zumba but this is effortless exercise.

I was redirected back to some language YouTube videos after watching one which was recommended on a Facebook polyglots page.

I have started several languages on Duolingo.

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

I and my family have lived in the UK, Spain, the USA and Singapore. I am a travel writer and photographer and teacher of English A level and English as a foreign language.

Please come to a Toastmasters International Club where the English clubs have a language evaluator or grammarian.  We also have French, German, Mandarin Chinese, Tamil and other language clubs based in Singapore and many more online around the world which because of Covid-19 are now meeting online.

I am President of Braddell Heights Advanced, meeting every Wednesday, on zoom the first Wednesday of the month but the other Wednesdays are workshops on app 

learncool.sg

Or quicker to type and easier to remember: 

 tinyurl.com/BHACOOL

Useful Websites

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_language_self-study_programs

https://www.facebook.com/angela.lansbury.121

https://www.facebook.com/groups/polygotcommunity

https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogs

https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2019/04/how-to-say-thank-you-in-several.html

https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2019/05/introducing-yourself-in-english-spanish.html

https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2020/01/second-set-of-portuguese-words.html Please share links to your favourite posts

https://www.toastmasters.org/find-a-club

translate.google.com

duolingo.com

Black Pepper Restaurant, Hatch End, Pinner, Amaretto Ice Cream and Beames-de-Venise Wine, for a Happy Meeting - And Moving Seats!

Problem
Where can you have a room to yourselves for a happy meeting with a congratulations speech? How do you get to sit near the VIP? How can you not get stuck with somebody who is boring all evening, and meet lots of people?

Answer
Black Pepper Restaurant in Hatch End.

Story
We spent the jolliest evening there in a room at the back. One of the ladies who organised the event brought along a banner saying Congratulations and a balloon.

We were congratulation a member who had become distinguished Toastmaster (DTM) which only goes to about one per cent of members of Toastmasters International Worldwide and involves a project turning around a filling organisation which is losing members, morale or money or all three. (In his case he blew new life into a flagging football club.)

Black Pepper Menu
Black Pepper has a menu with several choices for a set price three course meal. Whilst we waited for everybody to assemble I ordered a Prosecco.

The starter I chose was smoked salmon. Good.

My main course was duck with orange and saute potatoes and spinach. I have to say I was not thrilled with the main course. The duck seemed a bit dry. The orange sauce was tasty, but somehow the meal did not have freshness nor zing.

My companion chose rare for the lamb, then shellfish and had three glasses of wine and got an upset stomach. I'm allergic to shellfish and this is the third time he has been ill after a restaurant meal but I have been fine. I would suggest ordering meat medium rare rather than rare. Is it really worth risking food poisoning? I read that some restaurants won't serve meat rare but insist on it being cooked through.

I sat in the waiting room of the nearby local doctors' Medical Practice for a routine annual blood test and watched their loop of health videos. One of the health messages was to make sure meat is cooked through (especially on a BBQ when have the outside cooked or even blackened does not mean that the centre is cooked). The cancer websites warn you not to eat blackened food. But, back to the food and customer choices, everybody seemed happy with their food and evening at Black Pepper. Just a little blip.

However, the earlier disappointment with the duck was completely eclipsed by the delightful dessert. My dessert with amazing amaretto ice cream was wonderful. Flavourful. Worth going here just for the dessert.

The menu lists chocolate brownie with amaretto ice cream. Very rich. The friend sitting on my right found the combination of ice cream and chocolate brownie too sugary and rich and offered me a taste of both. So I got a double helping of the amaretto ice cream.

I asked for my apple pie to be accompanied by the amaretto ice cream instead of vanilla. I rarely manage to taste vanilla in so called vanilla ice cream. The amaretto is wonderful. But it's better with the apple. The large slice of apple is in a heavily sugared cake also. (Not quite as fresh tasting as the apple strudel from B & K. B & K is great for take away food and small groups, such as 4-6. But Black pepper, with its bar in the front, for a grander more glamorous event and group of 24-30 people in the back room.)

Drinks
At the end of the meal with dessert I ordered Muscat de Beaumes-de-Venise, (that's the appellation, the name of the drink. I think there's another Beaumes-de-Venise with another grape, not Muscat. Muscat is my favourite, just the right sweetness for me, sweet enough. (From the town of Beaumes (cave) de Venise in France.

More details on the Beaumes-de-Venise wine from the website:
grapedeal.com / May 2106

Moving seats
In addition to having the room to decorate ourselves, and a chance to make congratulatory speeches, the organisers ran my favourite system of seating. After each course you move around (every fourth person changes seats, starting with the person fourth to the right of the standing organiser, who says, "You move (Michael or whoever) and so on clockwise around the table or horseshoe. That way the VIP gets to meet more fans, more fans get to meet the VIP, nobody monopolises the conversation, everybody meets several people, more fun, more new people met, and more business gets done arranging other social or business events.

It also means that husbands and wives who have seen each other all day get a chance to meet new people. You have more to discuss with each other when you get home afterwards.

Tips
1 You can buy banners and balloons in the party shop across the road from Black Pepper in Hatch End if you forget and decided you need anything at the last minute for a celebration. Another party shop is in Stanmore.
2 Look up reviews of the menu in advance to choose your choices.
3 Switch seats two or three times in a large group event.

Black Pepper Restaurant
461 Uxbridge Road
Hatch End
HA5 4JS
Tel: (+44) (0)208 421 4349

Blackpepperrestaurant.co.uk

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer. Please like my posts, follow and share.

Speeches Worldwide Helped By Powerpoint Slides

People say the audience should be listening to you, not reading the slide.
1 But if you regularly speak outside toastmasters to groups of retirees, those at the back with poor hearing and poor concentration - are glad to have visual reminders.
2 Those walking in late are grateful to have some clue as to what is being said.

A slide is like a signpost. It tells you where you are going.And the distance.

3 In Singapore the presenter often speaks poor English.
4 Or somebody in the audience causes a distraction. It's very useful to have a slide which tells you what you've missed.
5 Once I arrived late because of traffic problems. I was asked my opinion - the presenter was going around the audience. I looked at the board to find out whether we were doing opening introduction to yourself, table topic, or what? The board gave me my answer which saved embarrassment to me, the presenter, and the rest of the audience.
6 In London we have lots of speakers, and audience members, whose first language is not English. The visuals prevent those situations where the evaluator has to admit, 'maybe it was just me, but - I could not follow the argument'! As an evaluator I love seeing slides. I can write my notes, then look up and catch up on anything I've missed from the bullet points on the slide.