277th Meeting
By Chathuranga Amunugama
Asia cup, Oscar award ceremony and Gavel conference preparations! So much action for a single week! However, despite all these, the Gaveliers found themselves in their favorite place to spend the Thursday evening. Merl Chandana, the newly appointed president, broke the silence of the ENTC PG seminar room by starting the proceedings of the meeting which was followed by the introduction of the Toastmaster for the day.
Silent girl with a really loud mind, simple yet advanced in talents, strong yet of delicate mind, it was none other than Wimali Galgamuwage. “If you were nominated as the best actor/ actress what would be the two things you choose to mention during your speech?” was her question to the Gaveliers for the Round Robin session. After a successful session it was her duty to introduce the Table Topics Master for the day.
Ama, a talented speaker and a humble Gavelier, had chosen a variety of topics as the Table Topics Master for the day. Bathiya decided to break the silence by walking down the memory lane to his 1st Gavel speech and it certainly awakened the nostalgic feelings of the other members too. After Bathiya ended his speech mentioning “leaders are not born, they are made”, it was Asitha who talked about the Valentine’s Day and ended the speech by leaving a question about the definition of true love on everyone’s mind. “No one is perfect. As humans we all make mistakes. It is our own duty to gain the experience from those mistakes and learn from them”. Naveen pointed out this universal fact. After Naveen, Pragatheeswaran described an interesting personal story about impressing others and it was Shenal who explained about his extraordinary relationship with his song list.
“Life is not fair! It never will be. It is our duty to not to take this precious life for granted and make it a meaningful one.” This is the universal truth about each and everyone’s life. It was Kithmin who explained this fact using his own experiences. After Kithmin it was Sandalika who shared her sweet story about her grandmother and emphasized that “little things do matter.”
We all have our own nightmares that we are really scared to experience. However for Athif it was seeing the LED bulb of his robot go blank. He was able to take all the Gaveliers in a wonderful path in the dark side of robot building and embedded the message that even though it is for the first time, we should not give up on anything without giving a fight. “Every night in my dreams I see you, I feel you, that is how I know you go on.” Rahu started his speech singing this song and twisted his romantic story, pointing out the importance of loving our parents. We go through quite a number of crushes before meeting the correct one. For Yasiru, 41 was his lucky number. He pointed out that the correct person for us is born somewhere in the world. After Yasiru it was Navodini who came in front with a titanic smile and pointed out that “smile is the titanic weapon we can use in our life.” As the final speaker it was Merl who came up with one of his personal stories and gave the message that we should pay our attention to the little things in life.
After a successful Table Topics session Ama handed over the control back to Wimali who introduced the two prepared speeches for the day. The first to do his ice breaker was Kanchana Ranasinghe. “Let us observe 3 minutes of silence for the past Kanchana” was a catchy start where he stole the attention of all the members.
After Kanchana’s ice breaker speech it was Kasun Ranasinghe who was able to steal the audience through his colorful ice breaker speech.
After two wonderful ice breaker speeches Wimali handed over the control back to Mr. President and the 277th meeting was adjourned.
The role players for the day
- Toastmaster-Wimali Galgamuwage
- Table Topics Master-Ama Kalpani
- Table Topic Evaluators-Merl Chandana, Rochelle Silva
- Grammarian-Chathuranga Amunugama
- Timer-Lahiru Paranamana
- Ah Counter- Asitha Rathnayake
- Prepared Speech Evaluators- Merl Chandana, Piyumi Bandaranayake
- General Evaluator-Niluxsi Puvanenthiran
