pbeedham's Blog
Jun 12, 2010 8:30 AM
I accompanied Asca and her "Cheerleader" / Counsellor, David Briggs to the Rugby Saturday Breakfast Club on what could certainly be described as a bright and sunny morning. The meeting itself was wonderfully casual and relaxed, with a popular thread of conversation during the meal being the temperature of the baked beans! Asca did comment during her talk that it actually felt like a family breakfast on a Saturday morning, which summed up the atmosphere nicely.
As always, Asca...
Jun 6, 2010 8:00 AM
A slightly complicated start to the day today. The first challenge was managing to get our party of nine marshalls in place on time for the 10km run between Warwick and Kenilworth Castles - the "Two Castles Run". Seven of us had stayed in our house overnight and left only 10 minutes later than the planned departure time of 7.30am. After dropping of the first four around Leek Wootton, we popped over to Warwick University to collect the last two. It was then back to Kenilworth to drop...
May 25, 2010 7:30 PM
A very warm reception was waiting for Ambassadorial Scholar Asca Tsushima and her support team - myself and the two Rotarians who she referred to as her "cheerleaders" or her "English Dad's" - David Briggs and Colin Harris from the Nuneaton Rotary Club. Still, Asca referred to me as a "very very very very young Rotarian", which has to be 4 "verys" too many!
The idea of a speaker's host is a nice tradition and a role played very well by Len Leibling at...
May 11, 2010 7:15 PM
It is always interesting to see how Rotary Clubs and their venue arrangements vary over time. While the formal part of the meeting was in the same room as I remembered from my first visit around 15 years ago, the food situation has improved massively for the Rotary Club of Lichfield St Chad. The carvery arrangement in the main restaurant works really well, although I did think the 'ladies first' approach gave Ryoko a challenge. One of the other Scholars told me two or three years ago that...
May 10, 2010 6:00 PM
Navigating during rush hour always make trying to get to a twilight meeting a bit of a challenge, but we just about made it to Drayton Manor Park in time to setup before the Tamworth Rotary meeting kicked off. There were a lot of apologies, making the turnout quite small, but this actually matched well with Asca's interactive style of presentation. Despite my seeing her talk three days earlier, it had changed yet again. This time Asca had incorporated her experience of a recent visit to a...
May 7, 2010 7:15 AM
The general election was still in full swing as the Coventry Breakfast Rotary meeting began on the 7th May and those present had either had very little sleep, or had given up watching the election coverage at an early stage. Those that did make it were in for a treat though as Asca gave another of her excellent talks. Asca is constantly tweaking, changing and improving her presentation, which makes it a delight to watch. The audience participation was at the usual level, both with the...
Mar 29, 2010 7:00 PM
It is always good to be made welcome when attending a Rotary meeting - for whatever the reason - and I was certainly made very welcome by the members of the Rotary Club of Kenilworth this evening. I was attending their meeting to support Ryoko Abe, one of our Ambassadorial Scholars, and had contributed by providing a projector and screen for Ryoko to use, although the was a slight miscommunication as one of the Club members had also brought a projector and there was already a screen in the...
Mar 18, 2010 8:00 PM
Asca was certainly on form tonight and so were the members and guests at the meeting of the Arbury Rotary Club. Asca gave a wonderful presentation - now updated to feature a spring theme. She used her aptitude for involving the audience in her talk and the audience reflected this back when the talk was complete. She fielded some very diverse questions including personal ones about her history with learning English, thru broadband in Japan to the usual controversial question from Clive - this...
Mar 8, 2010 7:30 PM
This was an evening that didn't quite go according to plan..... A touch of diary amnesia meant that Ryoko was still on Campus in the middle of Birmingham when I checked to see if she was nearly at Warwick Parkway railway station! I really must learn to be a little more specific with my messages as an attempt to save as much time as possible and head into Birmimgham to collect her by car resulted in Ryoko travelling to Birmingham New Street station, while I waited at Selly Oak.... Needless to...
Feb 5, 2010 7:15 AM
Just over 10 hours after completing her first Rotary Club presentation as an Ambassadorial Scholar, Ryoko was gearing up to give her second. This time it was to the Rotary Club of Coventry Breakfast. Another friendly welcome was waiting for her and it was nice for some members to take the time to tell her how much they were looking forward to her talk.
Ryoko was clearly beginning to conquer the nerves as she was able to polish off a traditional "full English" breakfast before...
