by Darrell Pitt
“Wimoweh…Wimoweh…Wimoweh…”
If you found yourself humming the 1952 hit The Lion Sleeps Tonight over the last few days, there’s a good chance you attended the District 73 Annual Toastmasters Convention in Adelaide. Not only did it have workshops, contests, appearances by our international president Jim Kokocki and the incredibly exciting council meeting, but it also featured a barbershop quartet who taught us that you could have no musical talent at all and still sound good!
That was the experience for me. I’ve always felt shy about singing in public. My singing had rarely moved beyond the shower, but I found singing in a group to be incredibly liberating. The guys comprising Adelaide’s DQ Barbershop Quartet were highly professional and very switched-on. I’ve been to a number of conventions and the singing really took this event to a whole new level.
Then there were the contests. All I can say is—’wow!’ Many people agreed that the overall standard was very high indeed. I imagine it was hair’s breadth between several of the contestants. Many speakers brought tears of both sorrow and joy to the eyes of the audience with their amazing speeches.
What else did I like about the convention? Until attending the dinner on the Saturday night, I’d felt a little confused about how to define Call of the Wild. To the credit of everyone involved, people let their imaginations ‘run wild’. There were all kinds of wild to be seen. There were more than one dominatrix, several animals of unknown origin, the Flintstones and many interpretations of the theme that were hard to identify. (I was dressed as a vampire. I have no idea why, but that’s not unusual—I have no idea why I do a lot of things!)
Everyone involved in the 2016 District 73 Annual convention produced an event to be proud of and set a high benchmark for next year.
The theme for next year’s convention is Find Your Inner Hero!
Start thinking about your costume for next year’s gala dinner. You could be a real life hero, a comic book hero, a movie hero or someone else entirely. What hero will you be?