Postcrossing Round Up #1

There is this website called www.postcrossing.com - It is a postcard exchange project that invites everyone to send and receive postcards from random places in the world. In effect, it lets you travel the world from the cozy confines of your home! How cool is that!

I had joined this in 2012, with the goal of making new friends. I used to be active, but had fallen out of it due to varying work and home priorities.  But now I am back on the postcrossing circuit, and will post a round up of my travels around the world :D

As I said, I have recently gotten back into the circuit, so this Round Up features one post card.
This was sent by a fellow Postcrosser, who was celebrating his 500th Postcard. And the card was stamped with a special cancellation stamp. Here are the pictures

Are you a Postcrosser from India? Join the group on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/groups/indianpostcrossing/ :)

Toastmasters club of Pune East - 77th Meeting

I have been tracking multiple things in the last couple of months, and in my pursuit of happy-ness(just joking :)), I landed up at the Toastmaster's club of Pune East this last Sunday.  For the uninititated, here is what Toastmasters Club is all about

Toastmasters International (TI) is a nonprofit educational organization that operates clubs worldwide for the purpose of helping members improve their communication, public speaking, and leadership skills.

The theme of the meeting was 'Journey'. The prepared speeches went off very well. One of the speakers gave a mouth watering speech about how to make Sambhar, leaving the audience hungry for more. Abhinav Garule, the Toastmaster of the day(the person who conducts the entire meeting) made us do some voice warm up exercises which proved to have a dual benefit of warming up the voice, and loosening up the mind and helped everyone settle in.
In the second half of the meeting, we had a 'Round Robin' session where there was freewheeling flow of sentences and ideas, thanks to Tarun, who facilitated a Sentence Builder game and a 'If you were a' game. The Sentence Builder game is where you have to start your sentence with the same word that the person before you finished with. Here there are no restrictions regarding what you should speak about, the sentences can be around random topics; the restriction is on time, you get 15 seconds to say whatever you want.  The 'If your were a' game is where you challenge the person after you to complete and elaboratIe upon  the sentence 'If you were a _______' in fifteen seconds. I was challenged to complete 'If I were a windmill'. This part of the meeting was very very enjoyable.

On the whole it was some quality edutainment on a rainy Sunday morning!

I find the Toastmasters program to be an interesting format to learn new things, and overcome those mental walls at the same time.

Here are some pictures from the event

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