President "Resourceful Robyn" welcomed 27 members and 5 guests to last Thursday breakfast meeting, and prior to sharing "club notices", she welcomed all, including Lachlan Kerr and his family, Mum Tessa, Dad Damon and his younger sister. Lachlan is our club's sponsored Outbound Exchange Student. He is currently a Year 13 student at Sacred Heart College and he will be departing on his exchange on January 19th 2020 to Chile. We wish Lachlan best wishes as he ends his schooling at SHC and prepares for his exchange, and we look forward to seeing more of him before he departs and of course receiving regular updates on his adventures next year.
Two other important and urgent notices highlighted by Robyn, was the need for members to RSVP for this Thursday's Evening meeting just as soon as possible. Also if you have the time available, the club would welcome you volunteering to assist with the "Tag-on Tag-off collection at Orakei Station this Friday November 1st. See below for more details.
Alan Mayne was our first speaker of the morning and as Alan introduced himself, "he is one of the older men of the club, not oldest, but older as in longest serving"! As expected, Alan's Snapchat was very interesting and entertaining. He covered off his childhood, schooling, family and a very successful business career, despite getting stuck in Form 5 for a few years, like a few other members by the sounds of it! Alan ended his talk by sharing five observations / rules, that he has adopted;- The older you get the more dollars you need;
- Keep on learning;
- Eat healthily;
- Exercise the brain as much as possible, and
- Only mix with people you like.
Next up was Past President David Hartstone who has recently returned from a 24 day "Golfing Holiday", in Spain and Morocco. As an avid golf player this was a trip of a lifetime playing some of the best courses in the world. He had a great time playing golf most days. For a moment we thought that we were going to have a shot by shot slide-show of the 20 plus games he had, but alas this was not the case. We are not sure if there was a technical problem with the overhead, or did he cut his presentation short after Murray called from the floor asking ; "If we give you a Tea Towel now will you sit down"!!!Dave also found the course-side villa that he intends to buy when he wins lotto - yes it does look nice and capable of hosting lots of visitors!!!. Next Golf Tour will be Canada.
Our third speaker was club member Lynette Boyd who has just returned from a three week, Train and River Tour of China. During her presentation Lynette relayed several experiences that have stuck with her, such as;- The population is huge and small cities have populations of "only" 5 million;
- Chinese food tastes different in China;
- Travelling on a tour is not for her;
- Girls are more sort after than boys;
- Everything was clean and spotless except the toilets;
- She made no new friends on the tour, but some enemies
....and the list went on, but unfortunately the Ed. couldn't keep up with the hilarious one liners that flowed.
A big thank you to Alan, David and Lynette - we thoroughly enjoyed all three talks.