Laughing Horse

Here is one picture from the Stand Up Comedy show from Laughing Horse, Brixton (London)

I took them from the Video, and for some reason, Flickr does not want them, does not show them.

Are they too small for it?

Picassa and Windows Explorer and Piknic have no problem with them. Oh, the life is complicated! If just things could go ok for a while.

Here is a picture from the begining and one from end, and I would like to add a third if I may.

If the blogger does nicely want to cooperate.

Here is the second picture I showed, in my opinion, better then the first one with the shaving cream.

indeed, the photo I disliked, now I begin to like. "life works in mysterious ways."

 This is my prefered one.

It shows me leaning towards the audience.

I did have a great contact with them during the Stand Up, as good as usual when I tell a story at the Canal Cafe Theatre, or perhaps even more.

There were so many Toastmasters present, pals that will remember what I told and perhaps even tell about it to others.

So, will this note remain with pictures when I publish it? I hope.

Lewisham Speakers Club: Great linup for to celebrate the new place

Yesterday, was also a smashing stand up comedy night at the Laughing Horse in Brixton, 12 Toastmasters and lots in the audience too, and a great compere. In Stand Up comedy language "we killed" (made them laugh)

Great finish for our class with David T. Jones, his PhD is not in Comedy but he should get one also on that as he held a great Workshop, coming to teach us even as he was ill. Sending us links, and work to do for the next and next week, 8 in all, and looking over line by line, word by word the material we produced. Pushing us to do our best.

Tomorrow, Chris Rose and me, Virgins again, at Calendish Comedy club, for me it will be a first "on my own". Here is the Map and address to come : Free.

Lewisham Speakers Club:
Great linup for to celebrate the new place the 2nd November:

Under the able hands of Sian as Toastmaster of the Evening, the 2nd November, we will celebrate no less then three Icebreakers:

Lucas, Marcella and Stephen J. also Michael's second one.

Is this me?

This is the photo no one will see, tonight, as I have chosen another one to print in big size. Looking at it, now, I think, I should have used this one, it is funnier.

"But this big nose", of course, it was near the camera. And it is more like a clown, this one.

Well, another time, perhaps.

Finally, I learned my text, word by word, and I will improvise another time. Not tonight. I am looking forward with pleasure now to meet the audience.

Dresse rehersal

The dress rehearsal was catastrophic yesterday, for me.

For the others, mostly wonderful.

They have so many gags and they can say so much in barely 5 minutes!

I said barely nothing in eight, apparently with too many details, diluted. My moral is at zero this morning.

Morale a bit better, the article about my life and activities from Global Voice was being translated already from Yesterday to this noon into 8 languages!

First photo stroll in Paris, 2004

 

And already great interaction with different people in Paris 18e
Click to stop and read the description then resume

Courage! This will be 3rd Standup

Going back to remember my first Stand Up Showcase at Pirate Castle.

It was a hit, with 120 audience, cheering and laughing all through my act.

I even have a nice picture, just before the gig, with the others, well most of them, who took the class with me and performed.

Relatively, the second went well but we had less audience and I did not have much place to move. The light was too strong in our face. What will the future bring? I have to learn the text well now. Is it really 5 minutes?

In the Mistaken Identity, my favourite story, who got so much laugh, I said so much in five minutes! And my movements were so free, too. I got also lots of energy from the Canal Cafe Theatre Audience. And then, gave them back. That was real fun.

First kid 50 years ago

My daughter is 50 today.

What a memorable day it was, a very long day indeed, but after that, what a joy to have a baby in my arms.

Apparently, she was happy too to be in my arms, as you can see here, even if this photo is not the day she was born, but not soo much later.

50 years already1

Happy birthday, my daughter!

Flavia's joy

How to share with you Flavia's pleasure?

She felt giving her first speech at our Toastmasters club and receiving the first price for it, was like her... graduation!

I was so happy for her, and so proud that we could offer it to her.

For some Toastmasters is just another club, for others is the beginning of a new life. As for Flavia.

Caramel Skin, Terry Edwards poem

I met Terry Edwards at the Marlow Toastmaster's meeting, Thursday, and had heard him telling his latest Poem. Because of it, already, the trip was worth while.
===========================
WORD, by Terry Edwards

Caramel skin

I look at you and the season is always spring
Danger meets you sitting
I love the way your clothes are fitting
Harmony vibes in your stride
I love the way you glide

Your gaze is blinding
All I want to do is sit with you on the horizon
Do you like the finer things in life?
Well I’m lucky
Because I am watching one of God’s delights
I want to slip stream in to your dream
And love will blossom in
Shyness is not completeness
But with you I will disregard this weakness
And Blaze you like a candle
And only God will be able to dismantle
The attraction I have for you

Let me rubbish in heartache
If you think me fake
If you don’t let us both awake
To a daybreak of sunlight and bliss

I hear you talk
And my heart shatters in silence
Now witness the calling of one bird to another
I blush every time I smell your scent
Is this me singing a song?
Or living wrong

Some nights I awake with your image
Caressed in beauty
I wonder who is holding your body
Love singles out lust
What I see in you is a must
I shine without the weather
Because when I look at you
All I see is pleasure

To me
You
Your body your mind and soul
Is one big treasure
I would love to hold
And let the sacrament unfold

Because
Because you’re beautiful.

Storytelling is essential

Personal story makes or breaks a great speaker. I do believe in it, more and more do too.

In a corporate or any kind of work environment, in politics or community (and even personal life) it is important to be able to express an important idea (point, theme) through a story, a personal story.

We will create a Storytelling Workshop at Lewisham Speakers club, meet a few times from November to February, learning and experimenting the different aspects of crafting a great story. there is much to learn and experiment:

1. Where we find it in our life, what we learned and what point we want to make to
2. What we put in from our experience and what we leave out, 
3. How we transform it, craft it into a Story, adding Dialogue, Drama, Humour, then
4. How we embody (learn) it and 
5. How we deliver it to the audience living in the moment,

At the end, we will tell all a story, outside, to show what we have learned. Then, we can give each other feedback and have also audience's feedback and go on, to another level.

Four Speakers together

Informal picture taken after the Division B London Toastmasters Competition. Perhaps they even did not all notice I have taken it.

They were all great and the level of speeches too, we did learn from all who spoke.

And great workshops too.

I assisted to one about Body language by Ken Asafo Adjei, and towards the end we had Table Topics to demonstrate his meaning. I made the audience laugh by answering about my experience of "First Kiss".

The second workshop was Dealing with tough crowds, in fact more tough people, by Diana Lowe, and it gave me a lot to think about and some great advices too.

The afternoon we had first Humorous Speech then Table Topics Contest. And yes, even if there were designated winners, all speakers (and even the audience having learned) were winners.

Behind Prince Albert Hall, Kensington

Albion way SE13

I did not know how to remember that name, Albion, where the Lewisham's only central church is, where we will soon move our meetings of Wednesday's.

Is it to early to speak about it?

In all case, I know how to remember it now! Alb is white in Romanian. And way in a one way... cul te sac street, off the market street, in the very heart of Lewisham.

Learning from visits to clubs

Each Toastmaster club meeting is different, and never completely as expected.

Dealing with the unexpected is a skill one learns with time. How did I panick the first time I was the Toastmaster of the evening and how I admired those telling me "no problem" and calmly changing what was needed.

This week I learned from London Athenians not to panic if the meeting runs longer, and how and what can be cut so it finishes before, at least, three hours. The problems that arrive when success brings 'too many' members at once, too.

Then, how to make a meeting happen smoothly when not only the Sergeant of Arms, the President but even the VP Education, who usually replaces the president, is missing. So many come to rescue and the meeting went on as nothing special would have happened before.

At both meeting, no warm-up, saved a lot of time, and the guests were presenting themselves very briefly only towards the middle at one, the end in the other.

I learned a lot in three years, so much more to learn!

It is nice again!

Already at the beginning of this summer I should have had help to clean my apartment.

"At my return from Las Vegas" I told myself.

Then the usual south American young woman disappeared, no one called back.

Then, my cataract operation and at the same time my family moved farther and left here new things I should have put... somewhere.

The somewhere was never the "good" place.

"For the moment" I told myself, "then..."

There were waiting "somewhere" to be found and I the right to bend down.

When I knew a woman was to come to clean finally, I did take the boxes one by one from the floor and without actually bending more then a second to pick it up; putting the pile of papers on my bed, I begun to sort out where is their place.

Most, directly in the garbage pile.

When the woman went away, after three hours, of work or make believe work, she left the place cleaner, she also left me with the kitchen unfinished. I finally had to wash my cooking pans she did not touch. And even scrub the cups she left not quiet clean.

Flash news: I could do it!

So, now the place looks better, and even more, I have more courage.

Is anyone reading this?

After Blogger this blog has 26 followers, and after Google 60 people come some days to read it, but I never receive any comments or feedback, so how to believe it?

Some days I have the impression that I should stop, that is it not worth continuing it.

I wanted to remember the old days today, the 'good old days', Apple II days. For me there begun in 1981, when I made the first program on it in Applesoft - the Basic, and then, with what I was paid for it, I baught one for myself.

What a special joy was to have it for myself!

It did not yet have a screen but then someone gave me an old small TV that was the screen, and a month later I succeded to buy two Korean disc drives to be able to use the computer. And three month later I added to those tresors an Epson Printer, 'the best' on the market, for a whole month, at least.

Everything was moving so fast, but we did not regret it, we were there in the Personal Computer revolution, and even learned to use some Assambly language to make to computer even more ours!

The Macintosh came like a bomb only a few years later, in 1984. By that time, I already had my own company, who begun distributing in France the Legend memory cards that added 64 then 126 and, at the very end half mega memory to Apple II so it could ran Visicalc and later Excell.

With the first Macintosh we baught also our first ibm PC but no one wanted to use it, it took three more years for it to make a window like interface that Macintosh had from the start.

I made a great selling with MacVision, by Atkinson, who permited to put in Macintosh pictures taken with video cameras. Adding three colour filters to it, you could capture the three primary colors. And imported Ready Set Go, to make a page on the screen and not with scissors. First one page then 16, and at the end 256 pages! A whole book!

That is when I discovered Atkinson's Hypercard application that permitted the rest of us program easy the Macintosh and wrote a bestseller book about it and its language Hypertalk. Then went to San Jose University to hear Bill Atkinson talk about them and his new work. And Apple Developers conference in Cupertino, to listen to Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, how young they were then!

Yes, those were great times and wonderful memories.

It is worth

It is worth, going center London, already tired of the week, but still going.

It is worth, arriving early and getting an excellent 'real' espresso at the bar and the barman posing with you when you ask to take his portrait.

It is worth meeting with 12 others, Friday after Friday, even if you come sad telling yourself "I did not find any funny punchlines this week"

It is worth progressing, slowly but surely, with the great help of David Jones, whose Stand Up Comedy Workshop I recommend to everyone. Alas, you will have to wait till next year. But I signed up almost a year ago!

It is worth, coming home exhausted, then having 'one more line' suddenly coming to you before you fall asleep. I got it, I have one more.

Come the 30 October to our Showcase, David assures us we will all deliver by then.

Tickets for the showcase can be booked here:

http://www.ticketweb.co.uk/user/?region=gb_london&query=detail&event=469743&interface

It is worth trusting him that we will.

Adieu Steve Jobs

One of 11 or 12 parts interview with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates where we can admire his spirit and remember him live and renain with us, But all of them are fascinating.

My new red hat

When I will be old, said the poem...

and a whole society of Red Hat Women was born.

I found a red hat at our Red Cross shop!

And also I am old enough to behave like I want, I am not?

I look at my new red hat and it gives me ideas! Outrageous ideas! But, anyhow I am already preparing my Stand Up comedy showcase... where almost anything goes.

Of course, yesterday, I realized, speaking of my lines that I have my own limitations over which I do not intent to go. I am still "a lady" in hart. A romantic too.

And for the moment, yesterday I could wear the first time my Club Presidents Medallion, so I have to think a bit, if not always, how do I behave. At least this year. Then...

Oh, les cafés de Paris!

Paris one remember by his cafés.

Although, nowadays, London, New York and Berlin have also tables before some of their cafés, pubs or restaurants, perhaps because those of Paris were there first?

This picture is somehow so much "Paris" for me, for this time not taken by me but my son. Not only the red, but perhaps the mood somehow too.

Yes, for sure, I am ready for another visit, soon, if this gives me nostalgie.

And even this one!

Humorous speech Saturday

I am happy of the delivery, but yes, it is not very family oriented. More provocative in style, but I mostly poked fun of myself.

Sunday in familly

I was pampered, my nails made, and the first time in my long life I even have three of them decorated with flowers! Very eventful nice day.

Some pictures from yesterday.

Take the next step

"Storytellers when we first start out, have something to say, but often have just enough skill to realize how bad our efforts are.

The point, though, is that by keeping at it and continuing to tell story, the narrative voice and experience will finally shine through.

Don’t be discouraged if something doesn’t work, but make damn sure to learn from failures and move forward."

That advice comes in good time for me this morning, as yesterday in the Humorous Area Contest, between five, I was not even judged to be between the three bests. I did get the biggest laughs, perhaps, at the beginning and two or thee times toward the end, but probably for some my story did not gel. I think all women liked it more then the men, but who knows.

I got "your best so far, funny and with a message" from David T. whose opinion counts a lot for me, and "we did laugh the more of your story" from some of women, but listening again on the recorded soundtrack I see that the laugh was at the begining, yes, at the end yes, but almost nothing in between.

Yes, for me still a long way to go. Do not be discuraged, do as Michael Notaro, new chair of Toastmasters International said yesterday, Take the Next Step. Continue stretching yourself. Will do.

Black?

Black and white is interesting, and I learned how to use it better this last month.

I will use it, for certain forms a lot more, from now on.

From time to time.

But most of the time I still believe nothing can replace the magic of colour.

I took this two pictures one after the other, one in black and white and the other in colour.

What is YOUR opinion?


We were both waiting for the bus, who did not came for thirty minutes or more, and she was the one for once who begun speaking to me. What I was doing? I was taking photos of my reflection in the shadow of a car along the street.

It is so good to communicate.

I is wonderful to have the trace of mutual communication and understanding.