By Niluxsi Puvanenthiran
With giggles and laughter of amiable Gaveliers, the 259th Gavel meeting commenced. It was more special to the Gavel family as it was the second joint meeting with Gaveliers of Institute of Chemistry.
Afnan Azeem, a very enthusiastic Gavelier of ICHEM took up the role of Toastmaster and started the session with a precious quote: “People will not remember what you say; people will not remember what you did; but people will always remember how you made them feel.” With a captivating introduction we had a very interesting round robin session under the topic “An embarrassing moment I faced recently”. Probably it was the longest round robin session in the recent history. The session was really funny and embarrassing as well.
Role players were chosen from both University of Moratuwa and Institute of Chemistry. Table topic session was led by Merl Chandana. It was endowed with a variety of topics for which people rushed to talk.
15 speeches were delivered altogether by both families of Gavel. Speeches were really informative and inspiring. I was personally impressed by two contrary thoughts shared by speakers as “having no expectations is the secret of happiness” and “more expectations end up in more successes.” Some of the notable quotations during the table topic session were:
• Try to be satisfied with what you get and what you have.
• Bad decisions make good stories; Good decisions make great leaders.
• Life is all about priorities.
The speeches were on diverse spheres. A romantic story by Samadhi of ICHEM and a thoughtful speech by Hasindu through simple soap solutions were exalted. The word of the day ‘amiable’ was a great hit. Speakers used it 18 times. Malith pointed out the best and bad phrase usages in the grammarian report style which we started following recently.
As it was a joint session we drenched ourselves with a variety of fun activities. We had a splendid musical fiesta and delicious refreshments were provided. At last everyone sang and danced together and made ourselves more intimate. Group photos and selfies were taken as momentos of an evening infused with unexpected amorous moments.
The role players for the day
Project Chair- Praveen Kumarasinghe
Toastmaster – Afnan Azeem
Table Topics Master – Merl Chandana
Timer – Pathum Serasinghe
Ah Counter – Samadhi Nawalage
Grammarian – Malith Jayaweera
General Evaluator –Piyumi Bandaranayake
Table Topics Evaluator I -Sirimevan Jayasundera
Table Topic Evaluator II – Vibhanu Osanka Arachchige
Table Topics
• When I woke up this morning
• What if …?
• Don’t grow up. It’s a trap!
• My favourite spirit lifter
• When our eyes met for the first time
• The secret of happiness
• If at first you don’t succeed…
• The best movie I have ever watched
• What Gavel means to me
• Bad decisions make the best stories