168th Gavel Meeting

A group of girls wearing cheeththa frocks and a group of boys wearing sarongs and shirts gathered to the Post Graduate Seminar Room, ENTC Building on 22^nd of April of Monday to celebrate Sinhala Hindu New Year at Gavel.

“Wish you all a very happy and prosperous new year”, the President commenced the 168^th Gavel meeting – Aluth Awrudu Meeting. Everyone was eagerly waiting to share experiences and to grab Aluth Awrudu fun at Gavel. Everyone stood up for the national anthem lead by Damith Senanayake. To conduct this special meeting, the President introduced the Toastmaster. The Toastmaster was an enthusiastic member of the club, Imesh LihiniKaduarchchi. Role players were introduced. In order to let the audience to warm up their voices round robin session was conducted raising the topic as “How was your new year?” Since this is the season in which everyone is on a cloud nine, no-one found that 20 secs were enough to share their experiences. After a joyful round robin session the Table Topic Master for this meeting was called upon.  Charitha Saumya, a dedicated Gavellier of the time had come up with a nice set of topics. Sweet memories of playing traditional games like “Kata gaseema”, the egg story, making Kokis, rituals, Nonagatha time activities were some of experiences shared on the stage. Unless time was a constraint we could have listened to hundreds of stories. After a wonderful Table Topic session control was returned to the Toastmaster. An emerging great speaker of the club Vibhanu Arachchige made a fabulous speech on “Am I still dreaming?” as his second project in the CC manual. After all the evolution reports were taken the Gavel was handed over to the President. He adjourned the meeting inviting all the members in the house to enjoy arranged refreshment. Delicious sweets were even sweater with laughters, as always. After having the usual photo shooting the Aluth Awrudu meeting 2013 came to the end.

167th Gavel Meeting

February and March are the most awaited and the most excited months in boys’ school calendars, just because it is the big match season. Boys, old boys, family members and friends all gather in numbers to grounds not only to witness an excited cricket encounter but also most importantly to witness “the big match fun”.  So why don’t we share such wonderful experiences in Gavel? It was the big match meeting at Gavel on 25^th of March 2013 at 5 p.m. in hall 215, Sumanadasa Building.

The President commenced the 3^rd consecutive big match meeting. After the national anthem, the Toastmaster for that special meeting was declared.  Of course the Toastmaster was an enthusiastic member of the club, and was the one and only Anandian in that audience, Vibhanu Arachchige. After the introduction of role players the round robin topic was raised. The topic was “Going to the big with your girl friend/boy friend”. Most of the members of the house suggested that it is not going to work.  After a funny session Table Topic Master was called upon. A big match fan for the sake of the word was invited to take the control and we got to know that he had wonderful experiences in big matches. The person was Sirimevna Jayasundara. He came up with a great set of topics. Boys in the audience were really enthusiastic to put their experiences into words. After a joyful session the control was handed over to the Toastmaster. The gathering was really lucky to witness two brilliant speeches by two experienced speakers in the club, one by Hasini Abeywikrama and another one by Dinesh Kenady. Simply they were amazing.  After having the evaluations of those speeches, another excited meeting came to the end.

The president adjourned the 167^th meeting.

166th Gavel Meeting

It was time to have a normal meeting for the Gavel family after having a series of themed meetings. 166^th Gavel meeting was held at Postgraduate Training Room in the 3rd floor of the ENTC Building on March 21st, 2013, from 5.00 p.m. onwards. The President commenced the meeting and everyone stood up for the national anthem. 

Toastmaster was Charith Akalanka, an enthusiastic member of the club. After introducing the role players, the round robin session commenced. The toastmaster stated that he would not give an introduction to the topic and he invited the audience to tell whatever comes to their minds when they hear the word “Maththala”. This session was full of humor.

Then it was time to have the table topic session. Imesh Prathiba, another emerging active member in the club played the role of table topics master for the first time in his gavel story. A good set of topics were displayed and everyone came forward to express their ideas. After the evaluators’ reports, control was handed over to the toastmaster. Since there were no prepared speeches, the toastmaster handed over the Gavel to the President. The meeting was adjourned by the President. 

165th Gavel Meeting

“A promise is a promise” –

Mr. President called the 165^th meeting to order by mentioning the UN theme of the Women’s day 2013. It was the “Women’s Day Meeting at Gavel on 11^th of March at 5.00 p.m in 215 Hall, Sumanadasa building.  It was an exciting meeting because both girls and boys had a lot to share about women.  Boys make fun as they criticize girls. Yet they do appreciate the presence of women in their lives as mothers, as sisters and of course as girl friends. Girls are definitely proud of being girls.

After the national anthem the President introduced the toastmaster for that special day.  She was the ideal person for the toastmaster because she is known as the feminist of the club. It was none other than Hasini Abeywickrama. According to the procedures role players were introduced. Round robin session topic had two versions. “In girls’ shoes” for boys and “how I see girls” for girls. Everyone pointed out how important it is the presence of women in their lives.

After warming up their voices the audience was ready for the table topic session. Toastmaster called upon the Table topic master, again a female representation in the club, Sandareka Wickramanayake. The gathering was so enthusiastic to express their ideas. Many valuable and interesting thoughts did come up.

“Equality should be in every aspect..” ,

“No need of women’s day because it is an insult for them” ,

“Women are not hard to understand, men just need a little bit of literature!” were a few of them.

Most of the speakers took more than 3 minutes for their table topic speeches; it might be because they had a lot to share. It was really enjoyable. 

After evaluation reports control was handed over back to the toastmaster. Since there was no prepared speeches after having grammarian’s report and general evaluator’s report toast master’s duty came to the end.

Then a small game was conducted by the president. After that Women’s Meeting 2013 was adjourned by the President.

164th Gavel Meeting

After a while we met at the university premises to have a Gavel meeting. It was the 164^th meeting held on 4^th of March 2013, at Sumanadasa building at about 5.pm.  Since our President,  Pasan Pethiyagoda who is also the student representative of IEEE region 10 had visited Bangkok, Thailand for a conference he was not able to make it. Therefore the Vice President Education Hasini Abeywikarama headed the meeting. She called the meeting to the order and everyone stood up for the national anthem lead by Dinesh. 

The control was handed over to the Toast Master for the day, Vibhanu Archchige. “If you get a chance to date a celebrity, who would you choose?” was raised as the round robin topic. Everyone was excited expressing their feelings about such a date. This made the session enjoyable. The time was to the table topic session. Sachille Athapaththu was called upon as the Table Topics Master. He had come up with a good set of topics. They could be related to our lives as well as most of them were about current situations. The audience eagerly gave voices to their thoughts. In the prepared speech session Sajith was supposed to break his ice. He delivered a genuine, touching and inspirable speech revealing him.    

After all the evaluations reports, it was time to mark the end of another wonderful evening at Gavel. The Vice President Education, Hasini adjourned the meeting.