Today is another busy day like yesterday, spending most of the day next to this larger-than-life black-and-white photo of myself. Lunch was the Golden Gavel award, to Pamela Wallin, the Canadian journalist and media personality. She had quite an interesting talk on Canadian/American politics, and just as she made a small joke about Canadians being the Americans’ best friends, whether the Americans knew it or not, the stage lights slowly dimmed down to black! At first, I think some thought it was a joke, but they didn’t come back up. She kept on going, and then someone got a spotlight on her, and after a while longer, the lights sort of came up. Apparently a technical glitch!

Thursday evening was the candidates’ showcases, where we (candidates) travel through four rooms (grouped by region) answering questions for 10 minutes about our candidacy in a table topics style. All three unopposed candidates (including myself) were put into a single group for questions (opposed candidates were questioned alone). It was only enough time for an average of three questions for each of us.

In the first room, I didn’t do very well on a question about team-building, but I think I did well in the second and third rooms. In the last room, which included my own home region, I was in the middle of answering an easy question, and I completely forgot what the question was! I mumbled off something about “and that’s why we have to keep on doing what we’re doing”, when I should’ve asked for the question to be repeated. But from the feedback I got afterwards, not many people noticed, I guess.

After that, all candidates were asked to attend a reception back in the area where our tables were set up, but that was in a different building, and the attendance was pretty light. By the end, I had given out over half of the printed directories, and actually had a few DGs coming to me and asking for them! Apparently there was some pretty good word of mouth going around, I received many many flattering compliments on the value of the book.