As usual, Kevin opened the meeting by giving a warm welcome to all the members and guests. Heather set a very clever theme: proverbial wisdom. Grammarian Siloato introduced the word for the night “Catastrophic”. The word was commonly used by the members and guests in the evening. For your information, the meeting was fun, humorous and full of wisdom and far away from “catastrophic”.
First section: prepared speeches.
In Ivo’s speech, “defusing verbal criticism”, he showed people practical and step by step methods to deal with criticism. Franziska’s speech is “Bird in the Tree”. With her stories as a marathon runner and a toastmaster club member, she inspired people to find their own strength and confidence. Liz, a wonderful story teller gave us a vivid picture of her catastrophic experience with horses on a pitch-dark night on a farm. The story was entertaining, funny and informative. In his speech, Ratul gave informative and practical ideas about mentor and mentee. If you are thinking to join a toastmaster club, that information is especially useful.
In the speech evaluation, Jie, Ted, Richard and Jessica shared their encouraging, considerate and constructive feedbacks to the speakers.
For the business section, our president Kevin encouraged people to join our friendly and wonderful three king’s toastmaster club. He pointed out that we have quite a few brilliant members eg: Steve, Ivo, Lakshman, Liz, Chris, and more in this club. It is a great place to learn to be a great speaker and communicator.
For the challenging impromptu speeches, table topic Master Chris prepared fun questions for the speakers to express their imagination and experience. All speakers including our guests looked as if they were enjoying their speeches. Then table topic evaluators Tony (our guest) and Lakshman gave constructive, encouraging feedback to all the impromptu speakers in a rather amusing way.
Near the end, Ah counter Jeffery, grammarian Siloata gave hilarious reports of their findings about the use of “ahs” and “ catastrophic” respectively.
Next, general evaluator Sherry gave a very comprehensive evaluation to every role holder except the speakers. Well, this is the best place to learn to be a good speaker with constructive evaluations on all speakers and roles!
At the end, the guests gave very positive feedbacks for the evening. And they all seemed to have fun.
Also, our hard-working and warm-hearted president Kevin prepared us lots of scrumptious refreshments for the meeting to make sure all members and guests are happy both inside and out.
By the way, we had three Onehunga toastmaster members contributing to our fun meeting with roles and stories. They were Tony, Tom and Pauline.
Last, here are some of the quotes I jotted down from the meeting used by our members.
Heather: “ Ko te kai a te rangatira he korero” which means “The Food of chiefs is talking.”
Kevin: “Many hands make light work.”
Bao: “A thousand miles start with a first step.”
Ivo: “Criticism like rain should be gentle enough to nourish a man’s growth without destroying his roots.”
Franziska: “A bird sitting in a tree is never afraid of the branch breaking. Its trust is not in the branch but in its own wings.”
Jeffery: “The real only mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.”
So, that was our evening. As “I hear and I forget, I see and I remember. I do and I understand.” You are welcome to experience our meeting next time.
