“Spring has sprung!” began Toastmaster Margie with a smile. This was a warm and friendly Toastmaster meeting – a spring-feeling-spiderism-voxel-concoction of epic proportions!
Leading the pack tonight was David K. with his CC speech #8 “A novel approach to voxel geometry with MARS CT”. Clearly this was not going to be your average run-of-the-mill speech. David had a projector, great diagrams with mathematical equations, animations and Beer’s Law even – all based around his research into Spectral molecular imaging at the University of Canterbury Physics Department. David ran a great presentation tonight and received some great feedback from Dave B. to help him prepare for the real thing this Thursday. We wish you luck David!
JP’s “Living with extrovertism” speech tonight was also a practise – a practise for the Area Toastmasters Humorous Speech competition later this month. This speech opened with a BANG! The speech was hillarious, based around anecdotal stories of JP’s past, living with “extrovertism”. There was mis-diagnosed Turret’s syndrome, lime-green tracksuit pants, a mishap with wees at school and then finally a job which JP said “I could just talk all day and people would give me money for it”. A great speech, with some great feedback to tune it up even more. We wish you luck at the contest JP – sock it to ’em!
Jen’s Tabletopics were perfectly apt tonight. Based around the theme of spring, Jen had a ‘new spin on it’, asking “Volunteers to spring forward” to speak!
Dave B began with the question; “What will you miss about winter?”. But the reply was oh-so-clever! Turns out our Dave had a friend back in the UK by the name of Mr Winter who he used to get up to all sorts of trouble with!
“What is the sound of spring” was the question assigned to Matt, our newest Toastmaster. “Boing!” he began! Then there were bees, birds chirping & motor mowers.
Ellie had “What is the smell of spring”, which she very cleverly described as the end of soup. Because we love soup in the thick of winter, “but by the end of August, we’re completely over soup!”. There were daffodils, and plenty else involving the other senses – even ‘Extrovertism-get-ridicism’!
JP had the task of describing his favourite season, beginning with winter. “I’m built for winter” he said. Then rolling through the other seasons, JP picked the goodness out of each, eventually struggling to pin a favourite on any one.
Before we wrapped up the evening, we got to hear a report first-hand from Ellie who recently attended the International Toastmasters Convention in KL. Ellie talked about a few “first” experiences for her on the trip, but then she talked about a ‘lump in her throat’. And the lump was because she truly believed Tuesday night was the best night of the week, yet last Tuesday, she was missing us all and decided to go shopping for us instead. Isn’t she lovely?! So tonight, Ellie presented all sorts of Toastmasters trinkets – there were ‘Word of the day’ cards, new member cards, Toastmaster-branded 1st, 2nd & 3rd place ribbons and a complete set of pins for all the club committee members which she & JP presented on the night. Thank you so much Ellie!
See you all next time!