Toastmaster Ade was bright, welcoming and organised – everything a good Toastmaster should be! With the speakers all lined up and all the seats filled she launched the evening on time, introducing JP for a President’s Address.
“Confidence is everything” asserted JP, while reflecting on the new job he’d only just won at his work. “And our club is where we get to come to practise our confidence”. What a relevant way to begin our meeting. Relevant because this message was reinforced over and over throughout the evening with anecdotal stories of work-borne confidence from Jennifer, Tim, Ellie & Dave B as well.
Beginning his Toastmasters journey tonight was Matt, with his ice-breaker speech ‘The night to remember’. This was a recount of his incredible ordeal, surviving the 7.1M Darfield earthquake while on the 24th floor of the Hotel Grand Chancellor. There was terror, darkness, uncertainty and fleeing into the broken streets of Christchurch. Matt retold this story with clarity, both in his rich descriptive language and with the projection of his voice. A very memorable story and a great way to kick off a Toastmasters journey. Congratulations Matt!
‘A roadmap to experience’ by Dave Y was a series of the many injuries Dave had encountered throughout his life so far. Many many injuries, which sum to enough practical experience to help him deal with most of the emergencies he faces at his work in the meat industry! Dave’s had injured backs, encounters with corrugated iron, incidents stumbling onto things in the dark – including dogs. Then there were knives, keyboards and even a series of broken bones which began at the age of 18 months! Thanks for a great speech tonight Dave, and please be careful out there!
Speaking from the Entertaining Speaker manual, ‘An experience’ was a captivating, side-splitting recount of Marg’s Devonshire Tea experience at The Ritz in London. Most people need to book 2.5 months in advance, but our Margie with her charm, managed to slip in on the day! There was English Breakfast tea, cucumber sandwiches, pull-apart scones and a strange black-lace woman who was being kissed all the way up her arm – “It was enough to curdle the cream” exclaimed Marg! Before she made it out, Marg managed to insult the staff by asking for a doggie bag, before getting stuck in the loos after using too much hand cream! Marg broke through barriers tonight, speaking for the first time without notes. Congratulations on this great achievement tonight and this fantastic speech.
JP’s table topics were a great challenge tonight. Earlier in the evening he’d asked people for snippets of information about themselves that others wouldn’t necessarily know. The challenge was to guess the person and explain why! There were pizza lovers, goals to work around the world for 10 years, Zephyr drivers and pedal-to-the-metal speedster driver!
Congratulations also to our guest Malcom for coming along introducing himself at the meeting. We’d love to see you back again.
See you all next time!