Tonight’s meeting was Toastmasters perfection – a truly stirring speech and another that was enlightening, loads of entertainment and laughs and a whole lot of learning too. At the centre of it all was David K who completed nailed the Toastmaster role – a great achievement for this first time in the role.
But kicking it all off was Wayne with a reading from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. From the chapter “Fog on the barrow downs” we heard this expressive literature live as Tom Bombadil sent the Hobbits north into the hills of the Barrow Downs. Great stuff Wayne.
Kathy reached a monumental milestone today where after nearly two years at Cathedral City, she wrapped up her final, 10th speech from the Competent Communicator manual. “A bad day at the office” was an eye-opening and incredibly stirring speech, based on observations Kathy had made while serving with the Salvation Army to aide Christchurch’s prostitutes on Manchester Street. This utterly gripping speech had Kathy’s audience hanging on her every word as she told the stories of three street workers and the situations they were in. Kathy’s appeal to spare these women our judgement, instead giving them compassion and dignity was incredibly honest & effective. Congratulations Kathy – both for your service to these women, making their stories heard and on achieving such a great Toastmasters milestone.
JP followed from Kathy with another milestone – his final speech from the Speaking to Inform manual. “Marketing makes you fat, but it’s still your fault” was a speech that was far more serious than the name might suggest. Within 10 minutes, JP had successfully dissected the main mechanism that the world of marketing applies to us every day – cue, routine, reward. Then JP turned this around to teach us how to apply the very same principle to effect change in our own lives, by interrupting our own habit-loops and building new, constructive ones. Thank you for this insightful and educational speech JP!
Table topics was a riot, with Jennifer handing out covers of fake children’s books, tasking her victims to fill in the story! Brilliant! We had Sergie with “Kitty visits the vet”, Wayne with “Where’s my nest” and Matt with “Charlie the grumpy chicken”. Janet was solving Christchurch’s ‘decorator crisis’ with ‘Puppies who wanted to paint’ and Dave Young’s ‘Daisy’s happy day’ was a twisted story of how Daisy the cow actually few over the moon after a series of run-ins at the Kennedy Space Center! Incredible.
Thanks for another great evening – see you all next time!