Time keeping was the theme of the night and Toastmaster Dave B really had us thinking right from word go when he declared that time was always fixed and only energy is variable. “Forget about time, it’s all about energy” he exclaimed before launching the evening with our Grammarian David K.
The word of the night was ‘Triumph’, a particularly apt word for our Grammarian, having only last week submitted his Masters thesis! In true grammarian style, David rolled out beautiful adjective after adjective as he explained the emotions he’d been through over the last 12 months while researching and writing his thesis, ending in triumph last Friday – a word that was successfully applied left, right and centre tonight!
Ben read a brilliant Bard tonight from the book “Moving ’em – a guide to low stress animal handling” by Burt Smith. This gripping reading took us through the lessons learned by the author when dealing with one particular wild cow. There were lassos, herding, horses, sweet revenge and remorse – what a great piece of text and such a great reading Ben.
Sergie well-and-truly kicked off his Toastmasters career tonight with his incredible icebreaker, “Oh no, this cannot be happening to me!”. Evaluator Dave B described this speech as ‘something very special, spectacular’ – and rightly so, the speech was an incredible story and it was delivered with conviction. Based around events Sergie experienced during work travel in 2002, this story was both a great introduction for Sergie to the group while simultaneously being a dramatic & thrilling story of gun-point robbery in Venezuela. What a great way to start Sergie – welcome to Toastmasters!
With her 7th Competent Communicator speech tonight titled “Lend me your ear”, Jennifer completely blew us away with a speech that was entertaining, incredibly well researched and utterly engaging. This speech was based around ‘The near square merger’ – a surprisingly marked change to New Zealand pronunciation which advanced incredibly quickly from the 1970’s to the late 1990’s. In the opening of her speech, Jennifer illustrated her point brilliantly by having three volunteers read the words “chair, cheer, spear, spare, rare & rear” to the audience while asking the audience to write the words down. Congratulations on achieving your speech goals tonight Jennifer and treating us to such an incredible speech!
Tabletopics had some laugh-until-you-cry moments tonight as Tabletopics Master Chrissy dropped her victims into explaining how they got to the peak of their (randomly chosen) careers. We had the country’s most successful Bible Preacher (Wayne) who advanced to preaching from the highest level of the Parliament steps. There was a Sam who loved talking so much, he bounced from job to job until eventually landing his dream job at Campbell Live and Kathy, the girl who transitioned full-circle from funeral director to wedding planner, with the goal of running longer work projects. Tim started Christchurch’s largest midwifery service after witnessing a birthing experience so extreme it drove him away from his career in software development and finally we had JP, the army tank commander who was driven to the job particularly for the ‘comradery’ and tight work spaces!
Thanks for another stellar evening! See you all next time!