Last week was another inspiring week at Croydon Communicators. Already this year we’ve had around 20 guests and at least half a dozen of them have either become new members or given firm intention to join - that's great news!
I walk into our venue at 18:45 and I was already met by several club members as well as completely new guests. I am already looking forward to the evening because tonight’s Toastmaster of the Evening is none other than our old previous member who has recently rejoined the club – it’s KJ! I was particularly looking forward to it because I waited almost a year before I got the courage to be Toastmaster. And here we have KJ going for it, taking up the chance just a few weeks after becoming a member – top marks from me already!
Meeting Starts
OK, here we go, bell after bell, it’s 19:00, the venue is full and we are ready to start. Every time I see Paul, our Sergeant-at-Arms, up there showing us the exits, he reminds me of flying and looking for the seatbelt and life jackets!
After the three F's – Fire, Facilities and 'Fone' from Paul, he introduces our President, Cheryn, who with a little help from one of our newest members, Mary, reminds us why we are here as Toastmasters. Cheryn then introduces KJ, our Toastmaster of the Evening.
To introduce all those who will play a role tonight, KJ has asked them to answer one question – "if you had to learn a new language, what would it be?"
One of the role players of the evening who will assist KJ to run the meeting is our Timekeeper and is taken up by David. No he’s not that David .. or that one ... oh not that one either! For those who haven’t been here for a while, we have another David in the house, another of our newest members, and in response to our Toastmaster's question, the language he would like to learn is Spanish. You can never have enough Davids.
Next up is Paul Rhys-Taylor who is our Grammarian tonight. Knowing his love of the language and specifically its proper use, we are in the right hands. Paul would like to add Swahili to his list of languages he already speaks. He also introduces the world of the day, Differentiate, which is clearly displayed around the room.
Now it’s time to increase the temperature in the room – it’s the warm-up time. If you want to have the room buzzing and get those neurons firing vigorously during this session you only need to ask Rahmat to be the Warm Up Leader. And the warm-up task is to introduce yourself and say what animal you would be and that animal must start with the same first letter as your first name – excellent! All of a sudden we have a room with a duck, a pussy cat, a giraffe, a squirrel, a slippery snake, a shark, an anaconda, an ant and a dolphin amongst many other intriguing animals. Thinking of the many species, it reminds me that the London Zoo has recently finished their annual stock take. According to the BBC “Last year's stock take took place on New Year's Day. Then, there were 70 species of mammals, 119 types of birds, 81 reptiles and 281 different species of fish.” I would want to count the penguins.
OK, after that brief digression into the local news, we are back in the room where everyone has just stopped laughing at all those introductions, it is time for the main part of the first half of the evening – the prepared speeches, all four of them.
Prepared Speeches
Everyone is now concentratin on the Toastmaster who introduces another Paul, our first speaker, who will deliver his Ice Breaker - the first speech project of the Competent Communicator manual you receive when you join. Born at a very young age in Essex, Paul’s words not mine!, Paul went to a grammar school where he learned to speak Latin, drink beer and play rugby. He then joined the merchant navy which meant travelling the world and drinking more beer – probably many guys’ ideal combination. A fascinating journey through Paul’s speech! What is Paul’s favourite place, I hear you wonder? It is a land far, far away called England, well it was for Paul while he travelled the globe. And the language Paul would like to learn? it’s Australian! Well if you think you speak Australian then, would she be apples or you’d be mad as a cut snake if I offered you a flake with your ice cream?
The second speaker for tonight is Mary who, like Paul, is also delivering her first speech -the Ice Breaker. Mary is an accountant and an excellent one it seems from her stories of the businesses she helped turn around. You can tell she is oozing with passion for her job but you can also see how excellent she is at delivering a speech. Mary has been a Toastmaster before, and one can see she has been using the techniques we learn at Toastmasters. A professionally delivered speech – well done Mary!
Our third speaker is Dan who would like to learn Visual Basic. For those non programmers out there, Dan is hoping to learn the basics of seeing, but a computer language used behind all your favourite Excel functions. The purpose of Dan’s speech was to help us have a better night’s sleep. He explained the different uses of the bedroom, but apparently he left one out for some reason. As he explains, we can all take 3 steps to improve our sleep - right temperature, using a sleep mask and ear plugs. Who would have thought that you could use the power of three in your sleep too? A visually rich speech from Dan – well done Dan, or shall I say well Dan!
Our president has the last word or rather 7 minutes of words – she is our fourth speaker with an educational speech which is beneficial to all of us – how presidential of her! Cheryn’s speech is a detailed speech about how we can all make the most from Toastmasters. She talked about the different manuals we can follow from the start, including the advanced manuals to achieve your Bronze, Silver and Gold awards, as well as the events, contests and workshops we can take part in. We then also learned some lessons from a Mama Eagle teaching her young to fly, which I felt was the bonus part and ties in perfectly with our animal kingdom game during the warm-up session!
Speech Evaluations
The prepared speeches are over, and the evaluations are on. The first up is Sue evaluating Paul. Being a lover of foreign travels, Sue seems to be fascinated with Paul’s adventures and shares his fondness of Australia. Sue rightly commends Paul’s ability to share stories and grab the audience’s attention. Sue’s evaluation is descriptive and straight to the point, allowing and enabling Paul to apply this valuable feedback.
Evaluating Mary is Anne who would love to learn Greek because one side of her family lives in Cyprus and she often goes there to visit them. Given Mary’s performance as speaker, Anne had a list of well deserved commendations as well as a tip or two on how Mary could make an even bigger impact on her audience.
Next up is Aarthi who is evaluating Dan and his 'Sleep Well' speech. Aarthi’s evaluation was certainly not one to need yarning from as her energetic speech makes everyone pay attention to her, and rightly so. She picks up on Dan’s humour which makes a speech more pleasant and more likely to remember. In his speech Dan used a number of props including the demonstration of the sleeping mask which Aarthi commended.
Finally there goes Aleks who evaluates Cheryn. He cometh, talks about the power of three which Cheryn used numerously and very effectively, flaps his wings like Cheryn’s Mama Eagle a couple of times to commend her proper use of stage and off he goes. Oh yes, and he would learn Chinese because it is very likely to be useful in the future.
Before we break off for the first half, KJ calls David, our Timekeeper, to give a report on the times so far – everyone did well, so we deserve a break and nice cup of tea!
Table Topics
The time of the Earl Gray and café latté is over, time for Table Topics! KJ starts the second half by introducing our Table Topics Master who is none other than our honourable member for Croydon Communicators, Arcadius. The language he would choose to learn would also be Chinese because it will be handy in the future. After explaining his role, Arcadius starts picking the wary audience one by one.
First victim - no, victor, depending on how you see Table Topics, was Praveen – one of our guests - now turned member - hooray (he obviously likes Table Topics then!)! His question was, how have you prepared for Valentine’s Day? Straight away you can see that Praveen is a victor because he gets on stage, delivers a great speech and stands very confidently. And his answer seems to be very easy – he has not prepared at all. I can see your gasps, but fear not for him as his wife isn’t bothered much.
Paul Rhys-Taylor was Arcadius’ second speaker answering what stands between you and success? Paul is very articulate, but he knows the answer and goes straight to the point – it is fear, unbelief and mistrust he says. He then concludes that banishing and overcoming this trio clears your path to success.
Next Arcadius Asks “if there’s no enemy within, then the enemy without can do no harm”, what do you think Mary? Even though her accounting skills may not have been much help to answer a philosophical question, Mary was more than articulate to expand and analyse the question and finally conclude with agreeing with the statement.
You are a beautiful woman, but one morning you wake up a man, what do you do, Arcadius asks Sonya? Not to be phased by the rather unusual question, Sonya answers, I would wash the dishes and support my wife before elaborating even further.
Arcadius’ next speaker would have a super power of her choice in addition to being invisible, but she didn’t know it yet. The speaker is Gina and her power is to make people she touches happy. Then, came a voice from the back, would you rob a bank? No, I would not rob a bank, she says, because everyone would be happy and wouldn’t worry about money.
Good things come to those who wait, Rahmat, says Arcadius. Rahmat gets on stage and says that as well as wait, you pray and the good things will come.
Arcadius then continues, a winner never quits and a quitter never wins, what do you say Aleks? After the question to the audience Aleks argues that if you choose a path and later realise it was the wrong path, would you, now knowing that carrying on, you would fail, still continue because you don’t want to quit? Or would you rather re-evaluate your options and “quit” that path and choose the right one and win?
The final Table Topics speaker was Sue with the question, where would you choose to be born if you could? Well, says Sue, I love Australia and their weather so I would choose there. But then I love the culture contrast in India so maybe I would choose to be born there. But then Kentish maid to Kentish maid, back to the Medway in Kent I’d be.
Table Topics Evaluation and meeting close
After that set of captivating selection of questions from Arcadius and open-minded answers by the enthusiastic speakers, it is the turn of Amma to evaluate all the Tabel topic speakers. She certainly has a huge task at hand, but no task is too big for Amma as she has a sandwich for each and every one of the speakers. I hope they are not full because her Commend Recommend Commend sandwiches are as rich in flavour as a Lamb Rogan Josh from the Cashmere region. She then topped it with a demo of dancing to show how some speakers could have built on their performances.
Now we are nearing the end of the meeting, so KJ invites our Grammarian, Paul, on stage to give the verdict on how we did with the word of the day (differentiate) and our use of language. In total, seven speakers had used the word of the day. Paul also gave a break down on the use of the 'um's' and 'ah's' as well as a nice, long list of interesting phrases and words he heard being used throughout the vening, like attire and luminous.
The final speaker is the General Evaluator (GE) who will evaluate everyone who hasn’t been evaluated so far, such as the five Evaluators, Timekeeper, Grammarian, President, Warm Up Leader, Sergeant at Arms, Table Topics Master, and even the venue. The GE is Stephen Edun from Greenwich Speakers. Stephen took his time to make sure everyone was thoroughly evaluated. His use of humour and storytelling was amusing. He was impressed with the number of times the speakers used the word of the day, especially since apparently he was the Grammarian in his home club last week and only two people used his word of the day – romance. Maybe romance isn’t in the air in Greenwich :-) Overall Stephen did a splendid job and closed the evening with humour.
After a final report from our Timekeeper David, it is time for our President to get some feedback from tonight’s guests. Oh, hang on a minute I hear you say, we haven’t heard much of our Toastmaster of the Day, the mighty KJ. There are good reasons my fellow Toastmasters – a great Toastmaster works seamlessly in the background like a Swiss watch to get everyone else on and off the stage gracefully. The fact that everything went like clockwork is evidence of KJ’s fantastic job as Toastmaster. WELL DONE KJ!
Cheryn asks our guests Gina and Sonya what they thought of the evening. We had four guests tonight, but the third guest had to leave early and the fourth, well he came, he saw and he became a member there and then. So a big welcome to Praveen, our newest member!
I hope I’ve given you a taste of the evening we had on the 13th of February. If you thought it was a bit long, I have a much better solution, come to the next meeting as it is much more enjoyable if I do say so myself :-) For those who couldn’t come, I hope I did justice and you enjoyed the read.
Dates for your Diary
Next meeting: Thursday 27 Feb 2014 – Mind in Croydon
Second meeting: Thursday 13 March 2014 – Mind in Croydon
Club Contest: Thursday, 27th March 2014 (International Speech and Evaluation Contest)
Please contact either myself (Aleks) or Aarthi if you would like to take part in the Speech Contest or Evaluation Contest. For the Speech Contest, you must have completed at least 6 speeches from the Competent Communicator manual. However, you only need to be a paid up member to take part in the Evaluation Contest.
I will send out another email with more details about the contests, but you can contact either myself or Aarthi with your interest from now.
I hope you’ve had a nice, relaxing weekend and see you all soon!
Aleks Kola
Vice President for Public Relations
Croydon Communicators
