Rahman as Toastmaster for the first time
Hope everyone have had a wonderful and long weekend break! (Or wonderful 10 days vacation for some of you). As usual, our meeting was held on Tuesday evening with a good number of attendees, some with exciting stories about their Easter break to share. The MC for the evening was Rahman, who did a wonderful job in leading the meeting for the evening. And whether you like it or not, here is a recap to Meeting 294!
The evening was warmed up by Ming, giving us a 2-minutes inspirational story about focusing on our goal. Using Big Kev from the biggest loser as an example, she told us how the heaviest biggest loser contestant was able to achieve tremendous weight loss during his journey as biggest loser contestant. The secret behind this… is to focus! Focus on your goal and you will gradually shape your bad habit. Changing your bad habit is not easy, it is a timely process, but once you focus, you will be able to achieve your goal and have a better lifestyle.
Ming sharing an inspirational story; and Elena share with us her Easter adventure.
After inspiration, we had Eric giving a series of Table Topics questions about Easter and ANZAC break. To some people, Easter may mean getting chocolates eggs and bunnies! To some others, Easter has a deeper meaning. For Josh, Easter means spending quality time with friends and family. We are always tempted to go on a vacation, far away from home during long breaks, but sometimes, having a break from doing anything nor go anywhere is an awesome holiday – Just like Emma would rest and relax with her books and movies if she has gotten herself 3 working days off the week! And if you have kids and have trouble “controlling” them, maybe you can use some reversed psychology on them – Mark’s tactics. While some people were enjoying their Easter breaks, Elena was doing data entry! Elena, WHY!!
Peter in his “appropriate” stance during his workshop
Moving on, we have Peter Jordan giving us a workshop about knowing our audience. The type of speech you present will depends on your audience, so it is important to know your audience. You can know your audience by age, gender, occupation, leisure, work group, venue and the distance from the audience. Once you know your audience, you can tune the presentation of your speech to suit your audience, for example your stance when presenting a workshop at CVTM (refer to Peter). Despite warning us that there will be “something stupid” from his speech, I think Peter has cleverly make used that to produce a humourous and engaging workshop. The important message of the workshop is, know your audience and let your audience guide you in your speech. Music is nothing if your audience is dead deaf.
Food for thoughts for the evening by Edward, Vanessa and Mark (Left to Right)
Food for thoughts for the evening by Edward, Vanessa and Mark.
- Edward reminded us about why we come to Toastmasters. The real reason we are at Toastmasters is to be able gain confidence, and use our powerful voice to communicate – To get a job, to share your ideas, to become successful. Many people have a simple goal when joining Toastmasters, to improve their public speaking skills. Maybe now its the time to refine your goal and ask yourselves, what you want to achieve with this skills you developed.
- There are two sides to most of things in life. We either like it or don’t. The glass is either half full, or half empty. We are either one one side of the room, or the other. We can either think positively, or negatively. The choice is yours. Vanessa enlightened us with the power of positive thinking, using her brother to illustrate her point. When you are pessimistic, you are pretty much double dipping in misery. On the other hand, if you choose to believe in positive thoughts, opportunity will comes to your doorstep. Which side would you rather be on?
- There are plenty of public holidays with lost meaning for the newer generation, take Easter for example. To get us in the spirit for the upcoming ANZAC Day, Mark took us back in time to remind us about the joint Australian and New Zealand amy who fought bravely in Gallipoli during First World War. Because of our ANZAC legend, 25th April has became the day for the Australians to remember the sacrifice of those brave ones who died in the war. Such an informative and educative speech about ANZAC day from Mark, put together at the eleventh hour.
Meeting 294 was filled with inspiring quotes and stories behind our public holiday. Like our grammarian has pointed out the good grammar and bad grammar, and left our grandma out of the highlights and phrases (Steve’s pun). Another long weekend ahead! Hope you take this opportunity to revisit the historical stories about Australia. Enjoy and stay safe 🙂
Upcoming events…
Willetton Club celebrating their 50th Meeting
28th April 2014, Monday 6.45-8.30pm
WHERE:
Rostrata Family Centre
Prendwick Reserve
Cnrs Tilston Close & Prendwick Way
Willetton
Power up on the Peninsula
District 17 Convention in 1 month’s time!
If you want to be part of this legendary event this year, better register now!
— Huili