Toastmaster Club

After spending two hours last night typing this up I could not believe how idiotic I was when I clicked the ‘revert back to draft button’ before saving it somewhere else again. The joys of being an amateur blogger. Toastmaster Club take 2.  

Last night I had the honour of attending a Toastmasters club meeting. As it was my first time attending an event like this, it was definitely an eye opener and I would recommend going to one if you have never been. 

The evening started off with a 'meet and greet'/refreshments session where I was introduced to some of the Toastmasters. Once everybody had arrived and gathered, the meeting commenced. It was opened by the Toastmaster of the evening, followed by a short speech given by the president of the club. After that all the guests had to give a short introduction about ourselves - our names, our professions, our hobbies and who we were a guest off. Being the guest closest to the front of the room, I was the one who had to start this off but not remembering what I had to introduce myself about, I was then prompted by the people in the room. 

As the evening progressed, there were prepared speeches followed by a short intermission (we had sandwiches and fried rice with some pretty good sambal). After that, there was a session on table topics. Not understanding what this session was about, I asked around during the intermission but was told that I would find out firsthand about it. So when the session commenced boy was I surprised. Table topics session involved picking a topic out of a pouch and giving a 2 minute speech about it. If you know me well, you will know I have always struggled with public speaking but given the encouragement from the whole room, I decided to pick a topic - BAD CHOICE. Haha anyways I picked the topic about an 'invigorating holiday'. Now I know most of you will be thinking, that's not a bad topic, should be easy to talk about right? Nooo, it wasn't, well, not for me at least. So for the 2 minutes that I should've been speaking about this topic, I stood frozen in front of the room (facepalm). The worst was once I went back to my seat and calmed down, the idea starting flowing in and by then it was the next person's turn. Anyway, here is the speech that I should've done, or something along these lines. 

An invigorating holiday, how I wish I had more of these lately. To lie down on a sandy beach with a good book, my sunnies and a giant umbrella. Feeling the sea breeze and listening to the waves overlapping one another. Unfortunately, these days even the preparation and the journey to our holiday destination take all the energy out of me. I have to triple check all our packed bags to make sure we had everything because although most of the time Zac packs his and Grace's bag, he somehow always manages to forget something. YES ALWAYS. An example of this is our recent trip to Singapore, where he packed our toothbrushes but forgot to put them in our bags and so we had to go out and buy them from the pharmacy. Then there is the journey itself. On a good day, Grace will sleep for a few hours if not the whole trip, or play on Zac's note. On a bad day, she will be crying, screaming for attention, trying to get out of her car seat or walking up and down the aisles of the plane. And she's ONLY TWO. So by the time we get to our holiday destination, I'm already tired and you will think I can finally relax and enjoy myself now. Unfortunately, my daughter has other plans and being the little adventurer that she is, she will want to run around and explore and both my husband and I end up trying to keep up with her. So, hat's off to every single parent in the world who has managed to take their active children on a holiday and feel invigorated and rejuvenated after. 

There you have it, my so-called 2 minutes speech that I thought about after passing up the opportunity to tell everyone in the room at the time. Following the table topic session was the evaluation session, where all the speeches were evaluated, even the language used through the evening. There was even an 'Ah' counter (a person who counted how many time fillers such as Umm, so.., well.., you know, I mean etc. everyone used). If a Toastmaster used more than 5 time fillers through the evening, there was a RM1 penalty. If more that 10 were used, there was a RM2 penalty. 

The evening finally concluded with a short speech from the last president; the awards given to the best speaker, table topic speaker and evaluator; and feedback from the guests. Overall, it was an amazing and invigorating (the word of the day) experience and if given the opportunity to partake in it again, I would love to give the table topic impromptu speeches another go. I will even bring Zac along to see how he goes with them haha.