Today’s theme was serendipity and the meeting was full of serendipitous things!
Today we had……
-17 attendees from Kanto, Shikoku, Kyusyu, Thai, Hong Kong and Vietnam
-Theme of the day: Serendipity
The occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way
-Word of the day: Peroration (by Takako-san)
It means the concluding part of a speech, typically intended to inspire enthusiasm in the audience.
https://en.oxforddictionaries. com/definition/peroration
ex.) The peroration of his book is the most interesting part.
-Timer: Hideki san (the first-time role, good job!)
-Best prepared speaker: Megumi-san
-Best Evaluator: Kazuko-san
-Best Table Topic speaker: Aaron-san
As warm-ups, we had small talk session and table topic session. Each member had each interesting story such as a reunion, Star Festival event, the latest movie trend, becoming a dad, etc. Especially, Megumi-san’s news intrigued me most. Her cute baby boy had his hair cut. She said he has changed a lot. How? I was curious! I sent a message via chat function to ask her to show him. She kindly shared his “before-after” photo with me later. He used to look like even a pretty baby-girl. And now, OMG…what a change! He looked exactly like his dad. One picture is worth a thousand words!
Now it’s time to have prepared speech session. The first speaker was Yuki-san! Her speech title was “A new person in the meeting”. She started with an anecdote relating to a vice president in a big company. She didn’t recognize him when she had a meeting with him, but he knew her. Besides, in a few years she saw him again and, to her great surprise, he remembered her clearly. Sounded like he associated her with his great friend named Morimoto, which is the same last name as Yuki-san. What a serendipity! Now she has more opportunities to meet with foreign people online. Through this online Toastmasters club Diversity, she hopes to be better at meetings with more practices.
The 2nd speaker was Megumi-san! Her speech title was “Osaka lover”. She is from Osaka, she has lived in Tokyo since she graduated from university. The title was catchy. I expected that her speech was going to be entertaining. It was more than that. She described the differences between Tokyo and Osaka with 4 examples: escalators, taxis, IC cards for trains and advertisements. All of them gave the audience a big surprise and laugh. Especially the last one was my favorite. The advertisement of policemen. The Tokyo version was serious and sincere in a peaceful manner, whereas the Osaka one was hilarious. The policeman in the ad was about to go into action saying, “Let’s go! Show your skills!” Megumi-san concluded her speech successfully by giving us important messages: Laughter is the spice of life. Let’s value the differences. We’re in diversity. Her speech was not only entertaining but also enlightening.
The 3rd speaker was Naoki-san, who has become the Area champion before! He has organized very well everything from conducting meetings to making his speeches. Can’t wait to listen to his speech! The title was “Organizing Your Speech”. He shared some effective ways to create an excellent speech. Firstly, he introduced the 2015 world champion’s speech “The Power of the Words” to describe how much simple choice of words make a difference. Then he mentioned 3 essential points: organization method (“Tell them” approach), develop an outline, and how to prepare the speech script. I am pretty sure you must be eager to get the details. Even if you were absent from the meeting unfortunately, you could get the picture of his speech with his manual and the presentation slides. It was so kind of him to share them with the members after the meeting. Awesome and amazing as always!”
Oh! Here’s the happy news from Yukimasa-san! After the meeting, he applied Naoki-san’s method in delivering speeches at 2 “off-line” Toastmasters Clubs. He got the Best Speaker awards respectively. 😮 He appreciated how effective and powerful Naoki-san’s method are!
Next, Table topic session conducted by Yukimasa-san! He is a big fan of soccer and it was the best time to touch on 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia. He created 7 unique questions. 3 attendees had a chance to make a speech.
First, speaking of Sweden, now you may recall IKEA. The questions was this. “If you need not to care about budget, how do you want to make your room?” It seemed natural for Surat-san to make a better room for his new born baby at first. When he goes back home from work, he looks forward to seeing her as well as his wife. Even her sleeping face like the sweetest little angel releases his stress from his demanding work. Also, he wants to get a piece of nice furniture for his wife to take care of their baby easily. How sweet of him!
Second, Belgium is the country of gourmand. The question was this. “What is your favorite food?” It was my turn. “Pumpkin!” came into my head on the spot. But I hesitated to start talking for a while. I wondered how I could go on talking about a pumpkin for at least one and a half minutes? But then I recalled my host mother’s homemade pumpkin layered pie during my stay in the U.S. Scrumptious! I couldn’t help missing my host family a lot!
Third, Uruguay adopted renewable energy aggressively and now reached at 95% of electricity of hydro, solar, wind. Biomass, natural gas, etc. The question was this. “What are you doing for sustainability?” Aaron-san readily responded to the question with a plastic bottle in his hand. After he mentioned his wish to protect the environment by reusing the same plastic bottle 1000 times, he shared what he actually does on a daily basis. He insisted sustainability should be something that we could innovate. He has a large plastic bag to put all rubbish in his house and reuses it many times. Moreover, he loves to drink whisky, a glass bottle of whiskey for a recycling campaign. Lastly, he turns on the air conditioner wisely and sometimes he uses a kind of fan to save electricity. At the peroration of his speech, he emphasized innovation was the key for sustainability. Aside from his excellent speech, it was grateful to listen to his speech very clearly for the first time. He had had some connecting problem in making his speech online. But at long last he made it! Besides, I can’t help mentioning one more thing, the stuffed Olaf from the movie “Frozen” sitting on the sofa with Aaron-san. He seemed to enjoy his speech, too.
Lastly, we had evaluation session. 3 members evaluated 3 prepared speeches respectively. All of them knew the effective ways of evaluation with supportive comments and helpful tips.
All in all, as some guests commented about our meeting, it was very organized and educational with supportive atmosphere.
As another peroration story, Yukimasa-san has published his 3rd book recently. The title is “Best Selection III Leadership: From my evolving days of Toastmasters; 2016 - 2018 (English Edition)”. It’s about 10 speech selection in Toastmasters activities during his leadership assignments. If you are interested in public speaking in English or in Toastmasters Club activities, I highly recommend it. Of course, I have already got it. You can order one from Amazon. https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B07F5TFNRP/ref=pd_ecc_rvi_1
Surprisingly, Naoki-san had bought his previous books before they met each other at Diversity TMC. What a “Serendipity”!