Around 5 a.m. Silent and serene. I get the newspaper outside and look up at the crystal, clear sky. Still dark and chilly. Full of fabulous stars are shining and sparkling. I wish I could find a shooting star to make my wish come true. In a few hours, I take gentle sunshine shower while drying the laundry. I get energy and power from it. This is how I start a peaceful morning.
Hello, everyone😊 Today’s meeting theme was World Hello Day. We had 17 attendees including fabulous guests. According to the World Hello Day organization, “November 21, 2018 is the 46th annual World Hello Day. Anyone can participate in World Hello Day simply by greeting ten people. This demonstrates the importance of personal communication for preserving peace. World Hello Day was begun in response to the conflict between Egypt and Israel in the Fall of 1973. Since then, World Hello Day has been observed by people in 180 countries. People around the world use the occasion of World Hello Day as an opportunity to express their concern for world peace. Beginning with a simple greeting on World Hello Day, their activities send a message to leaders, encouraging them to use communication rather than force to settle conflicts.” What a wonderful idea!
Today Midori-san conducted the 28th meeting with the following fabulous helpers. Yukari-san introduced the Word of the Day: fabulous e.g.) a fabulous hero, a fabulous sum of money Please let me hear your fabulous musical performance. My wife’s pot pie is fabulous. Takako-san was in charge of Grammarian. And Yuki-san played the Timer role.
Now, let’s start one of the 3 sessions, prepared speeches. The 1st prepared speaker was Mikiko-san! Her speech title was “Finding new members for your club”. It was from Successful Club Series. She firstly explained what they are and then her speech outline, which consisted of her self-introduction, why new members are important, how we introduce our club and discussion time. As for the last one, prior to the meeting, she prepared her speech well by asking some members via e-mail about 2 questions: #1 In case you introduce TMC activity, how could you express it? #2 What do you think the favorable environment for guests? To my embarrassment, I had a chance to share my observation about the first question. I was going to make the audience laugh with an anecdote, but it didn’t work out. Haha… The second question went to Kazuko-san and Jota-san. Kazuko-san emphasized how important to create a friendly and welcoming atmosphere for guests and then to treat each meeting as a showcase for the members. Jota-san said environment is culture. How to develop culture? We need to meet and develop our culture for guests and existing members. I liked “discussion time” idea because it involves the audience more enthusiastically with her speech, compared to just listening to her speech.
The 2nd speaker was Naoki-san. His speech title was “Your presence is important.” from The Entertaining Speaker Manual. The speech objectives are to entertain using humor or drama from your personal experience; to organize entertaining speech; to deliver in an interpretative manner. The first presentation slide we saw a famous scene from the movie ‘Titanic’, where Jack and Rose were standing very closely on the bow of the gigantic ocean liner. I thought Naoki-san was going to talk about his romantic love story. Then the next slide appeared. The audience burst into laughter. He said that it was “Indian Titanic”, which showed lots of people hold desperately to a running train. He talked about his beloved Indian coworkers and friends referring to his happy memories with them. The speech title “Your presence is important.”, it was originally from one of his friends’ words. While making his speech, he looked the greatest I have ever seen. He wrapped up his speech and showed our Diversity club members’ screen shot in the end. It was an entertaining and touching story, indeed.
The 3rd speaker was Aaron-san! His speech title was “Friends or Foes” from Team Collaboration Manual. He had just finished making a speech somewhere like a classroom in a university? He is such an energetic and enthusiastic speaker. Amazing! I wondered how many times he made a speech ever before. He has always made a speech naturally and smoothly. I believe he can make a fabulous speech anytime, anywhere. Today he began with a couple of questions and mentioned what friends are like from his point of view, sharing his experiences. He concluded you can become friends with people you first find it difficult to get along with if you just try a simple communication to break the ice. Convincing and great speech!
Next, table topic session. I had been asked to stand in for Yumi-san as Table Topic Master just before the meeting by Naoki-san. I was a little bit at a loss how to conduct it, but thanks to him, I managed to do it. Yumi-san had prepared 5 questions. Due to the time constraint, 3 speakers had a chance to make an impromptu speech. -Would you rather be less attractive and extremely intelligent or extremely attractive and less intelligent? Yukimasa-san chose the latter one. He was modest enough to say he is not so attractive… He IS attractive just like Naoki-san, as a role model for Yukimasa-san. He went on to say that he is likely to be a backseat player. Even when he plays second fiddle, he is a great influence on people around him. I think that’s his charming point ;) -What language would you like to learn other than English? Peko-san would like to learn Korean. She had been there and made friends with a Korean guide, who is a good speaker of Japanese. Still, she wanted to study Korean but unfortunately gave up on it. Like she said, Korean language is difficult to learn, I guess. But personally, I would like to recommend her to try to use Korean to her Korean friend next time. Only a few native words should make her friend happy. That is what I learned from my experience. -Right now! At this moment! Where do you want to go? LanAnn-san wants to go to Kyoto, especially she is interested in visiting temples. She has been to Thailand and visited pagodas there. So, she wants to see the differences between them including how people pray and interact with the God. Quite interesting! Lastly, evaluation session conducted by General Evaluator Naoki-san. Wow. He took the multiple roles. As usual, all evaluated did a great job! They pointed out each speaker’s good points and gave concrete examples to improve for next speeches and demonstrated how each speaker could have done. Especially, Yukimasa-san showcased the way Indian people usually speak for Naoki-san in that he could use vocal variety.
Oh, I almost forgot to mention the award session. The best prepared speaker: Naoki-san The best evaluator: Megumi-san The best table topic speaker: Yukimasa-san We had another fabulous meeting. Much obliged!