Christmas is just around the corner🎅We had additional special meeting suitable for this exciting season.
On the previous Saturday, we had 4 club joint meeting with US, Canada, UK, Thailand, Vietnam, HongKong, China and Japan people. It was a fantastic event that we got together in one place, in virtual environment, and shared fantastic moments. From our club, Aaron san, Naoki san, Yuki san, Yumi san, Megumi san, Hideo san, Takako san, LanAnh san, Surat san, Marama san and Yukimasa san, with 11 members joined. What a diversified meeting it was! We could learn many new programs that the other clubs are doing well. Yuki san delivered the great performance as a prepared speaker and Yumi san did fantastic evaluation as her first attempt. And Naoki san shared great general evaluation, Hideo san reported filler words and Yukimasa san reported grammarian report. Plus, Takako san and Megumi san did great table topic speeches. Among the native speakers, all our members did fantastic jobs! It was honorable thing, indeed. We sincerely appreciate for Aaron san's hard work to make this fantastic meeting happen. Thank you, Aaron san! Thank YOU, dedicated members! I really wish I could have been there. OK, shall we go on to the regular meeting today? Meeting theme: Hallelujah Word of the Day: hilarious introduced by Takako-san It means extremely amusing, very funny, very cheerful. A piece of advice is not to say “very” hilarious. Instead, you can use “absolutely”. e.g.) The film was absolutely hilarious. ×very Timer: Midori-san Grammarian: Hideki-san
Unlike ordinary meetings, today we had 5! prepared speeches including 2 educational speeches, and evaluation speeches, without table topic speeches.
Let’s start with the prepared speech session!
The 1st prepared speaker was Drian! His speech title was “I resemble my reflection”. His speech focused on vocal variety. It was a thought-provoking storytelling speech. I was moved with his thoughtful deeds in accordance with his conscience. However, sadly enough, according to him, he had 2 big problems. Before starting his speech, the mischievous cat he had rescued deleted his speech script by jumping on the keyboard. OMG! He managed to make a great speech anyway. Another problem was that he didn’t see any signal to begin his closing during his speech. Actually, we have a few effective ways to show the timing to each speaker. Here are suggestions. Aaron san did great job after joining as SAA to display the timer on the screen in timing manner. Moving forward, it will be good for SAA to control the screen. And timer can kindly explain those ways to speakers before prepared speeches begin. And we can give Drian another chance to make the same title speech he was going to make. It should be more dynamic!
The 2nd prepared speaker was LanAnh-san! Her speech title was “Bad girls” from Competent Communication Manual #3 -Get to the Point with 5 speech objectives such as to organizing speech to achieve general and specific purpose. She firstly drew a comparison between “good” girls and “bad” girls by giving some examples. Her performance made the audience laugh. It was hilarious. Then she shared an enlightening story with us and what she learned from her experience with us. She realized she shouldn’t have judged the person she encountered by her appearance.
The 3rd prepared speaker was Yumi-san! Her speech title was “Being as a side-walker.” from the same manual as LanAnh-san. She has been living in Thailand with her family and recently joined a volunteer group called ‘Able and disabled Foundation in Thailand’ The members as a side-walker help disabled children to enjoy riding on a horse. She felt it was easy to do it on the first day, but it seemed challenging to keep doing her task after having a bitter experience. She never gave up and finally found out to solve the problem. Hooray! She also had difficult time finding out how much she should help or shouldn’t help. Through her valuable experiences, she learned that everyone can be a side-walker in everyday life not over-protecting the others but helping them nurture their own growths.
The 4th prepared speaker was Yukimasa-san! His speech title was “The results of Promotor 7”. He reported the results of his yearly project and what he learned as a showcase of project managements. In short, the project was amazingly successful! To reach the goal, he devoted himself to increase the membership and be recognized as official online Toastmasters club by the Toastmasters International. Until we had enough members to have a regular meeting, he had done everything from creating our club homepage both in Japanese and English in no time to recruiting as many people as possible who are interested in public speech. When he started the club, there were only 3 members including him. But step by step more and more enthusiastic people joined our club, and they have been so cooperative that they invited many guests and accept the offer to become officers. We could have fruitful meetings. To be honest, I once felt reluctant to attend it just because of my tiredness. Once I attended it, I realized how much I learned from each and every member and I had a great time with them. By the way, can you guess why he named the project “Promotor 7”? He explained it. One of his explanation was about the #7 from the idea of a slot machine. When you hit 7, you will have a blast. So, he wanted to imagine a blast for our club. Hilarious! And just as planned, more members promote our activities in a number of ways and we finally got chartered as an advanced club! Thanks a million, everyone!
The last prepared speaker was Mikiko-san! Her speech title was “Sharing my Vision” from High Performance leadership Manual. She explained what high-performance leadership was in a kindly manner. Then she asked us if we have ever experienced the magazine review session during Toastmaster regular meetings before. She has done it at another club meeting several times and felt fantastic. Now her vision is to enrich interactive communication skills. To do so, she wants to hold the magazine review meeting with magazines, newspaper, and book lovers. Interestingly she has already detailed plans including exchange comments on what members read and creating vivid discussions. Even after each meeting, 2 guidance committee members will evaluate the meeting. Wow! It is about to become a reality.
Lastly, we had the evaluation session conducted by General Evaluator Kazuko-san, who has always amplified her encouraging remarks. The evaluators including me, Surat-san, Megumi-san, Drian, and Naoki-san evaluated each appointed speech in this order. It was surprising to know that Drian and Naoki-san had double roles. And the most exciting moment has come. The best evaluator was Drian! Congratulations!
Just a few months ago we commemorated first anniversary of our club. Next year we are ready to get the new year started as a chartered advanced club. We are the first online Toastmasters club in Japan! Hallelujah!
Wishing you a wonderful holiday season filled with peace and joy🎅