Passion

In the role of Toastmaster for the evening Colin opened the meeting by welcoming everyone and then inviting Paul to the stage to read out our mission statement.

Reading of the Mission Statement by Paul

Next to take to the floor was our general evaluator for the evening Tony and he was assisted by James  as Grammarian and Dee as timekeeper. James selected word of the evening was "Passion", which Steve was quick to utilize in his introduction of his Table topics session, managing to use the word twice within the first 30 seconds of his introduction!! Well done Steve.

James - Delivering Passion as the Word for the Evening

Steve's Table topics theme was based on situations and emotions with each person being invited to display a chosen emotion within the context of a selected situation.

Chris had to show excitement for his day at the office. A tall order we all thought...work/excitement, is it possible that these two could go together? but in true Chris style, generating a lot of laughs, he managed to convince us how exciting his day at the office can be.

Paul had to show shock at a reunion. He recalled a work meeting he'd had with an over friendly contractor which had truly left him in shock, when the contractor announced they'd been old school friends...."Don't you remember me Paul?"

Martin (our visitor) was really brave to accept Steve's invitation of speaking on a table topic and he did so well on his chosen emotion of sympathy on a visit to the dentist. Having a perfect set of nashers Martin said he couldn't see what all the fuss was about; why would anyone need sympathy for such a minor event as visiting the dentist. What drill, what needles????

Graeme was highly amusing with his joy at visiting his lawyer and being told he'd been left a fortune and didn't have to share it with anyone...how much more joy can there be.

Graeme and His Good Fortune

Colin was very zealous when telling us of the car accident event involving a lamp post which had been placed in an absolutely ridiculous place. Someone needs to be accountable for placing that lamp post on the pavement he told us.

Colin and His Misfortune with the Lamppost

In a time of 1 minute 34 seconds Peter displayed lots of pain at his ordeal of being called upon to speak on table topics; and then again at his ordeal of having to accept Graeme wasn't going to share his fortune with him.

Christine introduced Ian as the first speaker of the evening. Although Ian has been a toastmaster for many years and completed many competency manuals, he had chosen to do an ice breaker speech to tell us of his passion for rugby. Ian relayed memories of how as a child he'd spent many late nights/early hours with his dad fervently listening to All Black games on the radio dreaming of playing rugby himself; and how this dream had led to him succeeding at playing rugby at a senior level in his teens. He then went on to tell us about being fortunate enough to share the emotion and passion of thousands of other All Black supporters at the South Africa V All Blacks game at Ellis Park.

Amy then introduced Hannah as the second speaker of the evening.

Hannah - Captivating the Audience

Hannah kept us all captivated with her recitals of many Dr. Seuss famous short stories about creatures with stars on their bellies, the wood cutter tale and how this conveyed environmental issues. In between her recitals Amy managed to fit in a brief history of Dr. Seuss' life and the struggle he had to become a famous writer, with 27 rejections before getting his big break through. Then going on to write his most famous short story of Cat in the hat which has sold over 2 million copies and is printed in 15 different languages.

The double act of Netta and Rebecca gave thorough evaluations of table topics in a record time of 6 minutes 29 seconds.

Before our 10 minute tea break at half time Graeme managed to squeeze in his report on the Toastmasters convention he attended last week, held in the Bay of Islands. He felt it was the best one he'd ever attended and was very impressed from the outset with the very professional programme booklet he received on arrival. He was further impressed by the very high quality of all the speeches in the humorous speech contest and said he would have struggled to choose a winner had he been a judge. But the real highlight of the evening was been able to receive, on behalf of our club, the award for best web site.

Sarah H., Sarah L., Graeme and Craig at the Bay of Islands Convention with the Best Website Trophy.
Trophy kindly donated by Ray Leckie from Lunchspeak Toastmasters, Dunedin.

Special thanks to Chris for all his hard work in making our website the best for the second year running; which we've always thought but we've now got a trophy to prove it.

Graeme Presenting the Trophy to Club Webmaster Chris

Tea, Coffee and chocolate biscuits were efficiently served up by Peter and Dee, allowing people to make the most of our 10 minute break.

Back to business Wayne kicked off with his very educational education session on how to become an effective evaluator. Wayne gave a very comprehensive breakdown of the various steps to follow when evaluating a speech from starting with understanding the fundamentals of evaluation to the last step of building a bank of suggestions. He then reminded us of the upcoming evaluation contest on 24th November and ran through the requirements of entry.

Finishing off the night Christine and Amy gave their evaluations of the evenings speeches following the CRC method of evaluation they gave some very complimentary commendations and useful recommendations. Tony, general evaluator, followed by giving his report of the nights proceedings which included commendations, observations and recommendations.

One last thing before the close of the night our VP education, Steve, expressed the importance of getting involved and entering toastmaster contests to challenge and improve skills.

Best table topics of the evening went to Graeme and best evaluator of the evening went to Amy Edwards.

Dee