Speech-athon - A Feast of Speeches

Bali Toastmasters Meeting Commentary

Have you ever been to a meeting where you left the meeting feeling HAPPY and UPLIFTED?

Toastmasters meetings are well known to evoke those feelings, especially when they’re exceptionally well done like our Sept. 17 meeting.

The Toastmaster of the evening, Jerry Jones in his bright turquoise shirt with such enthusiasm and pizazz opened the meeting, which would go down in the club's history as one of our finest meetings.

Staying true to tonight's color theme most members and guests showed up dressed in varying shades and interpretation of turquoise.

As was announced previously, this was our first speech-athon, a speech marathon, where the audience was treated to a series of prepared speeches, - and what a feast of speeches it was!

The quality of the speeches were EXCEPTIONAL, each and every speaker was such accomplished speakers and they came very well prepared. This night somehow there was a feeling of reverence and respect normally reserved for something sacred. However, the humor imparted by some of the speeches make this occasion joyful and anything but serious.

The prepared speech session was opened by Olga Jafar, one of the first members of the Club. Doing her first Advanced Communicator project after a long period of absence, Olga showed such finesse and elegance with her speech titled the Triangle of Life. The Triangle of Life was about how to save oneself in the event of an earthquake, that is by standing close to the strongest wall in the house if you can’t get out in time. The speech had the audience riveted as the information was very useful and relevant in the wake of the recent earthquakes we experienced in Indonesia. The information was told in such captivating and entertaining manners. Who would have guessed that 2 days later this information would come handy with the strong earthquake that happened in Bali.
She was evaluated by Ellen.

Reski, the only non CC (Competent Communicator) of the speakers tonight showed she too was a speaker to be considered. Her speech was about our ubiquitous enemy: Plastic. She did her 6th project on vocal variety. She opened her speech by sharing with the audience a most recent incident where she was royally irked upon seeing someone dumping a large sack of garbage into a river. While she managed to prevent the man from dumping the other sacks, she was sad to witness this lack of awareness in general population. With clear facts and examples she persuaded the audience to take this issue to heart. Reski delivered her speech with such eloquence and a depth of feeling that left none of the audience unaffected by the graveness of the situation facing our beloved planet.
Reski was evaluated by Ina.

Ellen gave a speech on the idea of adding another meeting schedule as well as a new meeting place for the club as part of her 3rd Advanced Communicator project: A Winning Proposal. The project required that she presented an idea in such a way that would persuade the audience to buy her idea. Won the audience she did when they voted in favor of her proposal.
Ellen was evaluated by Cakra.

Ina also did her 3rd Advanced Communicator project, albeit from a different manual: A humorous speech. As usual, Ina’s speech was much awaited and anticipated by the audience. She spoke of ‘Urip’, her childhood rooster pet who refused to believe that it was a rooster. ‘Urip’ did everything it could to convince itself and everybody else that it was anything but a rooster, until fate proved otherwise when Urip ended at the kitchen table. Despite the sad ending, Ina masterfully entertained and kept the audience in stitches throughout the whole speech with one funny anecdote after another. It’s a pity Ina won’t be joining the humorous contest, as she would surely pack in the most laughter and would win the contest hands down.
Ina was evaluated by Reski.

Strong gave a ‘Presenting an Award’ speech as his 4th Advanced Communicator Project. He extolled the achievements and virtues of the award recipient-to-be and for a while we sat at the edge of our seat curious as to who the recipient was going to be. To her great surprise, Miranda was called forward to accept the Toastmaster of the Year award. So surprised was she that she did not give an award acceptance speech, only a mumbled ‘thank you’ instead.

Strong was evaluated by one of our new members, Michele. Michele did an excellent evaluation considering this was her first time doing the evaluator role.

Miranda wrapped up the prepared speech session with her speech ‘First Time Ever’, as part of her 5th Advanced Communicator Project: After dinner speech. She opened the speech with a question: “Do you remember your first kiss?”. The question elicited nostalgic sighs and faraway gazes from the audience. She spoke about the many first time evers she experienced during her first trip abroad. The moral of her story was that we never did anything exactly the same way twice so in fact we always do everything for the very first time. And if we remembered that, we will never consider our lives to be boring ever again. Miranda won the Best Speaker award.

Jerry won Best Evaluator for his evaluation of Miranda.

After the intermission, we finally inducted the new members who were present: Michele, Ribek and Sri. President Ina led them in the recitation of the Toastmasters’ Promise, joined by the rest of members. This was the first time we ever did this ceremony in our club.

Another first tonight was the presentation of the CC (Competent Communicator) awards to CC Miranda and CC Ina who have completed their CC projects a little while ago.

Suzanne D’Angelo, as usual, gave a superb performance as Grammarian. She effectively and concisely summarized the excellent use of the English language as well as what needed to be corrected and improved for all the participants.

Ida Wijaya, amazingly active now in the club took the role as the General Evaluator and did a wonderful job at that.

Miranda took her first shot at being the Timer, a deceptively easy role but which actually required a lot of concentration and coordination on the part of the role taker.

Cok Ratih was Ah-Oh counter and Ribek ballot counter.

If anyone could be awarded the busiest and hardest working Toastmaster of the meeting it would have to be Jerry Jones. As Sargeant at Arms he came early to set up the venue so by the time the rest of the members came the venue and all meeting paraphernalia prepared and ready. He was TOM (Toastmasters of the Meeting/MC), a speech evaluator replacement for Noni who canceled at the last minute, timed all the roles, and evaluated some leadership roles. AND he did all those with such efficiency and poise. Certainly here is a man who joyfully will rise up to and take in stride any challenge he’s given. On top of that he also clinched the best evaluator award. Well done, Jerry! You showed us that taking double or triple roles is an opportunity to stretch and grow.

A night of first time evers, it was certainly an uplifting evening, a joyous, rich and fun meeting. The sign of a successful meeting is when guests are so impressed that they join as members at the end of the meeting. And this time our guests Dayu Mirah and Marlyn became a part of the fast growing Bali Toastmasters Club. Welcome to the club!

Our next meeting on Oct. 1st is going to be a grab bag meeting, where no role will be assigned prior to the meeting.

Tentatively there will also be a special Toastmasters meeting on Oct. 8th, another grab bag meeting, when Gerald Green and several out of town Toastmasters will be in Bali to attend the ‘Speak Up with Confidence’ workshop with Gerald Green DTM AS Oct. 9-10.

So come and join us in what is guaranteed to be an amazing and exceptional meeting!!!

Toasts!
Miranda
VP Education
Bali Toastmasters Club

September 3, 2009: SIMPLY AMAZING

BTC MEETING Sep. 3, 2009

Word has POWER!

Our Word of the Day: AMAZING proved this theory. Used often by almost everyone present, very quickly it become the reality of the meeting.

It was an AMAZING evening, went overtime till 9.30 yet nary a dull moment!!! The theme of the day was island style, which is Bali Toastmasters official dress code. Ina was in sarong, Miranda, Olga, Suzanne and some of the guests came in bright tropical colors. Strong was in board shorts and barefooted.

We had 18 people attending. Gung Sri from Renon became our newest member. Another enthusiastic and eager-to-learn member... YAY.....

President Ina started the meeting with concise, yet in depth explanation of the roles for the benefits of the new members and guests... TOM Suzanne led the meeting with gusto, enthusiasm and great poise.

Miranda opened the Prepared Speech session with a project from her Advanced Communication manual, a dramatic speech, titled LAUGH NOW. She invited the audience to try a fake laugh that very soon became contagious and real. As was required from her project, she successfully added a variety of dramatic elements to her entertaining speech. Ida Wijaya did an excellent job as her evaluator. Praising Miranda's overall delivery and topic, she suggested that Miranda could further dramatize her gestures to make the speech more entertaining.

Next came Ribek, doing a speech for the very first time with his ice breaker.
This is an AMAZING event. Despite his struggle with the English language, we all witnessed and were able to greatly appreciate his effort to give his very best. He spoke slowly and clearly, conquered his fear and nervousness as he stood in front of us, delivering his speech with a lot of smiles without hardly using his notes. His story was about his sad experiences from not understanding enough English when he went abroad. And this had made him very determined to learn. His first triumph after joining Toastmasters was asking a question at a conference he attended recently, and to be cheered by his friends for this accomplishment.
Bravo Ribek!!! Bravo Toastmasters!!!
Tjie Strong evaluated Ribek, praising him a lot for his herculean effort. We all agreed with him.
Ribek was voted Best Speaker and Strong Best Evaluator.

Due to last minute cancellation by Reski who was supposed to give her 6th speech, Olga Jafar, the past president, the founding member of Bali Toastmasters Club stepped in and gave a very interesting and entertaining speech titled: The difference between Sinterklas and Santa Claus. Olga was such as a wonderful story teller, her grandmotherly mien and soothing voice was perfect for the speech. The audience was totally taken by her story. She also crooned a couple of Dutch songs usually sung to children around Christmas.

What is AMAZING was her ability to deliver such a wonderful speech with such short notice. She gave an excellent example of what experience and repeated practice at Toastmasters over time could produce.

She was evaluated by another first timer, this time as an evaluator, Cok Ratih. Cok Ratih had studied hard and seriously for this role, and despite her trepidation she gave a very good evaluation of Olga's speech, just the way an evaluation should be given. Brava, bravissima, Cok!

Cakra Sudarsana concluded this session doing his Advanced Communication project; the speech was called 'Energy of Life'. For his project he was required to present and sell an idea to the audience. He promoted the importance of learning the techniques of acquiring life energy, i.e. Kundalini and Reiki for a healthy body, mind and spirit.
He masterfully guided the audience through the understanding of the energy to the practical application of it in daily life, concluding with an offer to open the audience's chakras for free.
Cakra was evaluated by Miranda, who's duly enthralled by the expertise and the artistry with which the speech was given. Again the mastery from having done more projects than anyone else in the club really showed. Each project is always more challenging than the last one, thus the learning and growth never stops.

The Table Topic Master, or Mistress, of the evening was Noni. She took everyone by surprise with her explosive introduction and control of the session. She was highly animated and enthusiastic. She raised the already high-level energy of the meeting to yet several notches again. She introduced a new way to motivate the audience to take on the challenge of impromptu speaking by referring to those willing as lottery winners, as the lucky ones.

She threw several questions in reference to everyday challenges such as what to do when there's earthquake, fire, plastic bags etc. Maria from Hongkong, one of the guests, won Best Table Topic speaker, with her story about the way Hong Kong government tackled this issue.

Special mentions from VP Education of the role takers go to.... EVERYONE:
Suzanne D'Angelo once again set a new standard of excellence as TOM (MC). She was smooth, entertaining and very attentive to details. True to the objective of the role, she set the tone and the mood of the meeting. She controlled the entire meeting by keeping it fast pace and purposeful. So that even though the meeting went 30 minute overtime, there was no sign of boredom or anxiety from the audience.
Ina Jones, the Club president who took the role of GE (General Evaluator) of the meeting was very thorough, pointing to things that wre praiseworthy and those that could still be improved.
She was assisted by those new to Toastmasters yet no less thorough and effient:
-Amran Hidayat, who as first time TIMER came up with his very own effective time-recording system
-Govinda Rumi, a third time guest, was very thorough as Ah-Oh Counter, demonstrating excellent listening skills
-Anya Nabila, a frequent guest, managed ballots like a pro.

Jerry Jones, our Sargeant of Arms absentee made his infrequent visit to the club, straight from the airport after a very long trip from Saudi Arabia. In the Very Jerry way, he made his presence felt with positive comments and suggestions. In regards to the recent earthquake in West Java, he suggested that we do as best hazard prevention as we can by doing these three things:
- Have fire distinguisher device in the house: the red can, containers of sand, woolen blanket
- Have your medical kit always ready and in easy reach
- Always have a second exit other than the door in each room

A set of very simple advices that most of us know we should do but often do not, so thank you Jerry... and it's always wonderful to have you among us.

It seems like excellence breeds excellence. During this meeting it became obvious that one person's excellence motivated and spurred the next person's excellence - and this energy just built and built to create a great vortex that affected and consumed everyone present.

It was one of the best Toastmasters meetings I've attended. It was very high quality meeting, yet, it was so much FUN and CASUAL. Having experienced it, and seeing how each member enjoyed learning, growing and improving, I'm confident that QUALITY and FUN will become our modus operandi.

Would you want to have a taste of what we had?

Come to our next meeting. Stay tuned to the Bali Toastmasters Club updates!

Toasts!!!
Miranda