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