Thursday, 12th May.

Returning to our accustomed venue, after last week’s cosy foray to the foyer, Bali Toast Masters held their “Super Humorous” themed meeting and embarked upon a slightly new but very enjoyable approach during the Table Topics round:

Impromptu speeches based on a randomly chosen object or prop. The suggestion of Vaughn, this concept was based on the famous comedy show “Whose line is it, anyway?” and it proved to be challenging, amusing and very entertaining for both speakers and audience as you shall discover.

Once underway, the meeting quickly moved on to the Table Topics stage and even more quickly moved into the surreal with Vaughn leading the Table Topics while sporting a pith helmet and a slightly comical yet predominately disturbing mask.

Whether or not it was actually an improvement was insinuated but not decided.

Amongst the highlights were: Tjie Strong, who seamlessly linked his object, a squeaky, orange, plastic hedgehog, to the irony of death. Olga’s object, a monkey statue, produced an anecdote of the time her father mistook her for a chimpanzee.

Firman had a rather erotic stylized sculpture and, slightly at a loss, engaged the audience for physical participation. Our guest, David, nearly removed his clothes… but ironically failed to place his underpants on the outside of his trousers when he came to speak with a Superman toy as his object for discussion.

Novi took us all on an intergalactic imaginary journey with only a wooden hula hoop as her prop. All in all, a very imaginative, entertaining and comical Table Top session.
Vo-ghan won the craziest (or funniest) person award - the one-of-a-kind T-shirt.

Deborah delivered her 2nd speech from the basic manual yet clearly has skills and abilities expected at the advanced levels.

The jokes did not stop, however, with the topic looking at he history of humour, Deborah informed and charmed us all with the origins of jokes; ancient Sumerian records of farting wife

jokes and citing relics of gags and witticisms from the annals of history that we all still find familiarly amusing to this day.

Her visual depiction of Cro-Magnon man’s fart jokes around the campfire was hilarious. A really excellent speech. Well done, Deborah!

Stepping in at the last minute, Michelle gave a very engaging portrait of her entanglements with religious taxi drivers in Kuala Lumpur. From the spiritually free to the dogmatic and opinionated drivers,

Michelle took us with her on her precarious balancing act; falling foul of foot-in-mouth disease and having to extricate herself from the judgment of others. Evidently a strong Toast Master, Michelle’s speech was delivered masterfully, despite having such a short time to prepare.

A last but not least mention: Happy 21st birthday to Ibu Cok. What a delicious choclate and cream cake -- most definitely enjoyed by all.

A thoroughly enjoyable Toast Masters and, of course, more to come later this month and every month!

By: Johnathan Wilkinson