26th July 2010 Meeting Update

What would you do if you were in an elevator with someone you wanted to impress and you had only 2 minutes to do it? The theme of our meeting was about what sales pitch you could make in that short time.

Typical of Edwin's witty self, he seized on the elevator concept in our theme Elevator Pitch and introduced most of the speakers as some type of elevator, e.g., a fast moving elevator (Cecilia), a new elevator, tomorrow's elevator (Andrew). I think it was a creative and colourful way to introduce the speakers.

For the 3 facilitators, it was a first time for Jonathan and Pauline as Ah-Counter and Grammarian, respectively. And it was only Dick's 2nd time as Timekeeper. Pauline gave us a new word of the day : TRIAGE (v) (n ). Any guess as to what it means? It means prioritization and is commonly used in the hospitals and in the army. The 2 persons who used the word during the meeting received a prize from Pauline.

Philip Ngan delivered a speech packed with deep meaning and action. He even got blown to the floor by a typhoon 8 gust while acting out the role of the Mighty Tree. His message to us was that it's okay to be a small plant as it withstands the storm better than the Mighty Tree.

Cecilia asked us To Be or Not To Be....a multi-tasker. Apparently we are all multi-taskers one way or another. Cecilia informed us that it can be highly stressful to multi-task and you could lose out in efficiency, especially when performing complicated tasks.

Andrew delivered an advanced manual project, a seminar to benefit our club members interested to compete in the Humorous Speech Contest. He shared with us that we must have a reason to compete, and know our style and be comfortable with it since there is not any one style that will please everyone e.g. are you a Woody Allen or a Michael Hui? He told us that we must have a goal to achieve and should practice twice a day. Andrew shared many valuable tips and it was great to be there to learn from the master himself.

As an experienced Toastmaster, Edwin was able to explain to the audience the 3 different manuals that were used during the evening. It was really beneficial to hear his sharing. Thanks Edwin.

During the Table Topic Session, we heard two distinguished guests speak : Akash Karia, the President of HKUST Toastmasters Club; and KS Teo, DTM from Raffles Toastmasters Club Singapore. Teo left us with the phrase - "HK is uniquely unique". It stemmed from his observation of the many nationalities that turned up at our club. It was an impressive performance from the two and we were certainly given a great chance to learn, with their skillful 2-minute handling of their topics. Gilbert and Peter also displayed courage and skill in volunteering  themselves for a Table Topic.

We had another good evening in terms of guest turnout with 12 guests coming to our meeting. Steven Li came to bid farewell to us as he is returning to Tianjin after his memorable stay in HK.

I did a demo of Easy Speak in a continued quest to engage our members to use this great software to ease the administration and organising of our club meetings.

During the Evaluation session, all speakers received great feedback from their evaluators, as usual. Several valid criticisms were made that I expect many of us in the audience found applicable to our own speechmaking.

Here are the announcements for:

Best Speaker - Andrew Yeung;
Best Table Topic Speaker - Akash;
Best Evaluator - Daniel Chan.

Yet another fun, entertaining, educational meeting. Till we meet again at the next meeting.

Best regards,

Ong Ai Ai

HKTMC President