Welcome Back

Word of the Day: Savant (noun, an expert, learned scholar)

Idiom of the Day: “Gift of the gab” (talent with speaking)

Welcome back to Hong Kong Toastmasters Club!! I hope you’re rearing to get back to doing speeches, facilitating meetings and be part of the family again. It’s been almost a month since we last left off but hopefully this has given you renewed energy to use for our upcoming term. We kick started the new term off with the theme of Talents and Abilities. Where does a talent come from? Is it natural? Picasso, for example, picked up a pencil and paintbrush at an early age and began painting well beyond his age, but even Picasso took years to develop his signature cubist works he became famous for. Does talent come from nurture? Is it a strong ability which has been honed and encouraged from mentors and teacher? Whether you’re a natural public speaker or rehearse your speech 20 times before perfecting it, remember that every artist was at first an amateur.

Our very talented Toastmaster of the Evening was Andrew Yeung, a member whose experience carried us through very efficiently. The prepared speeches began with Marcus Chu who spoke about Talents and Skills as part of project 3- Get to the Point. I’m always impressed with how calm and confident he is on stage, definitely something to be admired. I was also all ears when he spoke about actor, Will Smith. Mathew Lee took the stage next with speech 5: Your body speaks. He talked about his theory of being a “pro-sumer” a person who looks at how we can be more money- savvy. The equation is produce+consumption. You produce what you want to consume. Say for example, buying property to produce investment which can therefore be used to consume products and a lifestyle you wish to lead. The comedian of the night goes to Jonathan Mok whose courageousness definitely showed what a long way he’s come from when he first started. The title of his speech was “Courage” This was speech number 6: vocal variety. He was able to personify characteristics of courage, try, failure and evaluate to great effect. Our last prepared speaker and seasoned toastmaster was Philip Ngan. Philip has just started his Technical Presentations booklet and gave a brief outline on the use of computer-aided translation. For those of you who were not at the meeting, it’s a software which can be used to translate texts. However smart this technology is though, we were warned that it does have its limitations and we should always double check the translation because we are more talented than computers.

Table Topics took up the next portion of the meeting where volunteer speakers, Vanessa, Phyllis, Steven and Alan were to speak on their feet for 2 minutes about a topic given by our table topics master, Joanne Chuk. Joanne’s topics included thought s about how much talent is involved in reality-competition TV shows, how female abilities differ from men, what’s more important IQ or EQ given from a male perspective and parenting skills.

Last term, our membership committee ran a contest to see who could refer the most renewals. The winners: Runner ups included Ai Ai Ong, Rita Tsui, Jenny Lam, Ernest Mak, Alan Kwong, Ben Fung and Paul Wong. Top 3 were Michael Boynton, Marcus Chu and Philip Ngan. Well Done. If you haven’t renewed your membership, please submit fees to the VPE, SAA or Treasurer.

Evaluations were conducted by Vanessa Lau who evaluated Marcus Chu, Edwin Lui for Mathew, Clement Wong for Jonathan and Rita Tsui for Philip Ngan. Our general evaluator this evening was, Sergio Aguirre, someone I always look forward to hearing speeches from.  We mustn’t forget our facilitators, our helpers who keep the meeting running smoothly. Time keeper- San Kong, Ah Counter- Ben Fung and grammarian- Michael Boynton who gave us the word of the day- savant, which is French, is a noun and means a person who is an expert or learned scholar. Albert Einstein was a savant on physics.

Now, time for the awards. Best speaker of the evening went to Mathew Lee, best table topics- Steven Wong (how many does he have now?) and best evaluator- Clement Wong. Well done to all winners.

Our next meeting will be on the 30^th of July. Hope to see you there!