There were lots of new faces in the audience at this week’s regular meeting, always a welcome sight since any Toastmasters club – particularly a new one like ours – thrives on getting new people to participate.
Club president Nazia Soon welcomed regular members and guests to the meeting and warmed everyone up with some thoughts inspired by the book The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari.
First time Toastmaster Alex Goldsbrough set the agenda for the evening in a warm and lively fashion and before very long we were into the prepared speeches.
The first speech of the evening was a number two speech by Joyanta Raksmith who told us all how the twin forces of decision and indecision had affected his life to date.
This was followed by another number two speech, this time by Fabrizio Palmucci, who gave us all a valuable lesson in the art bargaining, with his three top tips for getting a better deal at the market, at work and with your partner!
Bravely stepping in to replace a speaker who unfortunately had to drop out at the last minute, Nazia Soon gave an advanced speech from the storytelling manual about the early life of Buddha.
Finally, club regular Rekha Wadhwani told us all about her habit of setting physical challenges for herself every year and with the help of visual aids told the story of this year’s challenge, a 5K walk.
After a short break for a quick catch-up and some refreshments, Toastmaster Alex restarted the meeting, with evaluations being the first item on the second half of the agenda. Spirited and insightful evaluations of the four speeches were provided by Kate Osborne, Glen Long, Todd Wade, and Raj Jain.
This was followed by a fun and varied table topics session run by Raj Jain during which willing volunteers were invited to answer questions as diverse as “I haven’t had a raise, should I fire my boss?” to “My neighbour has a terrible singing voice how should I tell him?”
We were very pleased to see several guests opting to speak and giving even experienced speakers a run for their money. All of the impromptu speeches were then evaluated by Ratan Lele in his trademark humorous and efficient style.
When all of the votes cast during the evening were counted, the best speech award went to Fabrizio, best evaluator to Kate, and best table topic to first-time guest Jacqueline. Well done everyone!
Manuela Piscioneri, from the Women in Banking & Finance Speakers Club in Canary Wharf, was our General Evaluator for the evening and provided some great feedback for everyone who’d played a role but had not yet received an evaluation. May thanks Manuela.
All in all a great meeting and we hope to see a good number of the visiting guests at meetings in the future.
