May 26th, 2015 Theme: Listening . . .

“I’m always relieved when someone is delivering a eulogy and I realize that I’m listening to it”. ~~ George Carlin

Welcome to the last meeting in May blog. Today, we had 2 guests attend our meeting. 

Lynne was our toastmaster and offered information about what it means to listen and the benefits of doing so.  She offered several memorable (if you listened) quotes such as:

• I remind myself every morning: Nothing I say this day will teach me a thing. So if am going to learn, I must do it by listening. – Larry King

• One of the most sincere forms of respect is actually listening to what another has to say. – Bryant H. McGill

• There is a difference between listening and waiting for your turn to speak. -- Simon Sinek

  The GATE  team was: Chizuko  as Grammarian (Ubiquitous), Kathy as the Ah Counter, and Sue as the Timer. The General Evaluator was Amritha.

Tobias was our first speaker today. He completed his 1^st speech (The Icebreaker) from the Competent Communicator Manual Project 1. The speech was entitled “Public Speaking, A Lost Art” and was delivered in 5 minutes. 

Tobias wove two themes extemporaneously into his talk. 

The first were details about himself, such as his name being a biblical one and that he was the youngest, by 18 years, of 6 siblings. He also briefly talked about his pairs of children of each gender.  He was in the marines and now has a job as a local firefighter. 

The second was his attraction to public speaking: he previously worked at being a singer and an actor. His feeling and preference is to be in this club to refine his public speaking skills. He’s not happy when his children concurrently text and eat dinner. 

Robert was his evaluator. Robert liked the weaving of two themes in his talk, which is rare for an Icebreaker speech. He praised Tobias for to use hand gestures expertly to underscore his words, to offer excellent eye contact with the audience and to show extreme confidence.

He noticed that Tobias stood anchored in front of the lecturn and let his body movement and gestures attract the audience’s attention. He recommended a wider spread of vocal variety from soft to loud volume and from lower to higher tonality.

Our second speaker was Naser.  He offered us another story from the Storytelling Manual (Project #2). His speech was called: “Corruption”  and was completed within 7 minutes. 

Naser started his speech referring to Jackie Chan’s statement several years ago about the United States being the most corrupt in the world (rather than China). 

He then told a story about himself, when he was much younger and living in India and preparing for 5^th grade exams. His mother tried to motivate him by promising a red bicycle if he could achieve first rank. While studying very hard, he took the exams and was not able to improve beyond fourth rank.

Because he wanted the red bicycle so badly, he forged his report card to indicate First Rank. He was able to get the bicycle and was extremely pleased and rode it during the winter break.

He returned the report card unrestored and the forgery was soon exposed and his family notified. He felt ashamed, not of doing something wrong, but of being found out.

Lessons from this experience were: The teacher will use pen, not pencil to issue report card scores; The mother will stop motivating via bribery; and Naser learned that in the future, he must see it through, if he plans to do something that is (legally, morally) wrong. He concluded that there is a thin line between motivation and corruption.

 

Naser was voted best speaker.

Jean was his evaluator. Jean complimented Naser about his enthusiasm for getting a red bicycle. His face, voice, gestures were excellent. He depicted in his talk, a great mom. She thought that the moral of the story was to see things from all sides before making a big move.

 

Jean was voted best evaluator.

Anisha was the Table Topics Master for today’s meeting. She offered a grab bag of physical objects taken from her office desk that she asked 5 volunteers to extol their features to sell.

Jim spoke about his choice of a 12 inch architect’s triangular scale as not only an item of measurement but an item of discipline.

Jim was best table topics speaker.

 

 

Robert demonstrated the versatility of Safety Goggles in various positions on his face and body.

 

Tobias talked about his pick of a retractable metal tape measure as a metaphor for the progress (in distance) of the Seattle Alaskan Way Viaduct Replacement Tunnel.

 

Lynne chose a tube of toothpaste which she suggested could be adhered to walls or clothing.

 

Sue picked a Dry Erase Marker that offered the holder a license and tacit permission to write or draw.

 

Amritha was our General Evaluator for today. She liked Kathy’s example of using the word of the day (ubiquitous) in a supplemental way when explaining the duties of the Ah Counter. She enjoyed the volunteer speakers during the table topics segment, who tried to sell various objects. She was also pleased with the speakers and their respective evaluators.

Jung was our humorist for today. She recounted the unexpected consequences of a marital spat that escalated to the level of neither person speaking to each other, except by written note.

Some Announcements:

Our club has reached distinguished club level before April 30, 2015. Consequently, the club officers have been invited to a Celebration of Success 2015 Dinner on Friday, May 29 at Renton Technical College. Contact Jean for registration details.

Barbara Katz, currently our Area 54 Governor, has been elected to the position of Division E Director, which will begin on July 1, 2015. 

Attendees were:  Linda, Jean, Jim, Lynne, Naser, Sue, Robert, Pauline, Jung, Mary, Kathy, Anisha, Amritha, Tobias, Chizuko, David A. as well as 2 guests: Molly K., Diana C. Our membership total remains at 28.

~~~~~ Respectfully Submitted by Robert, the Secretary [Speak through your fingers and comment] ~~~~~

May 19, 2015 Theme: What Happened In History On This Day?

T.E. Lawrence, also known as "Lawrence of Arabia," died this day in 1935 in England from injuries sustained in a motorcycle crash.

Welcome to the 3rd meeting in May blog, which took place on the 2nd floor meeting room for the 1st time in a while.

Pauline was our toastmaster and talked about what happened on May 19 throughout history.

The GAT(e) Team was Kathy as Grammarian, Grace as the Ah Counter and Preston as the Timer.

There were 3 speakers. The first speaker was Jim, whose speech: “Resolving Conflict” was completed within 15 minutes. The second speaker was Lynne, who spoke about encouraging members to become club officers in her 9th speech entitled: "The Next Step". The 3^rd Speaker was Amritha, who fulfilled project 3 of the Competent Communicator manual.

The respective and corresponding evaluators for these speeches were Naser, Alice and Linda.

Sue was the Table Topics Master; Our humorist was Kimberly.

Due to my absence, there were no pictures to accompany this blog.

~~~~~ Respectfully Submitted by Robert, the Secretary [Please Comment to complete the Group memory of this day] ~~~~~

May 12th, 2015 Theme: Birthdays

“I wanted to buy a candle holder, but the store didn’t have one. So I bought a cake.” – Mitch Hedberg

Welcome to the celebration of the double anniversary of Toastmasters and our Club meeting in May blog. Today, we had 10 guests and a single digit aged child and infant with us.  

For this special meeting, Jim was our toastmaster and hosted a catered meeting with the theme of birthdays. (One of our guests, Nate S. celebrated his birthday today as well.)

There was no GATE team nor any Speech Evaluators.  

Jean was our only speaker today. She completed her 1^st new speech from the Competent Communicator Manual Project 1. The speech was entitled “The Ripple Effect” and was delivered within 15 minutes. 

Jean first talked about Ralph Smedley (1878-1965), who designed and created Toastmasters on March 24, 1905 (unofficially), meeting in a room at YMCA (men only) in Bloomington, Illinois. The purpose of the Toastmaster Club was to teach members how to speak, conduct meetings and plan programs. Regardless of where Ralph relocated in the YMCA network, the clubs he founded did not survive his absence. Finally, in 1924, in a brand new YMCA in Santa Ana, CA, the first Toastmaster International Club (#1) occurred on October 22, 1924 and in 90 years has grown to 313,000 members in 126 different countries. To replicate the club organization and structure, he wrote a pamphlet about the 10 rules for Public Speaking. [See more information about Ralph Smedley  and  Toastmasters history.]  
Early meetings offered 3 minute speeches,1 Minute evaluations and 1 minute table topic talks.

   

Jean  next talked about the founding of our Club, Public Speaking Northwest (#9406). It was begun in 2003 in Bothell and moved to several places including the Bothell Police Department, until it finally found it’s current location at the Seattle Times Building.  At that time, There was a course called the Speechcraft.

Jean concluded her speech by inviting the audience to sing Happy Birthday to Ralph (in a picture on a chair) and to our club.

 

Barb was the Table Topics Master for today’s meeting. She invited volunteers to talk about What Toastmasters means to me, first in their native language and then translated into English.  This was a very exciting way to hear multiple languages spoken. [As far as I could tell, Toastmasters is pronounced “Toastmasters” in all the non-English languages.] 

 

Naser spoke in Malayalam incredibly fast and then translated it into English, also very fast. All I could get was that he talked about Toastmasters.  :-) 

 

Alberto, one of our guests, spoke in Mexican and disclosed that he came here to learn to speak English to supplement the one course he took. He was also startled as he noticed that the Mexican Restaurants here didn’t serve real Mexican food. For example, sour cream is an American condiment and rice and/or beans are eaten and served at home, not in a restaurant.

Amritha conversed in Hindi (which was derived from Sanskrit) about Toastmasters allowing her to offer her ideas and a place to ask for help.

 

  Jung who spoke in Korean, talked about all the holidays that Korea celebrates in May:

May 4: Labor Day; May 5: Children’s Day; May 8: Mother’s Day; May 15: Teacher’s Day (as well as an ancient King’s Birthday)

Grace talked in Chinese (Mandarin?), about a story of two wood cutters who had a contest to see who could cut more wood. The younger wood cutter cut wood continuously with no breaks; The older wood cutter cut wood for an hour and then took a 5 minute break. The older wood cutter won the contest and when asked how come he could cut more wood, he said, he took a 5 minute break to re-sharpen his saw.

Chizuko spoke Japanese, about her 7 years of experience and living in several places in the United States and Canada and is now residing in the Pacific Northwest.

Announcements:

Pat Sultan, our Division E Governor, announced a presentation by Bruce Meaker, DTM about Effective Evaluations. He will be appearing at the Willows Voices Toastmasters Club located at 11715 North Creek Parkway S. #110 in Bothell, WA on June 5, 2015 at 7AM-8AM.  

Jim announced that he will be working on organizing a Toastmaster Club for Kids. This is called a Gavel Club. It will be starting up later in the summertime. Diana has been instrumental in causing this to become a soon-to-be reality. Help and support were requested by Jim.

Attendees were:  Linda, Jean, Jim, Robert, Barb, Lynne, Naser,  Sue,  Pauline,  Grace, Chizuko, David A., Diana, Kathy, Kimberley, Preston, Amritha, Jung as well as 12 guests: Nate S., Donna H., Mia, Yan Z., Diana’s Husband Howard W, Diana’s Daughter, Jackie M., Pat S., Alberto,  Tensina K. and baby Alina (See above), and Yosh I.  

 
Jackie M. joined our club today. This increases our membership total to 28.

~~~~~ Respectfully Submitted by Robert, the Secretary [Why not comment while I’m away?] ~~~~~