Saturday, April 23, 2016

April 19th 2016 Theme – Poker Is Fun

“The beautiful thing about poker is that everybody thinks they can play.” ~~ Chris Moneymaker

Welcome to the third meeting in April.


Grace was the toastmaster of the day.

The GAT(e) team comprised of: Grammarian – Hadaya (discourse), Ah-Counter – Warren and Timer – Jim.

Lynne was the first speaker of the day. She completed Project #3 from the Story Telling Manual – The Moral of the Story. The title of her talk - “The Angel Lady” which she completed within 7 minutes.

Lynne started her talk with a conversation that occurs between an old woman and her granddaughter Ashley. After watching a superhero movie, Ashley is convinced that being a superhero is the only way to help people. In response to Ashley’s viewpoint, her grandma narrates a story.

The grandma’s story revolves around Marlyn who works as a sales associate at the local drug store. Her job helps her support her ailing husband and herself. She makes friendship with 2 older women who are regular customers at the store. One night, while Marlyn was stalking shelves at the store and her mind was occupied by thoughts of her husband’s cancer reports, a male customer walks in furiously and behaves in a harsh manner. Marlyn is greatly saddened.

Due to the lack of any other sales people that day at the store, she soon gets back to work. Within minutes one of the old lady walks in. Concerned by Marlyn’s sad face, she enquires about the cause of her sadness. Marlyn shares her experience. The old lady hugs Marlyn and flips a small thing “A Sweet Little Angel” into her pocket.
Marlyn carried the Sweet Little Angel with her all the time. During tough times, it reminded her of the old lady’s kindness. Through this story, Ashley learns that in order to help others, one does not need to be a superhero. By our simple acts of kindness, one can be really helpful – just like the old lady.

Lynne was voted the best speaker.

Kathy was her evaluator. She appreciated Lynne’s original story and her story telling skills filled with conversations, various characters, vivid imagery, body language and descriptions well-tied with the moral of the story. As a suggestion, she offered Lynne to use more vocal variety esp. the little girls voice to make the story even more effective.

Jung was our second speaker. She completed Project #3 from CC Manual – Get to the Point. The Title of her talk “Life Lessons I Learned from Hiking” which she completed within 7 mins.

Through her speech, Jung shared with us the life lessons that she learned while going on hikes with her husband:

1.  Patience and Perseverance – While Jung finds going uphill is always challenging, without any clear picture of the path ahead, she has learnt that taking one step at a time with patience and perseverance is the key.

2.  Enjoy what is right around you – Jung talks about the beauty that is right around her while going up the trail. Instead of thinking about what is next, when she appreciates what is right around her – flowers, rocks, waterfalls etc; the journey becomes easier.

3.  Do not give up – Right before reaching the summit, she finds that the path is the toughest – resulting in temptations of giving up or turning back. Jung advices that we should not give up, rather keep going. Once at the summit, the feeling of accomplishment is just amazing.

By sharing her experiences, Jung encourages us to have patience, perseverance, overcome challenges, enjoy the beautiful moments around us and keep going steadily towards the summit of life.

Anisha was her evaluator. She commended Jung on her
well-organized speech packed with wisdom. Without any crutch words, Jung did a great job at delivering her inspirational speech with appropriate pauses making it very easy for audience to receive her messages.




Pratap was our third speaker. He completed Project #1
from CC Manual – Ice Breaker. The Title of his talk “Searching for myself” which he completed within 6 mins.

Born and raised in a small town in India, Pratap belongs to a middle class family of farmers. As a child, he dreamt of becoming a scientist. He had great love for math and science subjects. As he grew up, his ambitions also grew. He now dreamed to be an entrepreneur. Many questions arose. What was his passion, what did he want to really do? His search led him to a weird point in his life where he questioned himself “What is the purpose of my life?”

After he participated in a 10-day meditation camp called Vippasana in California, every bit of his thinking changed. With strict rules of no talking, no eye contact with fellow meditators and no gadgets; each day was filled with 10 hours of meditation. The teaching behind practice of Vippasana is self-transformation through self-observation. It was here that Pratap found his answers. He says that the purpose of life is simple – be of service to other people. He further says that passion is a positive energy inside each one of us and it is up to the individual to unlock it.

Amritha was his evaluator. She appreciated Pratap’s confident stage presence, organizational skills and clear delivery of his Ice Breaker. Amritha offered Pratap to consider stepping up to the stage with a mindset of having a conversation with a group of friends – her way of easing before talks.

Amritha was voted the best evaluator.

Jean was our general evaluator. She commended all those who had roles – esp. Grace who did a fabulous job as the toastmaster for the very first time by being well-organized and prepared with her GATe team, speakers and evaluators. She gave kudos to all the evaluators who encouragingly evaluated each speaker offering them suggestions to improve as well.

We had 2 guests (Emery and Victoria) and 14 members in attendance.

Member attendees were: Amritha, Anisha, Dan, Grace, Hadaya, Jean, Jim, Kathy, Lynne, Madhuri, Pratap, Pauline and Warren.

Respectfully Submitted,
Amritha Imandi, Secretary

Public Speaking Northwest #9406.

2 comments:

  1. It was a fun meeting...Congratulations to Grace on her first time as Toastmaster, she did a great job!!

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  2. How do you capture so much detail, Amritha? You remember everything! You write in interesting ways that encourage me to keep reading. You also show visitors how caring our club is and how well we treat those who take the risk and give talks. I also thought the photos were especially clear.

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