Toastmasters

My sister's boyfriend, Alex is a new member of Toastmasters. Last night, he brought me to attend one of the toastmasters' meetings.

Toastmasters is a club with the goal of improving public speaking skills amongst its members. During a meeting, members are encouraged (or prompted) to speak up or take up one of the several roles in evaluating other members. There are also members that are assigned to give out prepared speeches. I have heard of Toastmasters before but this was the first time I had ever been in one of their events.

I was expecting a normal, conversation session and I would just remain silent throughout the meeting but it turned out that I was wrong. Even as a guest, I actually participated in the round robin session where I spoke for 15 seconds (in accordance to the tentative) before I could sit down and enjoy myself listening to others' speeches.

The prepared speech session was a blast! Alex was one of the speech giver and he gave a touching ice-breaking speech despite being a first timer. There was also an experienced speaker who gave out a speech on the art of foot massage. His speech was so hilarious and so well organized that he actually managed to slip in so much information in his 7-9 minutes speech! Above that, his hand gestures, used at proper timings, really made all audiences craving for foot massage and he ended, emphasizing that foot massage is the best friend of ladies and the way to a man's heart lol.

There was another speaker who gave a story on a contagious disease that spreads amongst us - rudeness. He applied his engineering knowledge in electronic technologies and explained how he tried to reduce rudeness using these technologies. At the end of his speech, he came up with an invention which combines all the technologies he mentioned - the RED gun. Omg that device actually really ignited sparks(as taser was one of the technologies he mentioned)!

Overall it was a great experience. I picked up a few tips and hopefully they would come in handy in the future.