Tonight’s meeting had all those in attendance waltzing around the world with Toastmaster Lin’s theme of “Festivals around the globe”!
Lin peppered the meeting with pictures and descriptions of various cultural festivals, such as Diwali and the Lantern Festival, which was informative and educational.
Keeping in line with the theme of the day, Grammarian Dieter chose “Celebrate” as the word of the day, to hopefully be used liberally in everyone’s presentations. Sadly, in his Grammarian’s Report at the end of the meeting, Dieter was unable to “celebrate” use of the word “celebrate”! It was used only sparingly!
Table Topics Master Jacqui tasked impromptu speakers with a mini-presentation about a celebration at which they had felt either joy, fear, happiness or peace.
Speakers and their chosen topic were as follows.
| Speaker | Emotion | Festival |
| Jocelyn | Joy | Chinese New Year |
| Lin | Fear | Lantern Festival |
| Katina | Fear and excitement | Nikolaus Day |
| Guest | Joy | His wedding day! |
| Dieter | Nerves | His wedding day! |
| Kathy | Peace | Christmas Day |
| Ron | Peace | Covid at Christmas! |
| Dale | Joy | Her 70th birthday! |
Jocelyn was delighted at her first Chinese New Year! Lin, who was a child at the Lantern Festival referred to, hopes not to hit a tree again! And Katina vividly remembers Nikolaus Day festivities as a child in Germany.
Guest Ryland felt like a celebrity on his wedding day! By contrast, Dieter on his wedding day felt nervous about his groom’s speech and ended up speaking from a blank screen!
Kathy enjoyed Christmas Day without family, eating the things she likes and doing as she pleased! Ron was forced to spend Christmas at a distance when he came down with Covid a day or two prior! And Dale was overflowing with bouquets of flowers at her recent 70th birthday celebration!
Table Topics Evaluator Jocelyn enjoyed everyone’s impromptu speech. In awarding Best Table Topic to Katina, Jocelyn explained that she was looking for the table topic that made her feel the emotion because of the descriptive language used to convey the message.
With several members away tonight for various reasons, there was just one prepared speech, delivered by Katina.
In “Nature or Nurture”, Katina relayed stories from her younger years and discussed whether those experiences had helped shape various aspects of her leadership style.
Evaluator Dieter commended Katina for her entertaining delivery and for the way she had weaved the stories through the speech and tied everything neatly together.
General Evaluator Kathy found the meeting enjoyable and convivial, despite the lower-than-usual numbers. She concurred with Dieter’s commendations of Katina’s speech, noting that it’s people’s stories the audience remembers. She felt the club collectively can improve on handover between speakers and ensuring someone is always at the front of the room.
The next meeting of Spinnaker Toastmasters on 19 November is our penultimate meeting before the Christmas break! If you’d like to tell your stories, contact us or just come along, we’d love to see you!
Spinnaker Toastmasters Club, Plimmerton, Porirua, New Zealand 