It’s not a joke!

Our 7 April meeting was chaired by President Dieter with the theme “It’s not a joke!” based on April Fool’s Day. Dieter outlined the background or origins of April Fool’s Day from history and peppered the meeting with April Fool’s Jokes.

Sandie’s first chance as Timekeeper was beautifully introduced and the role explained. She explained how the lights and timing works and when she intends to ring the bell if a speaker is over time. Sandie gave her first timekeeper’s report at the end of the meeting and she admitted it was not so easy to ring the bell when a speaker went over time.

Grammarian Ron’s word of the day was “allure”, meaning to entice or attract, and he reported back at the end of the meeting on who used the word or its derivative.

In General Business, Spinnaker welcomed and voted in four new members: Rory, Kamila, Sandie and Chetna, and President Dieter presented them with their new member’s certificates. Welcome to Spinnaker.

Speech 1 by Mike, introduced by Ash, was Level 3 Strategic Management Pathway Speech. In “A different Easter message”, Mike compared his own early life with the traditional Easter message, and how today he would need weeks of scheduling to organise a group meetup of friends for a drink. He outlined some of the problems males in their 40s might struggle with when thinking about their friends. He gave us three pointers we can adopt to help cultivate friends in our lives.

Evaluator Ash thought the most effective part of Mike’s speech was his spot-on body language using his hands and animations, use of humour and brought a relevant Easter story into the speech to set up the rest of the speech. Ash suggested Mike make more use of the stage and move around a bit more to engage the audience.

Speech 2 by Chetna, introduced by Jinny was an icebreaker speech – it “breaks the ice” with the club, its your introduction of yourself to your fellow club members. It usually focusses on one aspect of your life or the reason you are at toastmasters as you only have 4-6 minutes, so it shouldn’t be your life history in 5 minutes, even though it’s possible. In “I just wanted to feel safe” Chetna told us a story about her journey from being bullied to signing up for Kung Fu and the lessons she learnt from there.

Jinny’s evaluation was practical, positive and motivational for Chetna, and reminded Chetna that a Toastmasters club is a safe place to talk about something deeply personal or challenging. She suggested Chetna try to memorise her speech so that she can extend her body language and bring even more emphasis to her words.

Dale evaluated Jinny’s evaluation as practice for her in the upcoming District 72 Evaluation contest in May. She offered some suggestions for Jinny to help her score the highest points possible in the contest.

Table Topics by Jacqui with the theme of “April Fool’s Jokes” where speakers had to talk about their April fool’s jokes or pranks they have done or been a victim of in the past. It was a most entertaining session.

General Evaluator Megan said she loved the theme of “April Fool’s” and its use in table topics. She complimented Timekeeper Sandie and Memory Master Rory on their first time in their respective roles.

If you are interested in coming along to a Spinnaker Toastmasters meeting, just contact us on spinnaker@toastmasters.org.nz and we’ll give you the royal treatment.