Ruwi Toastmasters Club: 90th session

True, attendance was lower than usual, but still we had a scintillating session. Two speeches, table topics and a cracking TMOD theme. What more can one ask for?

The session started bang on time at 3.15 pm. Today TM Mathen was playing the role of SAA and he flagged off with gusto.

As President Panna was playing TMOD today, the welcome address was delivered by TM Rajat. He spoke about the good experience of having seen the live streaming of the International Speech finals at Vancouver between 7.00-9.30 am, Muscat time. Ten world-class speakers one after another - what an experience! He also spoke about the concept of "ultra-learning" as shared by one speaker, where learning curves crash very sharply from years to months. He also exhorted the audience to always explore such new concepts and not ignore them thinking they were not for him or her.

TMOD Panna had selected "Dreams" as the theme for today, dreams in the sense of future goals as well as actual night dreams. Interestingly she introduced each role player by analysing the dreams they had shared, which exposed aspects of their character that even they were not aware of. Additionally, we came to know of larger than life characters like Henry Ford, who built empires on the sheer strength of their dreams. A very interesting session, TMOD.

Timekeeper role was played by TM Ramalingam, who, in the words of TMOD, effortlessly clubbed Timekeeper role with Jokemaster role. He explained all criteria simply and clearly.

Wordmaster MTM Kaviya introduced the word REVERIE to the members, meaning deep thought or day-dream. The effort at sentence-making put everyone into reveries.

There were two speeches slated today. The P-1 speech criteria were explained by evaluator MTM Swati.

P-1 speech was delivered by MTM Roman, titled "Who am I". It was a very fluent and mature speech in its presentation, covering various roles that she had played in her life and questioning in the end "Do these role define me? Who am I actually?" A confident speech TM Roan. Well done.

P-2 speech criteria, which requires speech organisation, was presented by evaluator TM Venkat.

P-2 speech was delivered by TM Sabu, entitled "Shimla adventure", describing his travails of travelling to Shimla on a winter holiday. We could indeed visualise the travel along with TM Sabu. He ended with some life lessons learnt from the travel, which nicely tied up the ending.

Table topics were conducted by TM Mathen and his choice of simple yet thoughtful topics based on dreams and their fulfilment was simply great. Everyone could present a point of view and for once there were people volunteering to speak. RTC has indeed come a long way.

MTM Swati evaluated the P-1 speech. While praising MTM Roman's confidence and eloquence, she suggested that the speaker could have included more details like her family and academics, which remained hazy. Well, we caught up with that part at tea-time!

TM Venkat evaluated the P-2 speech, appreciating the clear narrative of TM Sabu that took us on a trip as well. The speech was structured with a good opening and closing. However, he needs to work on stage movements and language.

TM Kamil played the role of Grammarian, pointing out subtle errors of language that need to be worked on. Thank you for the inputs, TM Kamil.

General Evaluator was played by TM Viswanath. He praised the performance of all the role players while suggesting that the players, especially evaluators, should utilise the full time allotted to them.

Business session was conducted by TM Mathen. There will be no session on 2nd Sep, being part of Eid holidays, so next session will be on 9th Sep. TMOD and speeches were blocked for that session.

The session was finally adjourned by TM Rajat, bang on time again.