Ruwi Toastmasters Club: 118th session

Our sessions are getting hotter - one because of the summer creeping up, two because of our educative themes, and three because the ribbon for the Distinguished Club 2016-17 finally came in hand and was displayed on our banner.

The session started a little earlier today, at 3.00 pm, as there was an All-Oman photo-shoot scheduled at Qurm Amphitheatre at 4.30 pm, and we all wanted to make it there in time, and not as a photo-finish!

Acting President TM Chaitanya exhorted all of us to pause and smell the flowers, and not treat life like fast-food. Enjoyment is an important part of living, right?

TMOD Rita had chosen as a theme Bonsai. As I mentioned earlier, our sessions were becoming educative and we were given an excellent expose on the history of bonsai as well as a beginner's course on the mechanics of growing a bonsai plant. Kudos to you MTM Rita for compressing the vast subject into the span of a session, a bonsai version as somebody said.

Timer role was played by MTM Swati, an expert timer who is also going to be a timer in DTAC.

TM Raja introduced the word of the day OUTLANDISH, a straight word with a variety of applications. It was indeed a good choice.

Jokemaster TM Kamil offered us a series of witty humour, wife-related and otherwise, that we all laughed at.

In this session, the first speech on Pathways for the club was about to come up. TM Venkat, as evaluator, outlined the expectation of the Ice-breaker speech. Unlike earlier, the Ice-breaker level is now supposed to incorporate body and voice tools as well.

TM Bhaskaran delivered his Ice-breaker speech that made us familiar with his background once again. All members appreciated this landmark event for the club.

Table topics was conducted by TM Somakumar. He chose conventional topics that people found easy to speak on and the speeches were enjoyable.

TM Venkat conducted the evaluation of the Ice-breaker speech where he appreciated TM Bhaskaran's attempt and offered suggestions for improvement.

TM Rajat as Grammarian gave feed back on the usage of English in the session. He focussed in particular about avoiding fragmented sentences, advising the audience to somehow finish the sentence properly, having started it.

TM Viswa, as General Evaluator, suggested that all speakers address others as TM etc and not by any other prefix, as per the convention of TMI. He also suggested whether we can consider the Jokemaster role to be elevated to a 3-min humorous speech role.

Acting President declared the session adjourned, in a bit of hurry since it was already 4.15 pm and we had to drive to the photo-shoot.