Ruwi Toastmasters Club: Session 145

An unusual session today, because we had 3 speeches that were on three totally different planes of existence. Well more about that later.

The session was clocked off at 3.17 pm by TM Shanavas after a major furniture rearrangement in the hall of Abeer Hospital, who were, till then, holding another big meeting in the same hall.

Acting President TM Chaitanya related a story of a young boy with his hand stuck in a jar because he had closed his fist around a coin in the jar and could not extract his hand through the narrow neck after that. Do we miss big prizes in life because we close our fist on smaller gains? That's the question.

TMOD Rita had chosen as her theme "Coffee". She educated us on coffee throughout the session and interwove her presentation with introduction to the role-players with admirable skill. Good job there TMOD.

Timer TM Bhaskar described all the speech criteria with his usual gentle insistence.

Wordmaster TM Lawrence had taken up a role right off the bat, introducing the word PERCEPTION to the session. An easy word, presented on powerpoint with images (wow), it was enjoyed by all as the round robin required everybody to make sentences with the word.

Jokemaster MTM Swati related a few coffee related jokes before she changed beverage to petrol. She was on liquid fire today.

There were three speeches scheduled today, interestingly from three different project manuals - one from Pathways, one from Advanced Communicator Bronze and one from Advanced Communicator Silver. A treat indeed for the club.

TM Saleem, the first evaluator, described his expectations from the Pathways Icebreaker speech that we were about to hear.

MTM Vaishali delivered her Icebreaker speech (her second time around) titled "Go with the flow". We once again listened to her history but with one big difference - the confidence in her delivery.

Evaluator MTM Panna described her expectations for the ACB project Read a Story that was about to be delivered, where the speaker would be reading out a story or part of a story to the audience, making the characters and story come alive.

TM Rajat read out a story titled "Mammon and the Archer" by American author O'Henry, about the conflict of money with love and the relative importance of these in the life of the hero Richard Rockwall.

DTM Rajendra Varma, the thrid evaluator, described the criteria for the TV editorial in the style of a Straight Talk that was about to be delivered.

TM Kumar, sitting at a studio table and chair, flagged off to the studio count of 3-2-1-ON, with his program titled "Care and Carry", where he took up the issue of littering of the beautiful places in Oman, with an appeal to all of us to take away the litter that we ourselves produce at picnic spots.

Three different speeches, or rather, productions, elevated this particular session to another level altogether, where the members got a glimpse of the variety that TMI can bring to our sessions through their various advanced manuals.

Table Topics were conducted by MTM Kiran, who gave situations to the speakers rather than topics, with which the five speakers played around, bringing their own life experiences into the subjects in question.

Evaluation feed back was given by the three evaluators, TM Saleem praised the confidence of MTM Vaishali, while encouraging her to improve eye contact. MTM Panna praised the story narration of TM Rajat, while requesting him to raise the bar of drama in hia speech. DTM Varma praised the facial appeal of TM Kumar while advising him to expand more on the theme (and be more formally dressed as a news channel anchor!).

Ah Counter and Grammarian MTM Shobha, who declared that she had a hard time staying awake after a heavy Diwali lunch, nevertheless delivered a gentle and succinct report on the usage of the English language, as expected from the Grammarian.

GE role was played by TM Venkat, who suggested that Jokemaster memorise the jokes instead of reading, and that the Table Topics be more succinct.

Business session followed, conducted by the VP-E TM Chaitanya. For the following session on 10th Nov, TMOD was finalised as TM Lawrence, with speeches from TM Saleem and MTM Panna. Tall Tales contest was rescheduled for 17th Nov and is hoped to be a resounding success.

President TM Rajat wound up the session after announcing the awards: