Ruwi Toastmasters Club: Session 158

We stole a normal session in between the contests going on, to catch up on a training session and to progress on speech giving.

Today we were thrilled to have as guests we had the Presidents of the PDO club and the Ras al Hamra club.

The session started on time, thanks to our ever diligent SAA TM Viswanath.

The welcome address was delivered by MTM Panna, who, while talking about the World Cancer Day on 4th Feb, elaborated further on cancers of the mind that eat us up from inside - like, anger, envy etc. It would be good if we could take preventive care of these diseases as well.

TMOD Shanavas had chosen as his theme "Food are Medicine". There are many food items that have medicinal properties, well known to our culture. He had asked each role player, which item of food they thought was also medicinal and the answers varied from ginger and garlic to potato and water. The answers were sometimes humorous, but by and large an illuminating theme.

Timer MTM Sandhya explained the timing criteria.

MTM Vaishali was the Wordmaster and introduced the word SUBSISTENCE to the group. Not an easy word and the group faced a climb when making sentences.

Jokemaster MTM Amaravani related a few hilarious ones with a straight face, based on the medical industry.

TM Rajat conducted a training on "Effective Evaluation" as a preparation to the club contests to be held next week. There were many practical tips on what to talk about in evaluations, how to manage time and how to practice.

TM Raja described the evaluation criteria for an Icebreaker speech to be delivered today.

TM Srinivas delivered his Icebreaker speech. As he described his initial days of struggle and later success through sheer persistence, I sometimes wonder why we surf the internet to find inspiring stories where there are so many amongst our own group of friends. A powerful life story, delivered with passion and humour.

Table topic master was TM Lawrence who had some topics on the theme (food based) and some general ones. People tended to choose the food-based topics (known devil, I guess) and were fairly successful.

Speech evaluation was delivered by TM Raja in a motivating tone and tenor, wishing TM Srinivas further success.

Grammarian MTM Swati gave some feedback on the good and bad usage of English.

GE TM Yashpal gave a meticulous feedback on all roles. Among other things, he reiterated the need to use mikes so that the audience at the back could hear better.

President Rajat closed the session, after exhorting all to give their names for the Evaluation and International contests scheduled next week.