Be Confident, Speak and Impress

This evening, I did my speech No. 17, which is actually Assignment # 2: 'Uplift the Spirit' from the Specialty Speeches series. My speech title was "Be Confident, Speak and Impress", and Area Governor Allan Gan, again, was my evaluator. He complimented me on my language; he liked my opening and my closing. He even added that my closing was impregnated with very many words of encouragement that were ‘uplifting’. To improve, he felt that I should not try to juggle too many points at one time; instead I could have selected one or two and expanded on them. He also suggested that I could have considered using the ‘Before & After’ technique, and dramatize it for good effect. Yeah, it is a great idea! Anyway, I was confident, I did speak, and hopefully, I did impress!

At this HICT Toastmasters meeting – thanks to Jonathan, we were able to use the Senate Conference Room and with air-conditioning too – we also witnessed two new members, Desmond and Vincent making their maiden speeches. And they were praiseworthy. For a person who is not easily impressed, I found them to be really good. Mind you, these guys have unmistakable potential. In fact, this meeting saw a total of 6 speakers – it demonstrated how enthusiastic members are to want to speak!

In his other ‘General Evaluator’ role, Allan did his tasks and more. But he surprised me somewhat when he also remarked that he thought my recent Humor speech was great, but that regretably, very few people could appreciate my ‘high-level’ jokes! If I could joke about the economic downturn, he surmised I must be good! Thanks, Allan. Given that we only had nine people attending this evening’s meeting, I additionally played the role of Toastmaster-of-the-Evening (replacing Shireen who was involved in the modeling rehearsal again). And as well as being an evaluator for Mike Cheang who was doing his assignment # 9.

Still talking about F1, Tony Fernandes’ other partner, Kamarudin Meranun has made the confident claim that the establishment of the much-publicized 1Malaysia F1 Team is an attractive business proposition and is expected to turn profitable in the first year of operations itself – as reported in The Star (September 29, 2009, p B1). Big talker, isn't he?