Written by Svetlana
Introduction
Bloomsbury Speakers Club hosted its regular but slightly unusual meeting on Tuesday 9th December 2014 with not so many participants due to being the last pre-Christmas meeting of the year. President Jo announced it open and handed the Santa Claus hat over to Nathaniel, the Toastmaster of the evening, saying that the hat will pass from speaker to speaker throughout this special meeting.
Prepared Speeches
Nathaniel announced the theme of day – favourite Christmas presents ever received and introduced the functionaries of the day. Alefiyah the Timekeeper (whose favourite Christmas present is a homemade cake), told us a memorable story of a bus and opportunity costs related to switching lights of the Timekeeper, which speakers should observe to be time-conscious! Our President Jo (whose favourite present was watching a glacier in South America) acted as the Hark Master and advised us to listen carefully to the speeches as there would be a competition where she would ask questions towards the end of the meeting to test how attentive we were and win chocolates!!!
There were three prepared speeches on the agenda. The first speaker Mengbing’s Icebreaker Speech Project “Who Am I?” started with a story of her name and continued with a story of her and her twin brother, who was a more talented one. She wanted to challenge herself and to see how different she was from her twin brother and how her own talents could show. This accounts for some amazing life experiences and wisdom she picked from travelling, living abroad, studying at the university in Switzerland, learning foreign languages, working for a charity in Africa, moving to London, and, finally, joining, Toastmasters.
Faith-Rose (whose favourite ever present was a family photo on the eve of the New Year because normally they all live in different places) whose No. 6 speech was entitled “Determined”. It was a personal story of overcoming challenges and being determined. She didn’t believe in good luck but in being determined and faithful. Being a member of Toastmasters International and overcoming challenges of public speaking helped her overcome the challenge of passing her driving test even through it took her three attempts to do it.
Svetlana (whose favourite Christmas present was a tea-maker with excellent green teas from her family) delivered her Speech No. 7 entitled “Sharing Life Hacks With Friends”. Svetlana started with a humorous story of how important it is to share the knowledge and experience with others and that what you share stays with you and but you don’t share in forever lost. She shared useful knowledge about healthy life style and easy tips on how to stay healthy, slim and fit at no cost.
We had warm guest introduction from Michelle.
Evaluations
Michelle (whose favourite ever childhood present was a bike) evaluated Mengbing’s Icebreaker speech. The speech was interesting and personal, light-hearted and serious, concise and well-structured and delivered without notes; it was an excellent speech for an Icebreaker as evaluated by Michelle.
Swarajit evaluated Faith-Rose’s speech as a beautiful performance, advanced speech with a confident, humorous, convincing manner with a strong message.
Rufinah’s best present was getting married in addition to all wonderful presents she received so far. Rufinah evaluated Svetlana’s speech, which contained a lot of useful learning experience from childhood to adulthood, was quite entertaining at times too, was enlightened by her smile, and she didn’t use notes. However, she should have used references to formal researches, sources, and scientists to underpin the life hacks, which she mentioned.
Table topics session conducted by Helen was really entertaining as she explained that there are situations, which the impromptu skill can save. We had a good laugh. Helen’s questions were focused on holidays.
“If you had one day access to Santa’s elves workshop for free what would you do?” went to Rufinah. She had wonderful time in Mexico in October, and she would go back to there. The weather was wonderful, food was amazing; the sea and the beach were like heaven; people were friendly and polite.
“What would be your favourite present in childhood, which you wanted but never received?” went to Jamie, who brooded over her childhood memories when her parents’ family was somewhat broken, therefore, her best Christmas present would be being together and watching movies and eating Christmas food.
“The worst Christmas present, which you received?” went to Alefiyah. Her nightmare moment of a Christmas would be Christmas dinner without gravy because chicken would be so dry or if the TV was broken and she wouldn’t be able to watch EastEnders with the most interesting Christmas episode.
“Which do you prefer: the white Christmas or the green Christmas?” was answered by Yu Ling, who would love it equally white or green as long as the whole family was having happy time together.
“Make us believe that Santa Claus is real” went to Swarajit. He started with how implausible the whole Santa Claus idea seemed to the majority of people that he travelled overnight and put presents though chimneys. In fact by Einstein’s theory of space-time compression this is possible. Einstein proved mathematically that it’s possible and Santa Claus was the one who put it into practice. He used a special machine to compress the space.
“Convince Boris Johnson to replace cabs with sleighs during Christmas holidays” went to Glen who staged a persuasive conversation with Boris at his own apartment. He would commend Boris on his achievements and, particularly, Boris Johnson bikes. He offered him an idea of using sleighs instead of bikes and come back to office year after year again and again.
Femi provided a candid and most valuable evaluation of all six Table Topic speakers.
Hark Master Jo’s contest was very popular and successful and all questions were answered at the first instance and chocolate went out to prises very fast.
In the absence of the General Evaluator we used a very innovative way of Group Evaluation facilitated by Glen. It was very interactive and provided a number of comments.
Awards
Icebreaker Ribbon was handed to Mengbing; best speaker and best Christmas dress award was granted to Faith-Rose; best evaluator award went to Femi; and best impromptu speech award went to Swarajit!!!
Next meeting
Our next regular meeting will be held on Monday, 12th of January downstairs at The Clerk & Well, 91-95 Clerkenwell Rd, London EC1R 5BX. Doors open at 6:30pm.
