By a moment of chance, I found myself attending a Toastmasters’ meeting at my neighbourhood CC.
It all started on Thursday when I saved the Documents_Checklist.pdf file onto my brother’s memory card so I could go down to the photocopy shop to print it. Then I did not put it back into the camera.
And as I was coming home on Friday, my brother was all, “Damn you.”, because he needed to use the camera.
So I went down to the CC to pass him the memory card, and found him in the conference room. Turns out that the toastmasters’ club meeting was about to start in 15mins. So what happened was that, my brother had to leave halfway to ‘go on a hot date’, so I took over his role as the AH counter, even though I’ve no idea what was going on.
It was actually quite a pleasant experience. The Zhenghua Toastmasters’ Club is a fairly new club, at an age of barely over a year old, and the people there are friendly and accommodating, not only to the new and unconfident speakers, but also to the guests.
As the AH counter, I was supposed to note down on a piece of paper every single instance of any person in the room saying ‘Ah’, ‘Uh’, “Mm”, making any repeated words, or any other pause fillers. As the president of this club has mentioned, pause fillers are used by people to get their audience sense their existence, but are frowned upon by the club.
I have a habit, however, of making it a point to include pause fillers in my speaking. [I even use it in SMS ._.] So it was quite a challenge for me not to use them during the session.
I also attempted the table topics section of the meeting. I was supposed to give an impromptu 2min speech on the topic that I’ve randomly picked from a bunch of topics [think Scenes from a Hat]. I’ve always liked impromptu speeches, so I was more than eager to try it out. I think I failed miserably, but at least the people there were, at the very least, entertained.
All in all, I thought it was a fun experience joining that toastmasters’ club meeting. Would love to officially join the club, but unfortunately, they only meet once a month, on weekdays. So maybe I shall join the club next time.
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Walked 7 clicks from Aaron’s house to Thomson Plaza in 90mins flat. whee.
Till the next time, it’s me, woonie, signing off.
