In keeping with the theme “Relatives,” Mary launched the meeting with musings about the Toastmasters “family” and our club as a “functional family” in which we all have different roles and are at different stages of growth in our skills as presenters and leaders. Two guests and 15 members attended.

Madeleine explains the hassles of contact lenses.

Mark was the first speaker, with a speech entitled “How Our Brains Can Save Us from Ourselves and from the Poor.” This was his third speech from the competent communicator manual. Mark drew on his rich experiences working with the poor and on a wealth of research about the effect of current policies and practices to propose a different system: providing minimum guaranteed income without creating monthly budgeting stress on the recipients.

Nicole delivered the second speech, entitled “Evaluate to Motivate,” from the Successful Club series. She explained the benefits of the evaluations that every Toastmasters meeting features for each speaker. She shared her insights on how to prepare to be an evaluator, along with a helpful handout with suggested structures for evaluations guaranteed to motivate speakers to continue to improve.

Madeleine, the third speaker, launched her speech, “I Can See Clearly Now,” with the eponymous song to describe the way she felt when she got her first (very thick) glasses as a child. She recounted her progression through different stages through life with vision issues, culminating in her cataract surgery, persuading us that getting your eyes operated on is not as scary as it sounds.

Our guest Denise participates in TableTopics.

Nicole awards Shen a ribbon as best evaluator.

Dave, Shen, and Johan gave evaluations of the speeches, and Michelle served as general evaluator. Shen was voted best evaluator.

Our next meeting (and our first meeting of 2014!) is January 11, 2014, starting at 7:30 a.m.

Adrian delivers the grammarian’s report.

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Junlei launches the orange-themed meeting.

As the meeting’s Toastmaster, Junlei, who had previously encouraged everyone to wear or bring something orange to the meeting, got our “speech-a-thon” off to an energetic start.

The first speaker, Adrian, presented his “Icebreaker” speech, the first project from the competent communicator manual. He used the words variety, orderly, and green to describe the characteristics of Indonesia, Singapore, and Seattle, respectively, as the three places where he has spent most of his life.

Adrian delivers his Icebreaker speech.

Petra delivered her fourth speech from the competent communicator manual, entitled “Get Lost with GPS.” She shared her experience of driving in a new city and the reasons why, even with GPS, she still manages to get lost. We all hope this will not be the case in Petra’s new home in California—and we hope that she will come back to visit us when she can!

Petra describes getting lost with GPS.

Taylor, the third speaker, delivered her “Icebreaker” in a speech entitled “Focus Factor,” named after a medicine to which she humorously alluded due to her challenges in focusing when she was younger. She recounted two occasions in which she surmounted that challenge: one involved unwrapping and fixing a lawnmower and another was about her winning a pie contest in Wyoming.

Taylor recounts winning a pie contest.

Mark gave the fourth speech, “Why You Are Hardwired to Make Bad Decisions and What You Can Do about It,” the second project from the competent communicator manual. His advice on how to make better decisions invited us to think twice before making our next spontaneous decisions.

Shen, the fifth speaker, focused on using body language to make his first skydiving experience vivid for us in “My First Tandem Jump,” his fifth project from the competent communicator manual. This was certainly a memorable way of celebrating his graduation from his master’s degree from MIT—especially because he was afraid of heights!

Shen, Mary, Dave, Rich, and Katey presented helpful evaluations of each of the speeches. Janell gave a general evaluation of the meeting.

Dave evaluates Taylor’s speech.

Our next meeting is Saturday, December 14, at 7:30 a.m. See you there!

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