Aug 28th, 2017
by Dr. Eric Tangumonkem, CC | | Permalink
Each meeting held by Preston Persuaders Toastmasters club (PPTM) is unique and has a distinctive “flavor”. Last Monday’s meeting was run with the timely precision that the PPTM club is famous for. The General evaluator for the day Ravi Meganathan stepped up to the podium one minute shy of the time that the program stipulated.
It should be noted that two officers of the meeting gave speeches and these speeches complemented each other. The first speech was delivered by Lekshmi who is the VP of public relation. She highlighted some of the things she is doing to promote the club and attract new members. For example, she, uses different aspects of social media, hands out flyers and uses word of mouth as well. She has started blogging and took pictures during each meeting and updates them on the PPTM Facebook page and other social media outlets. She emphasized the need for attracting new members and retaining those that we are already having. She appealed to the entire club to support her in this endeavor.
Her speech was followed by that delivered by Eric the treasure who echoed what Lakshmi had presented; membership means dues and the more dues we can collect the better our financial outlook. The treasurer presented the tentative budget for the 2017-2018 fiscal year and opened it for a question and answer session.
The last speech of the evening was presented by Uthara who was coming out of an 18 months hibernation period. She held the club spelled bound as she waxed eloquently on how her strict and car loving father drilled her on how to get a driver’s license in India. Instead of enrolling in a driving school for the license as many other people did, her father insisted that he was going to pass his love for cars to her by taking her under his tutelage. The D-Day came, and on the first obstacle course, her car died on her. This made an already nervous and tensed Uthara perplexed, and she was pushed to the point of giving up. She summoned the courage, restarted the car and it came back to life, and she was able to complete all the three obstacle courses that were before her. She did not just complete the courses, she did it the right way, and this earned her a driver’s license. The sense of relief and joy was beyond comprehension. You could feel a heavy burden lifted off of your shoulders as you listened to her. No wonder she won the best speaker of the day award.
Other winners were as follows: Best Table Topics - Sam, Spark Plug - Valarie Harris, Best of the Big 3 - Ravi Meganathan, Best Evaluator - Priti, Best Helper - Veronika Brzezinova
The toastmaster of the day Dean Emmeret educated us about hurricane terminology. In Japan, they are referred to as typhoons in India you hear of cyclones. In short, hurricane, typhoon, and cyclone are the same thing. Based upon his presentation each month of the year is a hurricane month somewhere on the globe. This theme was a timely and appropriate one as Houston and many other gulf coast cities in Texas and Louisiana are battling the tropical storm, Harvey.
Ravi Meganathan, our general evaluator, praised the success and professionalism of the meeting. He stressed the importance of giving constructive feedback to speakers through evaluation and highlighted one of the strengths and distinctions of Toastmasters, which is the fact that each speaker receives four evaluation. These evaluations provide crucial feedback that helps the speakers to improve and grow.
Kudos to all the helpers, who made it possible for us to have any terrific meeting.
Theme of the Day : Hurricane
Word of the Day : Pulverize
