4th Dimension Toastmasters

It always amazes me how we’re constantly trying to find new and innovative ways to make our meetings exciting and intriguing. For our last meeting, names were pulled out of a hat (or shall I say box), for those who would be fulfilling the different roles. I’ll give you three guesses what the theme for the evening was…..’I love/hate surprises’!! All the roles, from Sergeant at Arms to Table topics master were a complete surprise to those doing them. On the programme, there were also names which were assigned to those who pulled roles out of a hat so excuse the ‘AKA’ expression throughout this report as that is what the Toasties were referred to the whole evening.

Well done to Danie Roux, our Sergeant-at-Arms for the evening as he did a sterling job ensuring everything was in order for the meeting to go ahead smoothly! All the members and visitors were requested by Carla, our president to introduce themselves and they shared what had been a pleasant or unpleasant surprise that day.

Karen Geyser aka Tonker, gave a fantastic toast dedicated to all the great surprises that are thrown our way which challenge us and yet improve our lives. For a first timer and an impromptu toast at that, it was a surprisingly great toast!!

Carla introduced our toastmaster for the evening, Andrew Timberlake aka Tony. For someone caught off-guard Andrew was delightful and completely on point. He remembered all the pseudo names and needs to be congratulated for doing such a challenging role on the fly.

Sue-Anne aka , a visitor in our club, took her first shot at being a time-keeper and didn’t miss a beat. She gave great reports and we are really looking forward to her joining our club. Our grammarian was a very deep voiced Danie Roux aka Mrs Abuckle aka sergeant-at-arms. Word of the day was ‘Narcism’. The speakers excelled in using this word throughout the evening even more than once in a speech!

We had a wonderful variety of speeches ranging from CC1 to ACS level. The standard of the speakers was fantastic and we were well entertained during this section. Our first speaker was Tayengwa doing his much anticipated CC1 speech entitled ‘New beginnings’. We got to know Tayengwa and what his aspirations were specifically when it comes to toastmasters. The second speaker, Jaco, was also doing his CC1. The title of his speech was ‘Just Me’. Some people have had some amazing adventures indeed. Jaco used to work on a cruise ship in his younger days before he made some interesting career decisions which have led him to where he is today.

Richard Riche aka Georgie delivered his ACB entitled the Ring of the King. Richard had us intrigued throughout the speech using all the lessons learnt from toastmasters such as voice variation, gestures, facial expressions etc which added to the dramatic story about a king who lost his ring which shielded him from getting harmed.

Carla Sargo aka Pat completed her ACB-6 with a speech entitled ‘Timing is everything’. She took us down memory lane, reminding us of university escapades of pub crawling and shooter nights. She told us of different crossroads which we encounter in life and how they lead us to totally different directions based on the timing of the whole situation.

Our second last speaker was Graham Nicholls aka Jerry delivering his ACS speech entitled ‘the hospital’. In true Graham style, we were in stitches until the end of the speech. Graham has recently been to hospital to undergo an operation on his bladder. We were given a very graphic hilarious account of what happened.

And finally, Paul Smith delivered his CC8 speech entitled ‘The Entrepreneurship option’. Paul gave us a number of reasons why we should not write this option off. Some of which were unemployment and opportunities. He inspired us to find our passion and make money from it.

I tackled the chief evaluator role and conducted the evaluation session. Congratulations to our evaluators: Kirsten Long, Coralie Rutherford, Tiaan Otto, Marius Grobbelaar, who reminded us that evaluations are a crucial part of a Toastmasters growth and this was reinforced through the evaluations given to the speakers.

Carla wrapped up the meeting with a few ‘on-a-point’ clarifications. Thanks to all those who participated in the meeting and for those Toastmasters we haven’t seen in a while.

The club misses you and requires your attendance at the upcoming AGM on the 21 May! Please make every effort to be there.

I’m signing off!

Zibu Mntambo

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