4th Dimension Toastmasters

This evening’s meeting was a rather special one as it was the last meeting Carla Sargo was attending in our club as our President. As some of you might know, Carla is moving to the UK to explore different career opportunities. So I would like you all to join me in wishing her well on her journey of discovery.

The theme for the evening was ‘First Things First’. In keeping with the theme, we kicked the meeting off with the usual introductions and we shared what is the first thing that we enjoyed in 2008. It seems most people had wonderful memories, ranging from being awake and sober at midnight to enjoying some great champagne! Without any further delays, Carla handed over to Agnes Lutukai, our toastmaster for the evening. Agnes is a seasoned toastmaster and always ensures that the meeting is run professionally without forgetting the element of fun.

Our role players are to be commended for making sure everything was in order. Tayengwa was our Timekeeper, Coralie our Table topics master and Christa our grammarian. Our word of the day was ‘disseminate’ and its use was disseminated throughout the meeting (Christa, I’m making up for not using it on Monday). Andrew delivered an inspirational toast on ‘putting first things first’!

Our prepared speeches were of a high standard ranging from CC1 to ACB9. The first one was delivered by Colleen Luck evaluated by Tiaan Otto. Coleen finally took the great plunge and delivered her CC1. Her speech title was ‘About me’. Danie Roux delivered a hilarious CC8 entitled ‘Making mistakes’. His speech was evaluated by Andrew Timberlake. Danie left us with the following words to ponder, ‘if someone tells you that you have made a mistake, ignore them and make money from your mistake’.

Matt Hindley delivered a fascinating CC9 with his speech entitled “Picture Perfect”. The evaluator for this speech was Zibu Mntambo. Matt gave us some insight on how pictures can define so explicitly what is going on in the world at any given time. Our final speech was delivered by Carla. It was an ACB9 entitled “Welcome to bunnywood” . Her speech gave a fantastic overview of the rise and fall of the Playboy Empire as well as a new strategy to re-launch the brand. This speech was evaluated by Sue Munro.

Sue did a really great job of running the evaluation session while Coralie kept the toastmasters and guests entertained with a new and exciting way of running the table topics session.

Finally, Agnes handed over the ranks back to Carla to conclude the meeting. Please do not forget to vote for the individual awards to be handed out at our Induction dinner. If you want any further details, please contact Carla. If you have not already RSVP’ed for the Induction Dinner, please do so by the end of today.

That’s all from me. I hope you enjoy the rest of your week and see you at the Induction dinner.

Our meeting started off with bang as usual. Our theme for the evening was “The day of my life”. We had quite a few visitors and it was rather exciting to welcome them into the Toastmasters world and give them a taste of why we dedicate our time and ourselves to this great organisation. I’m not quite sure whether it was because we had just come from a much needed long weekend but there were almost more visitors than members at the meeting. Hopefully that was the reason and we will see a lot more of you at the AGM on the 21 May.

We spend quite a lot of time stressing about life, work, family, love and everything else that we dedicate very little time to appreciating the amazing and life changing days of our lives. As part of our introduction, we shared what those days were.

We then proceeded to the introduction of our role players for the evening.

Well done to
· Danie Roux, our stand-in Sergeant at Arms for setting up the room and assisting in keeping the meeting on schedule,
· Christa Roux who played the role of timekeeper for doing a fantastic job of keeping track of and presenting the times taken, very clearly and concisely and
· Tayengwa, our grammarian, challenged us to use the word of the day “Indelible” during the meeting. The word means something that is impossible to remove or unforgettable.

Richard Riche was our toastmaster and in his usual manner carried off the role as if it were no effort at all!

I delivered a much deserved toast to our mothers, who sacrifice, love and care for us throughout their lives and do not get as much credit as they deserve (seeing as mother’s day is coming up really soon).

Karen Geyser delivered a very interesting CC2 speech entitled “Home sweet home”. She posed questions such as why do we feel comfortable in some people’s homes and not others. She then proceeded to inform us that it had everything to do with how that particular home was organised to allow for good karma and flow of energy.

Danie Roux had an intriguing speech on “Paying Attention” – CC6. Danie gave us insight on the abundance of information there is and how we usually end up not focusing on the things we should be due to this overload. He left us with the following thought to ponder: Identify the moment you’re in, decide what information you need and pay all your attention on it.

Alan Powell told us a love story with his CC5 entitled “Life Chances”. It was about two people who had been separated for a long time and were reunited after 2000 years by chance! The moral of the story was that certain chances that come our way can present life changing possibilities.

Richard Riche presented us with a very well delivered, fun and lighthearted ACB-2 speech “Not kissing frogs”. Weird topic for a guy hey ? I know… He described how persistence and hanging on leads to great results eventually…He recalled going on a two disastrous dates (leading to being stalked) and the third one being the best. Not sure if he did kiss those frogs or not…He denies it but I guess he doesn’t kiss and tell!!

Last but not least, Marius delivered an absolutely brilliant ACB-6 speech entitled “What is humour?”. In true Marius style, he shared jokes and kept the mood in the room light while conveying the advantages of humour in our lives. He also left us with a challenge: We need to look at people in other cars in traffic and see just how grumpy they look and then resolve to laugh at least 300 times a day!

Carla Sargo as the Chief Evaluator led the evaluation session and well done to her for pulling it off so smoothly. The other evaluators for the evening were Danie Roux, Zibu Mntambo, Andrew Timberlake and Alan Powell, heads up to you all for the way in which you approached the evaluations.

We concluded with a reminder about voting for the New 4th Dimension Committee! Nominations need to be forwarded to Graham Nicholls before our AGM on the 21 May. Please make every effort to attend this meeting so that you can also vote in your new committee. The roles that need to be filled are President, Vice President Education, Vice President Membership, Vice President Public Relations, Treasurer, Secretary and the Sergeant-at-Arms. See http://www.toastmasters.org/clubofficers.aspx for more information!

Zibu Mntambo

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