My First Toastmaster Division Contest Experience

and i'm not even a contestant but that's besides the point.

so this is how it works.
Every club has a club contest, and the winner goes on to compete at Area contest (club winner vs club winner), and the winner of that goes on to Division, and the winner of Division is the "National" champion.

Toastmasters has 100s of clubs in singapore so believe me when i say it's not chicken feed.

On Sat i attended my first Area contest.
And very gung ho somemore, i was test speaker.

So i get to make my speech,
and contestants in the evaluation contest will evaluate my speech.
I basically get ripped apart 6 times. haha.

Before i went on, i sat through the humourous speech contest.
the standard was sooo high.

it was very enjoyable,
and so impressive.

and then it was the "oh shit i'm gonna do a speech in front of the experts" moment.

But it was still very fun.
i taped down my speech and on reviewing it, there're so many areas i can improve in.
but the audience lapped it up,
and it was one of those speeches i felt i did ok.

Usually after writing my speeches and rehearsing them, i can get a feel of whether the speech will work or not.
This one was not too bad.

Here's what the club's immedicate past president emailed out:

"After her speech, Yvonne came across as someone whom I would like to take home and show mummy .....Though she cannot cook, cannot clean the house, cannot drive but I still like her and believe all the problems and limitations will be solved eventually.

And I believe I am not alone. ... all other men will be thinking the samething .... ask Albert in private ... Ending is memorable.

Overall, both of you are fantastic and unstoppable!

I just feel that both of you belong to a special breed ( there are only a handful in our club ) who, the bigger the audience, the better they perform. You have achieved what others took years of struggling to reach this level.."

it's not all a bed of roses.
One of my evaluators went "there's too much 'you know', 'you know' in the speech. maybe you know, but i don't know."

"your eyes are darting everywhere"
"your hand gestures show you're nervous"

the overall atmosphere is an encouraging one though. :)
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It was completely fun but super draining cos it was a combined area contest and went on for 6 hours.

By the time i got home i was completely pooped.

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Attended the kids service today.
i was the biggest kid there.

shepherd was there to drum, and she invited me over.
we've been thinking if i could do something for the kids service.

she was drumming standing up which is very strenous for the foot (there's a foot pedal to tap)
and whenever her foot gets tired the beat goes haywire.

it's pretty amusing.

i'm not a fan of kid's performances and it was really early too and i was sleepy and unenthusiastic.
but i've just told her i'd like to try some ideas.
I think it'd be fun.

sermon today was pretty good.
the guest pastor said quite a bit that i could relate to,
including,
"don't pontang church! you'll be like doubting thomas!"
and i just pontang-ed church last week so shepherd had a field day ribbing me.

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time to hit the books.
let's see what this week brings me.