In the beginning of the New Year 2008, Hong Kong Institute of Engineers Toastmasters Club conducted their first meeting with their members on 2^nd January 208.  The theme of the 1^st Toastmasters Meeting is “Appreciation”, which resonate with the atmosphere of the prospectus new year and remind us to appreciate what we have now.

Introduction

Toastmasters of the Evening Mandy introduced us the importance of appreciation and how we expressed our appreciation in different aspects.  Therefore, we were appreciated to have Mr. Jonathan Leung, from Achievers Toastmasters Club, to be our General Evaluator of the meeting.  And then Table Topic Master Paul leaded us to share deeper our understanding of appreciation. The use of appreciation can be found in many aspect of our life: at harmonic workplace and in maintaining our good relationship with our partners.  Many of the guests, including Janice, Stanley, Chapman and Ken have been invited to share their understanding and comments freely.  Among other seasoned table topic speakers, Aaron and Betty, the audiences voted Janice as the Best Table Topic Speaker of the night! Congratulations!

Body

The prepared speeches speakers tonight include Barry, Aaron and Harry.  Aaron first introduced us the tips of “Timing Management”.  Aaron utilized the props of flip chart board and strong body languages to add impact on his message: Prepare and Observe for an opportunity, beware to analyze the Scenario before Taking action (POST Strategy).

Harry presented his 2^nd project in the Advanced Manual – Interpersonal Communication.  His speech title is “The Successful Negotiator”.  Harry shared with us that in order to achieve our goal, we have to employ win-win negotiating strategy.  To better illustrate the example, Harry even demonstrated us the role play to negotiate with his girl frind's father (Uncle Lung) to pursuade him to change the wedding banquet to a Chinese Restaurant, which is a cheaper venue than the Hotel Restaurant.  The conversation between Uncle Lung and Harry filled the atmosphere with humor and laughes.

Barry, doing his project 7, applied the communication skills that he previously learnt to present us the topic “Coffee or Tea”.  We all agreed with Barry that coffee is a better image to represent a more stylistic type of livestyle.  To support his speech with ground, Barry had researched and presented on us how a cup of perfect coffee be made by many delicate procedures and selection process.  In distinguishing which cup of coffee is better, Mandy provided a good solution, “It can be told as Star*** is $4 more expensive than Paci***”.

Just after the prepared speech session, our VPM Lung introduced each of the guests to us. Our Table Topic Evaluator, Betty, made the first evaluation following the break.  Wilson then evaluated Harry for his advanced speech.  The second Evaluator, Stephen, evaluated the two speakers, Aaron and Barry, and greeted them for completing the speeches successfully.  Our Timekeeper, Marcus, gave us a concise report on the use of time.  Marcus suggested Betty to utilize the remaining 80 seconds left. Our Ah-counter, Lung, presented us the number of unnecessary sounds we, every speaker, made during our speaking time.  Lung advised Stanley to take more chance to speak and pay attention to the ah sounds.  Our Grammarian, Kit, pin-pointed our grammatical mistakes and the good use of words.  Kit pin-pointed the good use of phase “lip service” by Ken, who used this phase to vividly describe how the boss appraise the colleagues not in heart, but in purpose to create a better image.  Finally, our General Evaluator, Jonathan, evaluated all of the speakers who haven't been evaluated.  Jonathan suggested if our meeting can have a one minute of silence after each prepared speech, the audience can have time to write their comment or suggestions to the speaker immediately after the speech.  Jonathan also invited all the Toastmasters to actively visiting other clubs, to learn from others and to appreciate from other Toastmasters meeting.

Conclusion

It is absolutely a joyful night.  We appreciated the time we get together.  We took a group picture (by uncle Lung) to remark this wonderful moment.  Thank you for all the members, meeting organizers and all the participating guests.  We will have our next regular meeting on 13^th February 2008, one day before the Valentine’s Day! And the theme is: Risks.  Guests are welcomed to join, to have fun and to learn by participating our next meeting.

Happy New Year 2008!

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