Surabaya Toastmasters Club #692744: MoM 12 March 2010: Go Green

This has got to be the one of the best meetings in the history of STC. Do you know why? First, for the first time, we conducted our meeting in a hotel! Well, not a five-star one, but nice enough as a change in place and atmosphere. The meeting room was spacious, and everyone got their own tables!

Second, we had a wide variety of guests coming from other clubs, other cities, even other countries!

Third, we also had the honor of hosting the Grand Master of Public Speaking, somebody who brought Toastmasters to South East Asia, the first DTM in SEA, and the ONLY Accredited Speaker outside of the US and Canada: Mr. Gerald Green!

For those reasons, the theme for the meeting was "Go Green". We also took advantage of the theme to remind ourselves to keep our beloved earth safe and healthy by conserving resources and say, "Hey, be more friendly to the environment, guys!"

Papa Green, as he's affectionately called, was greeted by loud ovation from everybody as he entered the room with Pak Arlan. CC Niken must have been so excited that she had the extra energy to act as both the President and the ToM tonight.

ACB CL Martin acted as the Table Topic Master and had prepared some tricks up his sleeves. The first speaker was ACG ALB Johan, and TM Martin asked him what the word "green" means to him. Next TM Martin called Gilda and asked her to describe something in his bag only by touching it. Gilda described it to the floor and the audience correctly guessed it as "Aladdin lamp"! Not bad, Gilda. :) The next two T/T speakers were Nur and Arno, and they were each asked to pick a coin from Martin's bag, read out the year, and tell the audience what their most memorable experience was in that year. Arno spoke about his personal experience in the year 1992 in which he was very close to facing a bomb. This earned him The Best T/T Speaker Award. Good job, guys!

On to the Prepared Speech Session. TM Jane Stefanie started off strongly, delivering her speech "Fail with Confidence" (BM#5). Everybody was blown away by her confidence, but the most surprising was when they discovered how young she was! Papa Green, who evaluated her, said "You will go very far." Indeed, way to go, Jane! CC Rina Lukiandari followed with her speech "In the footsteps of the Archeologist Stateman" (AM Storytelling #5). She told the story about Thomas Stamford Raffles, the founding father of Singapore, who happened to spend some time in Java island. ACB ALB David evaluated her speech.

CC ALB Irene came third, but she upped the ante by delivering the high notes on the poem "Meeting at Night: A Lover's Journey" (AM Interpretive Reading#2). Irene really displayed her poem reading talent here that made CC Rama, her evaluator, speechless. He admitted that he had very little experience reading poem, let alone evaluating one, but at the end he delivered another superb evaluation for her. Great job to both of you!

The final speaker was our guest from Bali, CC ALB Miranda. She's working on the same manual as Rina (AM Storytelling #5), but while Rina was talking about a dead person, Miranda spoke about a live one! The star of her speech was Steve Jobs, the genius behind Apple and all of its products that rock the world. Indeed, he's a one-of-a-kind communicator that can electrify the audience like no one else. Miranda was evaluated by ACG CL Yong Boon Kok.

All speakers did such a great job that they deserved an award, but finally it was Irene The Poet who nailed the Best Speaker award. Congratulations!

At the end of the meeting, Papa Green evaluated the whole proceedings, and he gave valuable feedbacks and suggestions. This has earned him The Best Evaluator award for the night! Everybody was happy, and those who had registered for Papa Green's two-day seminar could really look forward to seeing him again the following day.

Hall of Fames:

Best T/T: Arno