Toastmasters Club #620500, Beijing, China

Meeting Minutes Dec.24 2008 Christmas

Written By Cherry Gao

In such a special evening, Christmas Eve, our meeting being held as scheduled. No surprise for guessing the meeting theme, “Christmas” of course. Our TM Liu Bing creatively symbolized the image of Christmas with three colors: green, red and white. Green can be represented by the big Christmas tree; the red can be represented by the famous kind Santa Clause with lots of presents; the white can be represented by the snow decorated on the window. In the following TM sections, Liu Bing furnished us with useful and interesting knowledge by a small quiz about the origin of Christmas tree and Santa Clause.

GE Angela introduced her team with the three colors too. Green as Timer Rita; red as Wordsmith Joe who brought us the word “festive” which matched the atmosphere very well; white as Ah Counter Rolf who gave us very good tips on how to reduce crutch words by being just silent or pause.

What is most attractive about Christmas? It goes without saying, Christmas gift! During the table topic section, TTM Daisy asked the participants to decide what kind of gifts they will give in term of different situation.

Cherry was asked to give gifts to her children. Her answer is the classic Barbie doll.

Angela was asked to choose the gifts for herself. She started from a picture of house she had chosen as gifts in her corporate club’s TT, and ended up giving the answer of a happy life.

Joe was asked to invite a lovely girl to dinner on Christmas Eve. He said he would always use his shyness as an advantage in such a situation. Who knows or who cares as the result is he always got what he wanted.

Angelina was asked to give gifts to her kids too. Her answer is a series of educational and inspiring books.

Rolf was asked about how to spend Christmas with his girlfriend. As an old member, he would take her girlfriend to toastmaster club as he thought TM is the most romantic place, isn’t it?

Monica took the Quote master and Table Topic Evaluator rolls at the last minute. Her quote is “speak appropriately like golden apple in the silver basket” which urged everyone to treat other people with respect and encouragement. As a result, we will get return by surprise. Then she gave very good suggestions to every speaker and she pointed out one common problem that the members should be more imaginative and smile more. After all, it’s Christmas, a festive time.

In the second half, we enjoyed three great speeches.

Justine gave us her beautiful CC5 speech, by lecturing on the topic of .Christmas and authentical love, matching the meeting theme very much.

Peter gave us his excellent CC3 speech, about how to avoid harm from the polluted foods, which is very helpful when we live in such a time that we can hardly find any unpolluted foods. He shared 4 practicable tips so that everyone is easy to follow.

Grace gave us a passionate inspiring speech with a title “run freely”. Through her observation of a boy running and felling down with her mother watching, she told us that do what we want to do and what we can do ignoring the other people’s comments.

The three evaluators, Cathy Jia, Cherry and CK did their job fantastically, not only pointed out the speakers’ good points and also gave them proper suggestions to improve.

Quiz master Liu Bing did show a great listening skill as he captured some tough points and came up with some questions no one could recall.

GE Angela showed great evaluation skills by giving evaluation to every role. She didn’t only point out the good points but also gave some good suggestions for each role’s improvement. Rita, Joe and Rolf also did a very responsible job by giving timing control report, word using report, and Crutch word using report. Worth mentioning, Joe captured lots of pronunciation mistakes and grammar mistakes as well which helped members to improve a lot. And Rolf found that the speakers use crutch words most when they referred to the notes, which gave some inspiration for the speakers to figure out why.

The awards were: best speaker Grace, best evaluator: Cherry, best table topic speaker: Joe, best role: Liu Bing

Members presented were: Joe, Liu Bing, CK, Cathy Jia, Daisy, Justine, Grace, Angela, Rolf, Peter, Monica and Cherry.

Guests were: Rita, Angelina, Shaan, Susan

At last, TM Liu Bing ended the meeting by singing a well-known Christmas song “Silent night” and all the members ended up celebrating the Christmas Eve by eating a tasteful Christmas cake together. What a meaningful and romantic TM meeting on Christmas Eve.

Merry Christmas & see you on the New Year Eve.

Meeting Minutes Dec.17 2008

Do you want to be an entrepreneur? The answer to that question could be quite positive, just as what Justine got when she asked the same question. Starting with the question Toastmaster of the meeting Justine began her explanation about the meeting theme. From her message we know that entrepreneurship is a spirit which is required by every one and especially precious in this economic crisis period.

GE Tessa lead a challenging team tonight as two of them taking the roles in a very short time, they worked together very well in explaining the roles and helping members in the function areas.

Wordsmith Forrest Brought a new word “Sly” for everyone to practice, and in his end report he did capture a lot of grammar errors in the meeting, from his performance we can see he still kept his sharpness in listening, however, losing some speaking fluency, hope he come back often.

Timer Cathy Jia explained the time control role in details.

AC Grace did excellent job today by giving detailed and helpful feedbacks to each speaker, she gave the report with enthusiasm and encouragements.

Tessa gave detailed reports to every evaluators, her feedback on the improvement points were quite helpful.

Our TTM Peter did brought a lot of topics to the session, he referred to our existing economic situation and linked topics smoothly to the meeting theme, according to TTE Liu Bing his introduction could be shorter to have one more speaker.

5 speakers attended to impromptu speech session:

Nancy got a topic on explaining what’s the most important factor in a self owned company, she came up with a well supported answer :”Passion”

Angela had to explain how to bring creativity, she cited properly with an interesting story that demonstrated creativity.

Kelvin, our old member and absent for nearly a year, faced the challenge to choose a site for his Fashion shop, he did showed his plan logically on how to choose the site.

Lily was to show her opinion on what is her reward in having a home job, she cited her friend’s situation to conclude that taking care of family and keeping the work life balance would be the best reward.

Our guest Angelina bravely took a challenge in explaining how to setup a restaurant, she leveraged her experience in Cantonese foods.

Quotemaster Susan brought: “From Dream Chaser to Dream Maker, Make dream, don’t live in dream”, she used her recent experience in revealing the meaning of the quote. According to Tessa, Her quote could be in bigger letter so for audience to have a better view.

Overcoming physical sickness, prepared speaker Cathy Yue brought a CC2 speech on facing changes, from her speech we all saw the passion and energy in a youth.

Her Evaluator Lily gave sincere feedback with no notes at hand, that reinforced her message power.

Members attended were: Justine, Liu Bing, Tessa, Forrest, Cathy Jia, Cathy Yue, Grace Yu, Peter Liu, Susan Song, Lily Yang, Daisy Chan, Bruce Gao, CK, Nancy Tang.

Member guest were: Geraldin Tai from Toronto 77 club, Guests were: Alex Wu, an experienced teacher taught in Ontario, Angelina Lau, introduced by old member James Zhu, Kelvin our old member who has paid to join club again, Jenny.

In the last session of the meeting we had a joyful and hot competition on the election of next club committee, with the help of ballot counter Susan Song and Bruce Gao, the final result is:

President: Angela Han

VP Education: Tessa Aryani

VP Membership: Cathy Yue

VP Public Relation: Cathy Jia

Secretary: Daisy Chan

Treasurer: Peter Liu

Sergeant At Arm: Justine Chang

Congratulations to the new team!

The officer job hand over will be done in the club outing at Jan.10 and 11, however, the officer training can be done in the next two meetings.

Meeting Minutes Dec.10 2008- “Be Able To Be Happy”

Written by Cherry Gao

With TM Cherry revealing the meeting theme of “Be able to be happy”, the meeting started. What happiness is and how to be happy are the constant topics in people’s minds, and Cherry combining her own experiences found that actually happiness is an ability, easy to lose but hard to gain again. As last she gave members two rules to stay happy: 1. never add conditions to happiness. 2. Never wait until too late.

GE Lily led the team to have explained their roles very precisely. CK brought us a very encouraging word “uplift”, and many members managed to have used it. Cathy Yue and Daisy successfully reminded all the members of the importance of time control and nor-crutch-word speech.

During the table topic section, TTM Bruce brought very creative psychological situations in terms of happiness, making an abstract theme very interesting. He let every speaker imagine themselves as psychiatrist and give solutions to each patient.

Jeff was asked to cheer up a student who lost the University Entrance Examination. He urged the student to build up the AQ (Adversity Quotient), which is ability to deal with failure, in addition to having IQ and EQ.

Tessa was asked to save a boy who wanted to kill himself just because of losing his girlfriend. She had a good interactive dialogue with the boy and told him to look forward and not to be too selfish. Every word is piercing into the boy’s heart.

Susan was asked to talk her son out of playing games all day. She planned to spend time knowing her son first and then come up with better solution according to her son’s problem.

Daisy was asked to coach the man who doesn’t like his job but have the pressure to feed his family. She using the meeting theme urged the man that happiness is the key. Without happiness, he won’t do his job well and then he won’t feed his family well. And without happiness, what did he do this for?

Grace was asked to talk to a man who has a well-paid job but with a mean manager. She urged the man first to find reasons from himself, which is always a good attitude to solve dispute. And then balance the relationship with the manager and doing the job. You don’t have to love the manager, but you need to find ways to work with him.

TTE Cathy Jia did a very good job to point everyone’s good points and give every speaker very specific suggestions as well.

Quote master Grace brought us a useful quote highly related to the meeting theme: “Observe around you and be thankful for all that you have in this transitory lifetime” It reveals a very important thing about how to be happy, have a thankful attitude and be content with what you already have.

In the second half, we enjoyed three passionate speeches.

Lydia gave us her good CC5 speech, about her perspectives to see how to be happy. In addition to giving some examples how her colleagues see happiness, she gave two important rules to how to stay happy. The first one is to keep balance among job, family, friends and faith, etc, which is a very classic philosophy in China; the second is to quote Grace’s quote, have a thankful attitude to face what you have and what you don’t have.

Justine gave us her excellent CC4 speech, by lecturing how to find jobs in the financial downturn. From an expert’s point of view, she gave all the candidates three important tips: the first one is to be open minded; the second one it to be cautious and responsive as possible as you can; the third one is to keep connected, opportunities often lie in good friends.

Liu Bing gave us a passionate educational speech on club officer role’ responsibilities and benefit to the officers in preparation for next week’ officer election.

The two evaluators, Jean and Susan did their job fantastically, not only pointed out the speakers’ good points and also gave them proper suggestions to improve. And Jean’s evaluation itself can be a good model for members to learn, well organized, nice gestures and appropriate voice variations and pause.

Quiz master Jeff gave us some very good questions helping the members to graze the main points of the speeches.

GE Lily showed great leadership by giving a conclusion of evaluation. She gave some good suggestions, like she suggested the timer to lift the color board higher to remind the speakers and suggest the wordsmith to circulate the word among the members in favor of their better understanding the word. Cathy Yue, CK and Daisy also did a very responsible job by giving timing control report, word using report, and Crutch word using report.

The awards were: best speaker Lydia, best evaluator: Jean, best table topic speaker: Tessa, best role: Cherry

Members presented were: Jeff, Liu Bing, CK, Cathy Yue, Tessa, Daisy, Justin, Bruce, Lydia, Grace, Lily, Cathy Jia, Susan and Cherry.

Guests were: Rita, Jean, Rene, Wendy, Sheila and James

At last, two things to announce: Daisy needs some volunteers to form the facilitating committees, including the transportation committee, location committee, entertainment committee and sourcing committee; next week we will have our club officer election and so the member who wants to compete for some officer needs preparing a short competing speech.

Everyone enjoyed this wonderful meeting and look forward to the next.