Words from the annual International Speech and Evaluation contest!

The annual International Speech and Evaluation contest was held for the club Wednesday night 6^th March! Our President Sarah opened the evening’s proceedings by welcoming everyone and wishing all the competitors best of luck; she emphasized how important these competitions are in a member’s journey and development. Sarah then hand the reins over to our “Contest Chair” for the evening, Martin.

Martin explained the rules of the competitions in more depth, and introduced the different roles.  While our judges went outside the room to deliberate over their decisions at different times throughout the night, our Topics master for the evening Lucia stepped in and kept us entertained. Her questions were certainly thought provoking and at times hilarious.  We heard  Rob’s tale of engine failure while returning from holiday, to Jamie’s brief career in stacking baked beans in Iceland – the supermarket, not the country!  The funniest and most misinterpreted question of the night was ”would you finger a family member or a friend, if they committed a crime”. Let’s hope we never have to choose!

Our first speaker competing in the “Speech contest” category was Sarah. Her rousing and passionate speech centered on the heroes of 1916, that we should be inspired by these great warriors.  That the true wealth in life is not about how much money you acquire or how many  possessions you own , but people, people are more precious than gold. There is a warrior inside of us all and if you want something in this life don’t wait go after it, fire your passion. “Courage doesn’t always roar; sometimes courage is that little voice at the end of the day that says i will try again tomorrow”.

Next up with a speech entitled “Finally a right decision” was Michael, this moving and heartfelt   personal account dealt with his decision to finally stop drinking seven years ago.  For years drink had forced him to make the wrong decisions, get into the wrong relationships, and work in the wrong jobs.  When the mist began to clear all areas of his life began to improve. He finally got round to doing the things in life he never did before. Like attending an Ulster football final, seeing musical artists like Talking heads, Robert Plant, travelling, to countries he had never visited. Crucially, and more importantly his relationships with his family improved!

Next it was on to the Evaluation section of the contest and Jamie gave the test speech which was all about the quirky and unorthodox comedy style of Midge Hedberg who died in 2005 from a drugs overdose.  Midge’s goal in life was to tell the perfect joke; indeed his entire repertoire consisted of one liners, and as a testament to his memory here are some of his most famous ones.

- “You can’t please all of the people all of the time and last night they were all at my show”

- “I find that ducks’ opinion of me is very much influenced by whether or not I have bread”

- “Wearing a turtleneck is like being strangled by a really weak guy all day”

Three club members competing in the Evaluation contest;  Eugene, Cormac, and Brian, who all gave excellent evaluations of Jamie’s speech.  Eventually Eugene prevailed and he and Michael Joyce will go on to represent the club in the next phase of the competition.

Lastly our President Sarah made a special presentation of a bottle of wine and a box of chocolates to Pat for achieving the highest level award in all of Toastmasters.  She then congratulated Pat and all the other members who competed on the night phew. Our next club meeting is the 20^th of March, all are welcome!