Category: News

The toastmasters evening on September 24 was special, not only because we hosted the annual club contest but also because of the “gift” shown by Rene at the end of the meeting. In addition, we welcomed four guests, Stan, Judit, Luefing and Matthias to our club! Big applauses!

After standard opening of the evening, the contest was started by table topic contest. The four contestants, Marting.S, Jazzmin, Jeff and Rene, were very excited about the upcoming topic to be given. The topic chosen by Wenrong was , “if tomorrow is the end of the world, what will you do tonight and tomorrow?”. Each contestant has different angle to interpret the topic: Martin expressed her kindness and love to her sister, whom he definitely wanted to spend the last day with; Jazzmin would rather enjoy the nice food and drinks and make the day as perfect as possible; Jeff slightly converted the topic, based on his situation, to “how will you spend your days most meaningfully for the next day to next 30 years”; and Rene, as coming last, wanted to make some relaxing excursion and observe the special day.

Although four contestants were all performing fantastically, Rene in the end had won the first price. Congratulations!

After short break, the second part of contest, the humor speech, started. The first speaker, JP, presented us with an interesting fantasy story about how he, a 1.98 meter tall person, was actually judged as “tiny” from his “Tighten” tribe. Ensuing that, Rolf as second speaker told us the funny story between him and his daughter regarding “never to lie” rule in a child’s eye, when booking a flight ticket. Afterwards, Jazzmin came to the stage and delivered a vivid speech in German about the comparison between men and women when being in the car. As agreed, in the end Rolf was sent to the next level of area contest for humor speech contest.

The grand finale of the meeting was when Rene opened an evelope and showed everyone a shiny purple ribbon. On the ribbon it says “president’s distinguished club”. Wow!!! After long efforts contributed, our club has finally reached this award! Big claps! The present toastmasters and guests then all gave some congratulating words to the newly achieved award. The scene was most touching.

What came more exciting was that afterwards Stan and Judit announced that they have decided to join the club officially! What a happy ending of the evening!

With full of joy and gratitude, the meeting dismissed at 9:30pm where most of the attendants went on to have fun at Mario’s.

This week we welcomed SEVEN guests in our MITC gathering! Wow, that is one of the biggest guest group ever in our club. Thanks to Gala, Isaac, Lars, Richard, Stan, Till, Paul and Tobias who visited our club and participated actively during the meeting. Let us all give them a big hand!

The theme, “heat of passion”, was adapted almost everywhere during the meeting. To start with, Jeff presented us the word of the day as “Fervor”, a very popular one which was quoted by most speakers in the evening.Then after the hilarious joke from Martin.E regarding three engineer nerds, Jeff shared the thought of the evening with us “You don’t have to know how to dance before you try, just dance” – with a wise complement that “It’s also the same for toastmasters”.   During table topic which Jazzmin hosted, five persons were asked about “what is your passion of …”. We are honored to invite not only regular members, but our special guest of the evening Paul to participate.

After quick break, the most interesting speech part began. It started with an excellent speech given by Oliver, who talked about his reflection on the topic “The Internet: The better university?”.The topic was very carefully chosen, and Oliver has given us a clear structure of how he preceives as the advantages and disadvantages of internet education.

Then, as Martin.E evaluated later, the speech round turned to a “story-telling” night! We had the pleasure to listen to three different stories:

JP dance with a Vampire?! Relax, it is just a story of 90% truth and 10% imagination from JP. He did attend the dancing event with an attractive lady, who has long and beautiful hair, but he turned her down by rejecting her invitation in the end. What a poor girl!

Then, with the same name of the famous American TV series, Alexander revealed his secret about how he met his daughter’s mother. The title, “how I met your mother”, already attracted everyone’s attention. During speech, Alex talked in a very personal and intimate way regarding the romantic moments between him and his wife(or girlfriend at that time). Well done Alex!

Last but not least, we heard a most touching story from Grünter. It is about the tears from a special sheep in Capetown which had a huge impact on the butcher, who decided to do no killing anymore. When the climax of the story came, all guests were deeply moved.

The third part of the meeting was led by Ombretta as General Evaluator. She introduced Steven, Paul, Martin.S and Martin.E as evaluators and had some valuable compliments and suggestions for improvement for those members who had roles.

As closing part from President Martin.S, Martin re-emphasized the spirit of the MITC -friendliness. He wished that we can all improve the speech skill under a friendly environment. With that said, we closed the formal meeting and continued the evening cosily on Mario’s terrace.

The following dates to mark on our calendars where announced:

August 27th –> next MITC club meeting

November 15th – 17th –> “District 59 Fall Conference” in Budapest

Considering the extended spell of fine weather we’ve been enjoying lately it was only appropriate that our theme for the evening was “The Beach Boys & Sounds of Summer”. Both the musical welcome and the casual summer attire worn by most of the 17 attendees immediately put us in the mood.

During warm-up President Martin S invited us to share our fondest summer memory, and in her musical Table Topics Perrine asked four hand-picked candidates to explain the story and meaning behind some well-known summer hits.

After the break Steve gave us a recap of aviation history, from the seminal efforts of the Wright Bros all the way to the Airbus A380, large enough to host 50 Toastmaster meetings (Project No 3, ‘Organise your speech’). Next, Martin E skillfully used effigies of a Neanderthal and a carrot to tell us about some of mankind’s most important innovations and their impact on history (Advanced manual ‘Speaking to inform’). Jazzmin then took us on a magnificent tour of her second home South Africa, which came in the form of a slide show that included images of the Big Five and the Little Five (Advanced manual ‘Speciality speeches’).

A memorable summer evening was rounded off by slices of delicious, juicy watermelon kindly provided by René. The cool, laid-back style of our TM of the Evening Christian was very appropriate for the occasion. Much fun was also had at the usual informal aftersession at Mario’s.

August 13th –> next MITC club meeting
November 15th – 17th –> “District 59 Fall Conference” in Budapest

This was the first MITC gathering in the new Toastmasters year. Martin S. as our new Club President welcomed the fifteen members and four guests who had come to celebrate a “Summer of Success” (meeting theme by Alexander).

Among the guests, there was Jenni as a first time visitor and a friend of René’s. For Viktor it was the second MITC meeting as well as for Ankur who had visited our club together with come colleagues from Mannheim Business School last year. We also welcomed Stefan as a guest from the German speaking “Rhetorikclub Mannheim”.

Martin E. as Toastmaster of the Evening skillfully introduced the agenda and the roles of the evening. Despite some short term changes he and VP Ed Alexander had managed to prepare and run the meeting brilliantly. Continue reading “Recap: Our Meeting of July 9th, 2013”