On Wednesday, the 14th of January, we had two Icebreaker speeches, Project 2 from the CC manual, and an advanced speech.
Patrycja delivered her first speech at Toastmasters entitled “Should I leave the hat on?”. In a very creative way she described different areas of her life while wearing a hat of a different color. With a green hat on she told us about her job as finance controller; with a purple hat on she told us about her family and life as a single mother of an 8 year old child. She ended with a Toastmasters hat on, a pink one, and with it her Toastmasters journey begins. Her final question related to the pink hat was, “Should I leave the hat on?” The audience answered in unison “yes”!
The second Icebreaker, titled “Yesterday is history, my speech is a mystery, your presence is a gift”, was given by Nikolaos. He shared stories of his teenage years in Greece and his quest for self-discovery. We found out that he is a very optimistic person, and his speech won the Speech of the Evening award.
Arek delivered Project 2 entitled “The Paradox of Luck”. He told us about the importance of preparation in achieving our goals. Roald Amundsen, the first man on the North and the South Poles, perhaps was born under a lucky star, but it was his excellent preparation that led him to success. Amundsen excelled at planning for failure. He walked the extra mile and he questioned everything that he knew. These are steps in his preparation process and Arek provided great examples from the expedition for each of them.
Jürgen delivered Project 5 from the Speaking to Inform manual. His title was “Meet the Vegetarians”. He touched on a sensitive topic, namely meat :) He mentioned that the number of vegetarians in Germany is increasing. Almost 8 million Germans are vegetarians. This is 10% of the population, a number which doubled over the last year. Starting in 2013, even at the Oktoberfest, vegan dishes were served. He also made us aware about some foods which are not vegan: white sugar because of the bone char used in the production process; commercial bread because of L16, an amino acid made from human hair added as a dough conditioner; and vanilla ice cream because of the ingredient castoreum, which is the anal secretion and urine from beavers. At the end, he gave us some reasons to become vegetarians.
Lesson learned: Preparation is the key recipe for success.
