Peninsula Toastmasters Club

Thanks to all the contestants, who participated despite the fear (as Thomas Bowman put it in his prepared speech “Step into Action”).

Our intrepid contestants: Tom, Gerda, Tim and Vanessa

The contest was smoothly run and well organized by Evajdne Kortje, our experienced and, as Lois Strachan put it (Peninsula’s secretary and much more) “someone who makes things happen”.

It was a clear case of practice makes perfect as the contestants have greatly improved from previous presentations, not just in their normal club prepared speeches but in previous contests. So well done!

Congratulations to our winner, Tim Wagner, who won the International Prepared part of the competition with his Think Bike and who will be representing Peninsula on the Area D3 competition on the 8^th of April, Thomas Bowman was second with his Step Into Action speech, a personal tale of courage despite the fear and Vanessa Clark followed in a third position with her You can change your Stars and.

Tim Wagner is congratulated by Evadne Kortje

The Impromptu part of the contest was a tie… yes, all the contestants actually won! (Did I say they had greatly improved?). As it is required in an instance such as this, the Tiebreaker judge’s ballot was counted and the winner was Vanessa Clark, who will be representing us on the 8^th April in the Area D3 competition.

Under the word Revolution, Thomas decided to throw caution to the wind and asked a lady in a bus out. To his surprise she said yes and the encounter revolutionized his reality for ever. Then we had Vanessa Clark in second position, who explained to us that you can revolve your thinking about potentially chaotic events and regard them instead as positive and live changing. The choice is yours! Finally, Gerda van der Merwe was third and she told us about her current exciting 3-week celebration of this voluntarily-retrenched, 30-year-old-to-be lady, who is more-than-grateful to life for bringing a challenge she silently has been wishing for… in the form of chaos and revolution!

Vanessa being congratulated by Evadne

And the contest continued… Did you know that the Titanic was one of three sister ships? (I thought it was one of its kind!) And did you know that indeed it was not thought to be unsinkable? (I did!).

If you wanted to know these and numerous other details about the Titanic true story, you would have been in the right place at the Evaluation part of the contest, which was headed by Francois Rossouw with his demo speech: putting the story straight of the 15^th April 1912, The sinking of the Titanic.

The evaluators said it: captivating (Tim Wagner, winner), enthralling (Thomas Bowman, 2nd), informative and funny (Gerda van der Merwe) although Vanessa Clark (3rd) had a sinking feeling when the speech started… but considered Francois’ remark “what went down that day” an unforgivable pun!

And if you really wanted to know: yes, everything that happened in the Titanic movie did indeed happen that day! (Including the steamy scene in the car? We’ll never know!) But if you want to know why they chose the wrong steel to make the ship, steel that instead of becoming malleable in the cold, frozen sea waters, would become brittle, please ask Francois. I am sure he will be more than happy to repeat his speech!

Finally, thank you to the newest Peninsula members, Diana Kraak for being our Tally Counter and to Sandra Arendse for being one of our judges (together with Francois and Lois), roles that they took on courageously for the first time and at a really short notice.

And this is what makes our club meetings a success: everyone contributions… despite the fear.

Thanks to Ana Garcia for the review and Craig Strachan for the photos.