I attended the toastmaster division contest today. It is a really fun afternoon.
There are 5 humorous speech contestants and 4 table topics contestants. All the contests are the winner of their area contest.
There were over 30 people attended the contests. Table topics contest ran first. The contestants of table topics were given the same question.  The first contestant could listen to everybody's speech; however, the last contestant  could only listen to his/her own speech. So, the contestants could only know the topic right before his/her speech. The question is that "you win the mayor election, what action do you want take at first?" They all did a very good job. The last person win the contest. He is very skillful. He keep silent for about 10-20 senconds after he got the question. He used this time to think how to answer this question. The other persons started to talk right after they were given the question. The timing was started when the person begin to talk. I think if one person stay silent for 2 minutes without talk and gave a wonder answer after that., should he be the winner?
After table topics contest, it is the humorous contest. It has more fun. The five contestants prepared very well. The five people participating the contest are very good speakers. One person presented with a powerpoint presentation. He made a lot of fun pictures. Everyboy likes his speech "EearMuff". He caused so much laughter in the audience. However, he used two seconds more than the maxmum and automatically disqualified. I am sorry for him. The winner is in my club. He joined the club about 1 year ago. He is a good talker at that time, now he is a good speaker. He talked about P.O.V. the point of view. He is a published writer. When he was asked about his book, "step out of the parade". He said that meaning of life is not possess, but progress.
A lady table topics contestant closed her eyes for about a minute after she gave the speech. I was curious about her doing. I asked that what she was doing in that minute. She told me that she was thinking what she should say and she missed. I asked if that helped her for her improvement. She told me that she did not know. She won the second place.
A black lady gave a very interesting speech. During her presentation, I feel that she was so free to express her feelings using theme songs, her body etc. I was amazed by her freedom on the podium. I talked to her after her speech. I told her that she was so free and so relaxed on the podium. She told me that she feel so nervous actually, while everybody believed she was so relaxed/ She won the third place in the humorous contest. How could a person be nervous, while perform freely?
I talked with a lot of people. One of the people I talked with is a hypnotist. We talked about the stutter and hypnosis. I told him that when I stutter, I am hypnotized by myself. I got freezed. I hold my breath, stiffed my articulators and body. After several months progress, I could talk to people very easily. I would be able to overcome the obstacles pretty soon.