speed writing

It has always been my goal to prepare for my speeches way in advance so that I have more time to rehearse before delivery. However, I never managed to do so. I thought I gave myself one week to do it this time round, but since the car accident last Sat, I had simply no mood to eat. How would I have the mood to write my speech?

Received a call from the workshop to say that my car was ready for collection. My spirit was lifted when I saw the car revived and looking as though it were new. The stone from my heavy heart was finally lifted off.

***

I sat and looked at my watch. It was 1.30pm.

Tonight I invited 2 visiting toastmasters (as well as fellow bloggers) Ee Chuan and Ms Kam, and one guest - my close friend Jensen, to my club meeting. I could not disappoint them and since I've booked this project slot one month ago, I really did not want to give it up as project slots are precious and hard to come by.

Since Jensen is coming to pick me up at 5.30pm and I need 1 hour to doll up, I have only 3 hours left. The project objective was to research my topic, I had to speak on the topic I was very familiar with as I had no time to memorize my script. It had to be on my favourite critter - Hamsters.

Luckily for the fact that I am an avid photographer, I have some photographs of hamsters ready. Sticking them with blue tack on some coloured paper, I put them into a clear folder, while squeezing my brain juice on 3 interesting facts about hamsters that I'm going to share during my speech.

I managed to come up with the following:

Fact 1: Hamsters have unlimited sets of teeth as they grow continuously, unlike human beings with only one set of milk teeth and one set of permanent teeth.

Fact 2: Hamsters are solitary animals and they prefer to live alone. Unlike human beings, they do not like company.

Fact 3: Hamsters are nocturnal animals. They sleep in the day and play at night.

Fact 4: Hamsters can store food in their cheek pouches up to 60 times their own weight.

I quickly decided on the method of delivery - to give a quiz. Then quickly thought of an introduction - to as fact 4 as a question for everyone to guess my speech topic. Quite sad that I have to live with a conclusion without a message for the audience to take home. But I had no time to think of a strong conclusion.

I went to doll up with all these points running through my mind. And I was done at 5.15pm, just in time as Jensen was 15 minutes early as I had expected.

***

Glad that the audience liked my speech and participated actively in the quiz. It was a fulfilling chapter meeting as always.

My next challenge - Project 8 in 2 days time.