Leng Kee Advanced Toastmasters 20th Anniversary Monologue

On the 23^rd June, I gave a short monologue at Leng Kee Advanced Toastmasters Club’s 20^th Gala Dinner.  The following is the script.

Do we have an Ah Counter?  Great.  I can say use as many pause fillers as I want.

For those of you unaware, I joined Toastmasters in July 2018.  It will be a year soon, and what a year it has been.  My mentor, Gerald, is not in town.  He had to flee the country on a family engagement.  I suspect he knew I might be here.  In that case, I will just have to pick on Eric.  If anything goes wrong, we all know who to blame.  Eric is the best AIA Toastmasters president I have ever had.  Which is good because he is the only president I have served under.  No competition there.

I did not set out to join Toastmasters.  There was no grand plan for world domination.  I was walking along the corridor when AIA Toastmasters had their “recruitment” event.  I did not know it was a recruitment event.  AIA Toastmasters is sneaky.  They have these “training” events, and they bait us with food.  I fell for it.  So, I signed that form, and that is how I ended up with Toastmasters.  The wonderful thing about this club is that they have catered food for every meeting.  Visit our club.  Get fat.  Buy insurance because you are fat.

The question here is this: what is it that you love about Toastmasters?  Prepared speeches?  Table topics?  Refreshment breaks?  I like the fact that there is a Toastmaster club meeting almost every day of the month.  Do you know why?  I hate housework.  My wife calls and says, “Sweetheart, I need you to fix the leak in the toilet.”  I do not like to get my hands dirty.  A few phone calls later, and I am language evaluator, or project speaker, or timer at Frontier Toastmasters Club, or Kebun Baru Toastmasters Club, or the Moon.

I was here early, and I had time to think.  And I think I understand how Leng Kee Advanced managed to have such a grand event.  They did not need to sell you guys tables.  They charged you for it because they understand that Singaporeans will turn up when they pay for something.  Leng Kee did not need your money.

Have any of you been to Leng Kee Advanced?  They fine you for using pause fillers.  And then they have ten people for table topics.  Sometimes more.  What is the largest number of table topics speakers you have had?  See what I mean?  They meet twice a month; they have twenty table topics speakers; they fine them for pause fillers.  After one year, you have a gala dinner.  These people are brilliant.

This is what Toastmasters is about.  What we do in Toastmasters is based on the art of rhetoric.  It goes back 3,000 years.  We borrowed our manual from the Ancient Greeks.  Socrates was Plato’s teacher, Aristotle learned at Plato’s Academy.  Aristotle wrote the original manual, based on what he learned from his teachers.

Plato wrote, in his “The Republic” “I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.”  He quoted Socrates, who was married.  Who told Socrates that?  Probably his wife.

Socrates also said, “By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you will become happy; if you get a bad one, you will become a philosopher.”

What is the moral of the story here?  You can complete every project, very pathway, be a DTM many times over.  But never, ever argue with your wife.  You will lose.

Good Night, Ladies and Gentlemen.