• 85 • member once said, Toastmasters meetings are like a cookbook. They give you recipes for baking a speech. The more often you do it, the better it gets. I dedicated much time not only in attending the regular Saturday meetings, but also training our students for the International Speech Contests. To me, some of the most memorable elements of speeches are (in no special order): Cyrus Ng‘s classic “cat sheet” openings for many of his impromptu speeches; Weisi Yuen’s hilarious “losing face” introduction; William Cheung and Jacqueline Chong’s singing performances in their 10th speech; Billy Cheung’s precise evaluation on what a “nice body” meant; Sarah Lee’s convincing evaluative performances; Kenneth Wong’s quick wit on dealing with table topics; Kevin Lai and Dominic Chiang’s native-like British English (Kevin being the British actor, Rowan Atkinson, and Dominic being the politician, Chris Patten!); John Yong’s beautiful use of rhetorical devices; Eva Saur’s unique examples of falling in love with CUHK; Howard Kwong’s insightful sharing of his experience as an exchange student; Mia Tang’s vivid depiction of “JoMa” in the O’ Camp with her very original metaphor – “desperate housewives”; and Keren Zhu’s meaningful messages of treasuring one’s life. All of these speeches brought joy to my spirit and tears to my eyes! Perhaps what we celebrate today is ordinary young men and women who came to the alumni room with a pure heart of learning, but left with so many extraordinary achievements. Many of our Toastmasters have won trophies in the area contests; one or two have even made it to the district level. Among all these Toastmasters I have worked with, one of them gave me an experience I would never forget. In the first few years, students were allowed to enter the area speech contest with no particular requirements. One year, the rules were changed without us knowing. Our representative that year was Jeffrey Hui. Jeff and Many Chung Chi Toastmasters got trophies in different contests.
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