The Best

Table topics: the best thing I want to recommend

The Table Topics Master set an unusually generous brief: come recommend something good you have found, whether it’s the best park, the best book, or the best food, and the club took it as an invitation. The first answer was filed days early, in the group chat, someone declaring it had to be their new car. When nobody reacted right away, they followed up wondering out loud whether the group had somehow missed the news of the purchase. This drew the response the club reserves for its treasurer, plus an arithmetic joke about how many club-scale down payments that car represented.

There were so many recommendations queued that the session had to be split, with two evaluators covering half each.

Prepared speeches

Susie spoke on hormones and the life cycle. Asked which Pathways objective it served, she opted out, laughing that she had no objective because she’d given up on Pathways entirely. The reply was easygoing: fine, just enjoy the speech for now, with a note that Tao would give a Pathways walkthrough soon, which he did, four days later at the 1025th. Jacob’s speech was “Interest.” A third speaker withdrew the night before for a work conflict.

The Word of the Day was “versatile.”

The guest who ran the evaluation

The General Evaluator that night was Danny, attending as a guest. He had been to three meetings and had taken the stage fourteen times, and this performance is the one the club still refers back to: one member said Danny’s GE style was something they doubted they’d ever match in a lifetime. Someone spun the acronym out in tribute: “GE = great eyes - great ears - great expert - great evaluator.” His own explanation was less mystical: he’d spent the previous night squeezing out every last word of vocabulary he had, all for this one GE session.

The next morning he returned the compliment to every facilitator at once, inventing a G-title for each: Greeter of Everyone for the SAA, Guardian of Efficiency for the Timer, Great Ear for the Grammarian, Generator of Enthusiasm for the TME, Guardian of Engagement for the Table Topics Master, Guide of Encouragement for one evaluator and Great Example of a Toastmaster for the other. The venue got Great Environment. The evening got Great Evening.

He joined the club that night, and introduced himself in the group in full meeting protocol: “Toastmaster of the Evening, fellow members & distinguished guests, I’m Danny Zeng Yuke, delighted to be here at Shenzhen Toastmasters International.” His stated reason for waiting until the third visit to sign up: he was just following the rules, since the agenda clearly says new members need to attend three meetings first.

Two new members in one night

The second speech evaluator was also a guest, Maggie, who joined within a day. For the officers this was the evening the new term started paying off: the president got teased for it, the new team barely off the ground and already pulling in two people who wanted to join, both of them experienced and clearly excellent Toastmasters. The president’s own verdict the next morning: what a day, she’d gone to bed the night before and woken up to find so much good news waiting, genuinely thrilled.