Publicly Speaking

Contests are well underway and I am happy to publish those results I am privy to here. If I have enough info, I will sort by area.

TGIT :
Humorous Speech Contest
1st: Christine Lau

Teresa Lee, Area H5 Governor of Oasis Toastmasters, with her 8 month old daughter, Natalie & Neil Sy, Lieutenant Governor of Marketing, with his 2 month old daughter, Sabrina (having a nap or camera shy).

The Honky Toasties of tomorrow!! AAhhh....

It is generally accepted wisdom that what may be funny in one culture is not necessarily so in another.

A Toastmaster from Singapore, Eric Feng, wrote an article for a blog for Americans. Read it here.

He's talking about speaking to Singaporeans from the perspective of a 'foreigner' speaking to a homogeneous group of Mandarin speakers. That would almost never happen - either in Singapore or in Hong Kong!
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Unfortunately, it's very easy but dangerous to make assumptions about your audience. We don't know what languages they speak, whether they are foreign, local, married, divorced, straight or gay.

Anyway, reading that article prompted me to reflect on the quirks of "Hong Kong Humour". As I see it:

Physical humour is more effective than verbal humour. Word play, sarcasm, irony, satire and the like do not go down so well. Costumes, props, exaggerated body language and drama do get lots of laughs.

Humour in the context of boy/girl relationships is funny. Most speakers choose to situate their story in a torrid love affair or a failing relationship. If not, the boss/employee partnership comes in second.

And, as mentioned in previous posts, speakers sometimes pokes fun at others because of their differences - in looks, origin, sex, etc, which, to my astonishment, often gets the audience laughing.

Going back to Eric's article, we have to remember that humour is culturally bound. And, therefore, to be funny when speaking to an audience outside of Hong Kong, or even Asia, requires knowledge of their culture and, ideally, experience.

What do you think?

Oasis TM Club hosted a stand-up comedy contest on Saturday night.

Watch the champions and runners-up, Tong Cheung, Tony Chan, Jacky Lai and KF Tam on You Tube:


The judges were apparently impressed by toilet humour; jibes at pregnant, hormonal, spouses and breast size. Let's hope the upcoming Humourous Speech Contests are not in the same vein.

An appeal...

Contest season is coming and it seems a good time to get this off my chest. OK, here goes...

It is the opinion of this less-than-svelte Toastmaster that frequent references to body size during contests, conventions, workshops and other events are wholly inappropriate.

We've had a couple of high profile guys in the last year or so subjected time and again to an MC's indiscretion. We've heard intros such as:

"He's a heavyweight Toastmaster" or "... a huge - ly competent Toastmaster".

To me, such references are not only totally cringeworthy, they are potentially - even probably - offensive. Even in the absence of direct complaints, we, as Toastmasters, should be more sensitive and be models of politically-correct communications. Hong Kong may be lagging behind in this concept generally, but we - Hong Kong Toastmasters - should be demonstrating best practice, not succumbing to the level of playground banter.

Let's leave the 'Fat jokes' behind, please!

Right, I'm off for a pizza...

Our District 80 champion, Eddie Lee, from Hong Kong took third place at the Inter-District contest in Phoenix, Arizona a few hours ago.

Sadly, this means he'll not go through to the next round this time.

Eddie, you've done Hong Kong proud!

L-R: IPDG Poh Kim Siong, Donald Yee, Eddie Lee & Bernard Yue at the District Contest in Hong Kong in May.

Yesterday, I visited a club I've never been to before.

A member delivered his P9 speech. Let's call him Gary. Gary had prepared well, writing his speech word for word. He'd done his research. The content was valid and of interest to his audience. So, what was the problem? Gary delivered his speech, displaying none of the speaking skills we would expect of a Toastmaster with eight speeches under his belt.

He read the entire speech - word for word - from his notes on A4 paper. He made almost no eye contact with the audience, stood rooted to the same spot throughout with a deadpan look on his face.

And his evaluator - who has not yet completed nine projects - made no mention of these facts.

Brian previously commented on this blog that "we are too kind in giving evaluations and seldom fail people." I have to agree and, if I'd been Gary's evaluator, I would have failed him. I might have been a bit scared, but I hope I would have had the guts to be 'cruel to be kind'.

I also agree with Brian that there are CTMs/CCs who really do not possess the skills we'd expect them to. But, what to do when we have evaluators who are not qualified to evaluate and committee members who want to rack up their club's educational awards and earn DCP points?