Drum roll please….

The Winner of Division O Humorous Speech contest is Vijai Thirnageswaram.

I was so happy to hear that announcement yesterday during the Division O contest. I am still trying to get over the Jet lag from last week trip to India. I was worried whether I would be able to deliver properly after lots of preparation and I was able to pull it off. Thanks to my coworker and coach Pat who helped me along the way starting from tuning the speech to hearing me out and giving suggestions on pronunciation and every things else to win up to this level.

It is the first time ever I came up to this level in any Toastmaster contest in the past 11 years with Toastmasters. It is not easy and I know any challenge/contest is not an easy thing. It takes lot of time and practice. Practice is the key. So I took it bit serious after winning the club contest on Aug 23rd. I worked with Pat to change the speech to add more laugh lines and able to win the Area contest on Sept 18th. Immediately started working for the Division contest since I have to leave India for a week trip before the contest. With Pat’s help, we trimmed and tuned the speech again for better and practiced before leaving India. I got back on Monday Oct 15th and I was totally tired and sleepy due to Jet lag which made things worse. I kept telling myself, just one more day and try to get ready for it and it may be life time chance, never know right!

Started practicing with help Aruna(my wife) and Pat and got ready for yesterday speech. We thought we are all set and went to the contest with Projector and laptop to set it up. We found out that we are missing the clicker which I practiced with to move the slides. Bit upset and tensed, didn’t find it. So we have to jump to back up plan and asked Pat to move the slides as speech progresses. It did distract my speech flow but did work out well than I thought and got good laughs. I totally enjoyed giving the speech and actually forget few lines in the middle but able to caught back up and finished it. It was a great experience!!!

In the below picture, I am with District Dignitaries and other contestants from different Area. Pat Snyder is standing behind me. I owe it to him everything for all his help.


Now we need to start again to get ready for the District contest which will be held at District Conference on Nov 17th. I am really excited and hope to do my best and try to win it.

I love quotations whether it’s from well known people or unknown individual. Quotes just have the tendency to help motivate and reflect ourselves on the real meaning of the words and try to make some sense in some cases.

Here are 7 Quotations which I came across from Facebook friends shared library. They are simple and good.