My Dearest Fellow TMers,

If you missed last night’s meeting, you have missed quite a lot.

Nathan, looking more than his usual shirt and tie, shined and brightened the whole meeting room with his end-of-term report. With his convincing statistics, we saw that we have achieved a lot: we are doing very well on active member participation, on member retention rate, on number of members achieving competent communication awards, and so on.

Dedicated to excellence, however, Nathan showed us we need to have more advanced speakers in the club, ideally 50% of members; we need to balance speech opportunities for all members. We are open to ideas that can improve the performance of individuals as well as the club as a whole.

My Dearest Fellow Toastmasters,

Thanks so much for coming to the election meeting last night.

Nathan, Jeri, Charly Chen, Cathy Li, Michelle Liu, Heather Wang, Ann Lee, Sue Wu and Christy, congratulations on being elected club officer team for next 6 months! Your dedication to the club will be honoured and your contribution will be remembered.

For people who ran for the club officer role, Angela, Cathy Chen, Waves Zhang, Aoteman, thanks for your passion and willingness to contribute!

For those members who were there to cast your vote – for whatever reasons you can’t run for the office, you cared a lot to support the candidates, you cared a lot about the quality of CCTMC, and you believed your voice mattered and shall be heard.

My Dearest Fellow Toastmasters,

Are you playing on the court? Are you challenging yourself?

Are you afraid when entering into unknown and uncertainty?

Tonight, everyone challenged himself in his own way – Christy and John for their first role in the club, Jeri to evaluate Prof. Hale’s speech, Xiangzhen to organize the whole meeting, Abby who had only a few hours from contemplating a topic to presenting her final speech. I have to say, the whole team, except Yann, are all relatively new members with average of less than 6 month experience. Congratulations, Xiangzhen, Christy, John, Michelle, Elaine, Chris, Julia, Heather, Jeri, Cathy Chen and Frieda who stepped up for the challenge. And thanks Yann, who has always been there to assist us through the mazes.