Clueless in Japan

This is a club chartered in 1978 that meets monthly at a different restaurant in Southern California. It belongs to the "Founder's District" as Orange County is where Toastmasters International started, and where the headquarter used to be before 2019.  I was a member of this club, and it was my annual anticipation for the year-end visit to Cafe Mozart, an European Bistro in San Juan Capistrano. Le Gourmet Toastmasters Club has a core group of members who are current or past District Officers. Although it never says so, it feels like an advanced club when you speak among so many DTMs. The special meeting arrangements of Le Gourmet Toastmasters Club are: 1. Restaurant Selection The cuisine selections are never boring: Italian, Japanese, Korean, Indian, Mexican, Chinese, European, Mediterranean, Hawaiian, Peruvian, Thai, BBQ, ... you  name it. The officers did their best to negotiate the menu within a reasonable of price and variety to cater for special diet needs (e.g. veg

This is the club which typically met in the amazing Freemasons Hall in Covent Garden. Nothing really can beat the location! But the club is temporarily meeting on line. The club meeting is 90-minutes, and a few things really impressed me: 1. Flexible Table Topics Time + immediate evaluation The speaking time was 45 second - 1 min 15 second on my visit. This is not the typical 1-2 min duration, which nicely fit into the 90-min meeting. I also like the immediate TT evaluation after the session, which was conducted by an experience member. Many think that impromptu speech is hard to make, and harder to evaluate. However, the well-trained speakers will tell you that impromptu speeches can be practiced and you should practice before you're called upon to talk about important matters. I like the TT master who have a very clear instruction on timing rule at the beginning. He also offer tips for beginners (to just jump in and do it) and for more experienced members (to plan is like a speec

           Toastmasters International is a global non-profit organization that advocates to individual leadership growth and communication development. It takes the approach of "learning-by-doing" as all members need to speak by taking various meeting roles, instead of sitting passively to listen. To ensure sufficient participation for each member, the recommended club size is 20-30 people. The meeting locations and time vary a lot, from community center to hotels, from early morning to evenings.              During the pandemic, most meetings migrate to online. This breaks the geographic limitation. Members of a Toastmasters club now can visit another club at different country without the worry of passport or flights. It make this global organization more fluid and divers.                I will document some of the clubs I have visited during this special period of time. They are classified into 3 categories: 1. Advanced Toastmasters Clubs             There is no advanced cl