It’s my first time to be the toastmaster (host) of my home club’s meeting and on zoom. I checked in with the club president and our ‘tech guru’ 2 weeks prior. I reached out to the members the weekend (5 days) prior to the meeting to start the preparation (ask for speaker intro, coordinate with …
Author Archives: admin
Vacation
I love traveling and vacation equals travel time. If not going home, I’d be exploring new places and things. I don’t know why and how people do stay-cation (vacation while staying home). This year, due to Covid, I didn’t travel far, thus haven’t used a vacation day. I was surprised to see colleagues still took …
Catch the Moment
Yesterday I saw the family messages on Line about aunt’s birthday. I texted her to wish her happy birthday and asked if I can bring lunch or dinner and what she would like…no response. Later in the afternoon, I found out the Persian restaurant was open (which I asked a few weeks ago if aunt …
Mentality Creates Reality
I’m visiting Naledi-Polokwane Toastmaster club (virtual) meeting in South Africa. I volunteered at table topic (impromptu speaking) and was given the topic: ‘Yes, we’re back to reality’… For a split seconds, I wondered what it meant. Don’t we ‘always’ live in the reality? Or the topic meant that life is back to ‘normal’ (pre-Covid)? This …
Delegate and Grow
With tech team focusing on a large project with long development cycle, we need to do things differently. I asked non-tech teams to choose/ form task forces to work on the discovery, planning works of a few key areas. I then asked the product manager to lead the task force while I support it. He …
Survive => Thrive
I visited Boston Toastmaster club meeting. At table topic (impromptu speaking), I was asked to talk about ‘not only survive but thrive’… Two recent Toastmaster experiences were great examples and thanks to Covid-19: (1) Many clubs have brought their meetings online so I ‘could’ join tonight’s meeting. I couldn’t make the meeting in person with …
Always Making Progress
Over the past two weeks, a colleague and I have been calling sales to get buy-in and prepare for customer interviews. Most sales and ops teams were enthusiastic about product/ UX team’s interest in getting customer feedback even if it may not be the right time or circumstance to talk with customers now. What we …
Tea Time
My roommate and I have been working from home since mid March due to Covid. We’re busy during the week, barely talk with each other, and usually work late. Today for the first time, we decided to have a tea in the late afternoon. I love Indian Chai masala tea, hot and comforting, just the …
Karma
I watched Richard Peck to become toastmaster international president at this year’s international convention. Time goes fast. We met 9 years ago at a district 53 conference. I newly joined toastmaster then and attended the conference for the first time by the encouragement of my mentor. I remembered Rich, tall, slim man in suit, standing …
Alternative
I got up at 7AM on a Sunday morning to watch Toastmaster International’s panel discussion about the partnership of Toastmaster and Rotary Club. Somehow, the link didn’t work. I tried several times and waiting, nothing happened…I was a bit annoyed of wasting time and sleep. Then I reminded myself that I ‘gained’ some time to …