I went to my first Toastmasters meeting in Shenzhen. Who knows, maybe I’ll end up joining for my duration here. I had my driver take me there, though next time I’ll take the subway ’cause that way he won’t have to wait for me. Anyway, I called someone in the club and had her talk to my driver to make sure I had the right place. Pretty soon a guy with a bunch of roses approached me. “No, no roses”, I was thinking as I was shaking my head. “No, I’m not selling roses! Are you looking for Toastmasters??” “Shi!” and we jogged to the back of the building where the meeting was about 2 minutes away from starting. I signed in. In front of me was an Englishman (the only other “man of the west”) that I spoke to briefly. I then took a seat.

I was surprised at how similar the meeting was to the Kirkland Eclectics – lots of enthusiasm, support, and laughter. They had no word of the week, but did add an um counter. I supposed it was wise in this case to have an um counter when the majority of these people didn’t speak English as a first language. They also had a section called “Development Section”. I’m not really sure what the point was, but it was a good idea. A young fella named Vincent came up to the front with a violin and gave a long inspirational speech on his love of the violin and music. He also played three pieces, one of them being the Meditation from “Thais” by Massenet. He did a great job and I wanted to speak to him afterwards, but didn’t get the chance. Maybe next time.

Another interesting thing was the quantity of young people. For once, I was one of the older attendees. There were many people who were still in college. There is immense competition among young people, especially about to graduate, to get every edge they can so that they can land a decent job, which still pays peanuts compared to the salaries in the US. I wish more young folks in the US would join clubs like Toastmasters, most are out hitting the bars. That’s fine, I guess; there’s plenty of that here, but there is more of a hunger here, way more, than in the US. That’s a nice segue for a plug of The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman and an article I just saw (haven’t read it yet) in Business Week titled, “They’re Smart. They’re Hungry. And They Want Your Customers. Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.” The cover shows a shot of the globe that’s focused on China and Southeast Asia.

(l-r) Toastmaster of the evening (don’t recall her name), Hameed (TableTopics Master), Greg (Guest from Hong Kong)

Here’s another example of people and their cell phones. People adore cell phones here. I need to do a full report on this, but here’s one example. Here’s a shot of the Grammarian (the guy who approached me holding the roses) playing with his cell phone. Now, he should be paying attention to the speech going on, but instead he’s taking pictures and talking with the Table Topics Master, an Indian man living in Hong Kong. I suppose I can’t really criticize him, he delivered a good, if not extremely long-winded (Timer?) report. He even pointed out some good feedback to me: “Americans use ‘very’ a lot!” Arrr! Sorry, Jim!

Cell phone distractions:

The General Evaluator (she likes to cry while watching Titanic):

The meeting went on way too long. 15 minutes overdue and the Toastmaster was still talking. For all her enthusiasm and excellent speaking skills (quite the typical Toastmaster), she did not know how to be concise and not grope for things to say. I started feeling bad about Xiao Liu waiting for me outside, so I excused myself and left. I was planning on taking better pictures at the end of the meeting, but obviously never got the chance. I’ll come back tho’.