The seasons in the sun- Toastmasters CC manual speech project no2

(Singing)“We had joy, We had fun We had seasons in the sun”


Toastmasters, ladies and gentlemen

When I look back at my child hood all the wonderful memories I have, are centered around one event. That’s none other than, Sri Lankan New Year. Unlike many other countries in Sri Lanka New Year is celebrated in mid April.

This is based on the sun’s motion from the House of Pisces to the Aries signaling the dawn of the new year. This also coincides with the harvest festival. Usually the New Year falls on 14^th of April. The month of April is the school vacation and all most all the offices are closed for about 1 week. What makes this New Year so different is that there are set of auspicious times. Every year these lucky times are calculated by the astrologers.

If you go to Sri Lanka in April you would here the blasting of crackers so loud,  people fire crackers at each auspicious time and in general in April. You know the new year is coming when your dogs are crouching under the beds, scared of crackers and wouldn’t come out until the end of April

In Sri Lanka there is an exact time to end the previous year and a specific time to start the new year. Strangely there is nearly 5 or 6 hours gap between these two times. So the time between the last year and the new year is called “nonagathaya” which means neutral time. This time period is considered as an evil time period and therefore people don’t do any important work during this period. Which means no cooking at houses, no visiting other houses, no shopping basically nothing. During this time people try to engage themselves in religious activities by visiting temples.

Out of all the auspicious time the first one is the one for cooking. When the time arrives the bells starts to ring in temples and the crackers are blasting and in every house of the country mothers switch on the fire of the cooker at the same time and what do they all cook? they all cook milk rice which is considered as a very auspicious dish in Sri Lanka.

Then after few hours comes the auspicious time to eat, and to start work. The dining tables get filled with all the delicious Sri lankan sweets and other dishes which are only made during the New year season. New year is a good excuse to eat all your favorite food. Usually the father will feed everyone their first bite of the year. Here you will see my dad feeding my little nephew. The amazing thing about these rituals is that the whole country is doing the same thing at the same time. Which make you feel united or connected in some way.

For me the most joyous part comes right after this auspicious time. Every year after we take the meal we would go to our grandma’s house. I’m blessed with a huge family with many aunts, uncles and 20 cousins. You can see a picture of all of us together

At my grandma’s place on New Year’s Day we get the blessing of adults. How do we do that? We worship all the relatives who are elder to us even in one year. In return you get a hug, a gift and sometimes even money. Talking about money there is a special game we play with the cousins at this time of the year. It’s a betting game we play with money using a dice. With this My grandma’s place turn out to be a small casino. Of course adults would turn a blind eye because new year comes just once a year. In the afternoon the whole family will divide in to two groups and play cricket in the garden. As u can see in the picture, I’m not very good at it. At night we always have a fireworks show where we have loads of fun together.

This is just the beginning of the new year. Next day all of us would go to my uncles holiday resort and we have a new year sports festival there. There are many traditional games as you can see in the pictures. On this day comes the next auspicious time to apply herbal oil on our hair. My grandma would apply herbal oil on everyone’s head at the time. For us the most important part is the swimming pool in the resort. We would spend more than 8 hours in the pool playing various water games.

On 3^rd day after the new year. All of our cousins would go on a trip sometimes with parents and sometimes without parents. We all had the most joyful time on these trips.

Usually four days after the newyear comes the last auspicious time. It’s the time to go back to work marking the end of the new-year. As always every good thing comes to an end. It basically kills me to stay away from my family during this new year season knowing what a load of fun I’m missing here.  Therefore we had a small party at our place on the new year’s day in Japan with some of our Sri Lankan friends. I cooked milk rice at the same time as my mom cooked in Sri Lanka and we ate at the same time watching my family eating the New Year meal via skype.

As a kid for me that season was all about heavenly food and having a good time with my best buddies.

Time is flowing by and lot of things change but only thing that will not change is how much those memories would mean to me. In fact, they become sweeter with time.  I might not be a part of my family tradition anymore but what is important is building our own family traditions. So as they say, “best is yet to come”

Breath takers - Ice breaker

Imagine having to live 20 years of your life with a boxing champion who treats you as his punching bag and a champion rifle shooter who is always aiming at you.

 Toastmaster ladies and gentlemen welcome to my world.

Those two were none other than my own two brothers. My elder brother was the boxing captain of his school team and my younger brother was the captain of rifle shooting club of his school. Therefore back at home life was fantabulous with a mother who is singing all the time (Did I say a little out of tune) a father who makes jokes about almost everything and many dogs. At one point we had 7 dogs at home. My family has inspired me in many ways but mostly it was the way we were brought up. Even as kids we were given all the freedom we want to make choices about life. But we always had to take responsibility of what we did. Mostly the only form of punishment was my family’s endless bugging and teasing. I must say it was quite effective.

There’s something really funny about my life. That is where ever I go I tend to end up being the only woman. I was born in a family with two brothers. Studied mechanical engineering with almost no other girls in the department. Even now I’m reading for my masters in University of Tokyo and I’m the only woman in my lab and there are only 2 female students in my department including myself. But it has always been a lot of fun to work with men.

I believe that we go through death in a daily basis and with every breath taking experience we are reborn as a new person with a new set of attitudes. Today I would like to share some of those breath takers with you all. One fine day I walked in to my University’s Gavel Toastmasters club and that changed my life in many different ways. Not only I mastered the art of public speaking there but also I found the most wonderful set of people I ever met in my life who are also my closest friends to date. Since I was doing quite well in presentations I got the opportunity to represent my University and country several times internationally for conferences and competitions. Which simply meant 3 free trips abroad and one of those competitions was CIMA global business challenge. There we could bag the second place in the world finals. That was truly a breath taker.

All my life I have been very lucky because I was always surrounded by amazing fun loving and interesting people. My university life was nothing but a joyous ride with all night movie marathons, parties, trips and amazing spend the days with my best buddies.

Other than these buddies I have built a long term very strong relationship with books. In other words I’m a bookworm and I read almost everything that comes on my way. However I wasn’t quite in to love stories until one of my best friends gifted me the sweetest romantic novel that I have ever read, “Daddy long legs” on my 18^th birthday. I still don’t know why but that booked had some magic on it and it was the only book that I have read more than 12 times.

Ever since I read that book I was looking for my daddy longlegs. Finally I met him while I was a fresher in the University and he’s that wonderful man who’s sitting right there.  Who is the love of my life, my partner in crime, my best buddy in computer games, and my worst critic. After getting married I moved to Japan with him last year.

To be frank first six months of my stay in Japan was quite a nightmare. I didn’t speak Japanese and I was basically at home doing nothing. As a person, who has always lived a very busy life for me it was unbearable. But somehow I could bounce back with the wonderful support I had from my family.  

As per my brother there’s only one golden rule in boxing, the one who bounce back earliest would win the game. So is the way of life, Life would hit you on the face with all the troubles in the world but the trick is to bounce back as quickly as you can.

Toastmaster…

Prison Break

Toastmasters has always been a part of my life. Last month I took part in TM International speech contest. Well the below speech took me up to the divisional contest wining club and area levels. I couldn't make it to the District level but had a great time enjoying the speeches of Japanese. I must say they are amazing with the natural body language and vocal variations. Given below is the text of my speech.

Prison break

I’m a prison breaker

… shhhhh…

and that’s what I like to do with my life… Not only I break prisons but also I enjoy helping others to break out of their prisons.

Contest Chair, Ladies and gentlemen

The prison that I’m going to talk about today is not made out of stone and steal. Instead it’s a prison that exists in our minds. Many people tend to make groups I’d rather call them prisons based on their similarities such as country, race, religion, gender, school and so on. Then we label these prisons and set some boundaries to these prisons. These prisons limit us from fully embracing the wonders of the world. That can be quite harmful.

For me this prison braking habit started several years ago in Bangkok Thailand. My partner in crime was none other than my elder brother. Right after I finished my high school I went on a trip to visit my brother who is living in Thailand. At that time I used to be picky about almost everything in my life. When it came to food I was kind of a person who would say ‘no spice no life’ .It wasn’t only about food. It was also the same with books, movies and even the people I associated. My brother made it a point to tease me to death.

One night he took me to restaurant and ordered something special. I asked him what it was and he told me it’s a special chicken dish. Well it didn’t look like chicken but I ate it anyway. To tell you it was quite tasty. Mmmm!! Yummy!!

After the dinner he told me ‘do you know what you ate right now?’ I said ‘Oh ya I love that chicken’. Then he had a good laugh and told me.

‘Congratulations!! You just ate a frog’.  

A what??? A frog!!! You must be kidding me.

Well, He wasn’t.

I was totally furious with my brother and I was cursing him for making me eat a frog. After a while he came to me looked at my eyes and told me. ‘I have news for you sister, If you would continue to be picky like this, you would never survive the day you step out of our country.

Those words hit me and hit me really hard. In fact he was telling the truth. On that day I truly understood that for so long I have been a captive of my own comfort zones.  For me at that moment life just began. I started to take different paths in life and one of them became my life long career.

The story of my career begins with a simple question
How bad is it for a woman to become an engineer? Specially, a mechanical engineer? Whenever I answer the question “what is your major” there was very few who did not raise their eye brows and said “You are a mechanical engineer? Were you the only girl in your department? “, “Why did you choose mechanical Engineering?” those are the same old questions that I had to answer for the past few years of my life.
All around the world mechanical engineering is one of the fields with the lowest percentage of women. Do you know the curse of female mechanical engineers? Where ever you go you end up being the only woman. This curse followed me all the way to Japan and even today I’m the only woman in my lab.

So most of my friends warned me about the possible difficulties I might face in a masculine industry. I on the other hand am a wondering soul who was curious about the machines and the magic behind them.. Therefore against all odds I decided to become a mechanical engineer.  Well, being a female mechanical engineer was not so difficult as everybody predicted. In fact the only difficulty I ever faced as a female mechanical engineer was that there was no ladies wash room in my department.. :)

One of the best prison breakers I have ever seen is my good friend Shinsuke. Shinsuke is a very special differently-abled person. Both of his legs are paralyzed and he has minimum dexterity. He studies European history at the University. He told me that he wants to visit Kazakhstan to study their culture. When he went to a very popular travel agency to plan his trip they had told him that no one has ever been to Kazakhstan through the agency and therefore they can’t recommend any places to visit. Shinsuke didn’t get discouraged he planned his own trip and went there last summer all by himself taking three transits. Well if Shinsuke can what is our excuse.

Therefore ladies and gentlemen Let us break these prisons that bound us from enjoying the marvels of this world. Not with sledge hammers but by experiencing different cultures. For they say “Those who know nothing of foreign know nothing of their own” Ladies and gentlemen take your turn and make your move.

Contest Chair...

Not so welcoming orientations

Here in Japan many don't recognize the importance of an international language. It makes the life really complicated for the foreigners who come to Japan. Japanese isn't an easy language to master as English due to the 3 alphabets with thousands of letters and the different forms of language that's used such as formal, informal and much more.
I was truly disappointed at the orientation program of University of Tokyo, where none of the speakers cared to speak in English or at least to prepare the slideshows in English. There were many international students at the orientation program. I'm sure it was quite difficult for most of them to understand the content of it.  How could an institute like University of Tokyo ranked among the top ten Universities in the world could be that irresponsible towards a portion of their students.
Japan is a country where differently-abled people are treated with utmost respect and the infrastructure is specifically designed to make the life easy for disabled. How could a country like that could discriminate foreigners in this manner.May be it's a question about the ego. But I must say that ego can cost Japan in many different ways.
Well I usually don't sleep in lectures even when I'm sleepy for I believe it's a sign of disrespect for the one who conducts it. But I did sleep in the orientation to show my disgust towards that discrimination.

Don’t Panic

Once in a while in life you get to experience the unexpected. They aren’t always pleasant. There I was having a slow day at work, teaching a student in my lesson booth. It was just a sluggish afternoon or so I thought. Suddenly things started to move.

After being in Japan for about a year I was used to earthquakes and didn’t really get panicked. But this one seemed to be quite strange. It didn’t stop in few seconds as usual and my student started to panic. On to my left I could see that my fellow instructor who has only been in Japan for 2 weeks was turning red with terror. He didn’t know what to do. He was looking at me with the expression, “what the hell is going on here?”

Well, the only thing that came in to my mind was to go under the tables as I was told more than hundreds of times by my husband and we all did. We were clinging on to the steel bars of the table. My student started to scream in Japanese and I could hear a quite a lot of swearing on to my left. On the other hand I thought that it was ‘THE END’. Therefore as a Buddhist, I was recalling all the good deeds I have done in my entire life. Surprisingly it wasn’t really scary as I expected it to be.

I was in the 3^rd floor and the Building went swimmy. The shaking got stronger in every second. Books and laptops started to fall down from the tables and it felt like an hour. Later from the reports I got to know that it lasted only for five to six minutes but believe me, it felt much longer than that.

After the two major earthquakes we all came out of the building from the emergency exits. Everyone was shaking with fear. I will never forget those facial expressions for a quite a long time. I think major disasters have the power to unite people, for that’s what happened on that day.

Trains and busses stopped operation for they were expecting aftershocks. Therefore all of my workmates and I went to the nearby evacuation center. Even though the Japanese insisted that the buildings are earthquake proof as foreigners we had doubts about staying inside a building therefore we went to the soccer field outside. Everyone shared their experience. For us it was bonding over an earthquake.

One of my friends has been in a bus and she had seen how the buildings started to swing and how her bus was rocking like a ship. Another workmate was really nice that he was in a restaurant at the time and he had run out of the restaurant keeping a 1000Yen note on the table. Isn’t this world full of beautiful people?

With the earthquake telephone network went down and I had no idea about what has happened to my husband. Surprisingly internet was available and I could put a status on Facebook. After trying so hard for about 5 hours I could finally contact my husband for few seconds and have never felt so relieved.

All this time aftershocks continued at least once in every ten minutes. It felt as if we were in a ship. The temperature was also near zero. It was almost impossible to stay outside and with heavy hearts we went inside the evacuation center. At the evacuation center there were more than thousand people and everyone was given blankets, food cans and water bottles. This level of preparation surprised us all. It was only after watching TV at the evacuation center that we realized the true impact of the disaster.

All of us who were travelling from trains had no choice but to spend the night at the evacuation center. I thought it was going to be a very long night. All by sudden my husband came to the evacuation center looking for me. He had been cycling all the way from home to the evacuation center. It was such a pleasant surprise. Both of us walked home for about 5kms.

It would have been wonderful if this was the end of the nightmare but both of us woke up next day to another middling aftershock to find out the real catastrophe with the nuclear plants. A lot happened within these two weeks. Most of our friends left the country. Radiation levels rose. Water got contaminated. With all these happenings it is astonishing to see the resilience of Japanese. They keep on working as if nothing has happened.

All this time it hasn’t always been easy to keep it all together. But there is one thing that keeps me going. That’s what I have read in the book “Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy”. In that science fiction there exists a guide which has all the information about the entire universe. The Guide is encased in a plastic cover with the words "DON'T PANIC" inscribed on it in large, friendly letters.

10 things you didn’t know about Japanese Toastmasters clubs

At this end of the world Toastmastering is way different than it is in Sri Lanka and unfortunately mostly not in a good way. Therefore my dear Gaveliars, do enjoy and cherish those inspiring Monday afternoons. They are very rare to find anywhere else. After nearly 6months of search I found an English speaking Toastmasters club in Tokyo. I can easily write a list of 100 things but I don’t want to bore you to death with my grievances

So here goes the list

1. My greatest disappointment with Japanese Toastmasters clubs is that there is no round robin session in meetings. For me that’s the essence of the meeting where everyone gets a chance to speak. One certainly needs a warm up to open up. There was this one time they introduced round robin session as a special session. Many got freaked out that they never tried it again. Many Japanese are naturally very reserved. Therefore expressing their true opinion is very out of place. That might be the reason they hate it so much. Well, in my opinion there is no other way to destroy the core sense of a meeting more successfully than removing the round robin session.

2. There are two other roles replacing the round-robin session. Namely Thought of the day, and Joke master. I’m sure these two are superb concepts, if used properly they might make the meetings more interesting and I recommend you all to try it out. As the names suggest joke master cracks a joke and the person who present the thought of the day present some food for thought. Well I believe both of these concepts don’t work well in Japan. We rarely get their jokes. I think they lose the core when translated in to English and don’t get me started about the thought of the day. Many Japanese don’t reveal their thoughts and emotions as a result, they are beating around the bush and at the end no one gets the thought. One of my fellow foreign members who had enough of it once asked, “I’m sorry, but where is the thought?”

3. A significant attribute of Japanese Toastmasters clubs is the competitiveness. At the end of every meeting the best table topics speaker, the best prepared speaker and the best evaluator is chosen from the votes of every member. Only the speakers who are within the time limit are considered in voting. The winners are given small certificates which are provided by Toastmasters International. Before announcing the winners all the members beat the tables in the rhythm of drum-roll which I found pretty cool. The winners are photographed and published in the club website. This might be a great encouragement for members to improve their skills but I prefer the relaxed atmosphere we had at Gavel club. There is no harm to try it out for a change.

4. Table topics session is purely impromptu in Japan. The table topics master reads out each topic and points out a member for each topic. Thanks to my long surname that can’t be read by any one, I have never done a table topic in here and no volunteering is allowed too. So I believe it’s not fair. Table topics are not evaluated too.

5. If you lack self-confidence I recommend you to come and do a prepared speech in a Japanese Toastmasters meeting. At the end, in your evaluation you will hear nothing but the good points in your speech. In here evaluations are more of appreciations than evaluations.

6. Evaluations are timed in these meetings. Time allowed for prepared evaluations is 2-3 minutes. Evaluator is given color signals and only the evaluations that are within the time limit is considered in voting. This might be a good technique to limit some expressive evaluators.

7. Induction ceremony is an important feature in the meetings. Unlike in Sri Lanka where the induction ceremony is conducted once a year at the installation ceremony, here it is done every time when a member joins the club. Members should vote in order to give their approval for the new member. Many bureaucratic procedures are included in this ceremony. Usually once a month this ceremony takes place and it wastes a lot of time that can be used for the educational meeting.

8. One of the most irritating facts about the meetings is that members are using the same set of phrases for each role. That makes them so predictable and kills the excitement. Most of the time I can easily guess what they are going to say next.

9. Without doubt the most annoying thing in the meeting is the ever so loud hammering of the Gavel. Each time they pound it I get jumpy.

10. Many Japanese have very stiff facial expressions but their body language is excellent. It comes naturally to them probably because they are mostly slim and inertia is far less than ours.

These are some fun facts that I noticed in Japanese Toastmasters clubs. No need to say how much I miss my dear Gavel club each time I attend these meetings but by far this is the closest I can get to stay in touch with those good old Monday afternoons..