Korea Toastmasters Conference 2011

The readers who occasion this blog from time to time are funny, smart, handsome and/or pretty. Or so I assume. They're also a forgiving bunch who digest awkward opening paragraphs with formidable skills of intellectual gastronomy. Thus I feel quite comfortable beginning this post with a tangential thought that I had, upon awakening at 4:30am this morning. You see, I didn't buy an air-conditioner for our Seoul residence because I tend to leave important purchases until they become painfully necessary. Heather and Ashley have various forms of temperature control at mother-in-law's house in Busan. But I'm not so lucky here. So I awoke, rather warmly, a little early. I think I'm a sensitive sleeper.

Anyway, that tangential thought.

If you're familiar with the blogging world, you'd probably know what a tag cloud is. It's a bunch of words, usually in the sidebar that have varying font sizes showing which words are used most frequently by the blog author. Do I have one? Wait. No I don't. Anyway, in molecular biology, we have a machine called a microarray. What a microarray can tell you is which of your genes are at different expression levels when compared to somebody else's. For example, one of your hair genes could be expressed at a higher activity level than your friend's, while your sweat gland gene could be lower. A microarray tells you what biological differences there are between you. If I was a blog and you were a blog, and genes were words, then a blog microarray would tell us how different our tagclouds appear. 

Does that make sense? I hope so.

So here's my tangential idea: Imagine all the spoken vocabulary that Koreans use in a day and translate it into English. We'll call that the Korean vocal tagcloud. Also imagine an Australian vocal tagcloud (already in English). Now compare the two using a microarray. What we'd see in the results would be the words that are more frequently used in one culture than the other. My guess is that some conspicuously overexpressed words in Korea would be ones like 'burden,' 'endure,' and 'delicious,' while Australians would overexpress 'G'day,' 'mate,' and 'relax.' 

We'd probably use the word 'barbecue' equally.

So the main point here is that the words 'burden' and 'endure' are a curiously frequent part of the Korean lexicon. During my time in the Korean tertiary education system, I've often felt that some of my fellow students are enduring some kind of burden. This causes them to pick subjects they're not particularly interested in, and study harder than they'd like to. Perhaps a more preferable alternative is to navigate life through intrinsic motivation.

So this all leads to the Toastmasters National Conference, that I attended a little while ago. You see, Toastmasters is an education system built purely on intrinsic motivation. It's a whole bunch of volunteers helping each other improve public speaking in their spare time. Amazing? Well, not everybody thinks so. 

In the photo above is Kiminari Azuma, a public speaking champion and our special guest from Japan. Kiminari told us a few useful things that day, one of which was his habit of always accepting speaking challenges by default.

Everything gets better with practice. I remember my first day giving a speech. I had a tail between my legs and waffled on about something that was of no interest to anyone.

We held the event at BEXCO in Busan and it was attended by a few hundred members from around Korea.

Here's our club, the South River Toastmasters. Quite possibly the finest club in the universe. I've just finished six months as president, which has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.

The winner of the national speech competition was Frank Lev, from Sincheon Toastmasters. Members reach their zenith at the nationals, and it's an inspiring show.

The other half of my education comes from the lab. In the photo above are the boys of the Tsang Lab: Professor Tsang, Akechai and Dr Vahlberg. Our professor just finished his annual 3 months in Korea and is now back in Ottawa. Actually, I have to video conference with him in approximately one hour (8am every Tuesday). 

The only thing I dislike more than 8am Skyping, is 7am Skyping.

But we still manage to have our fair share of fun. Nothing says fun more than green bottles and shot glasses.

We've been going out a fair bit recently. Saving money via cheaper alcohol tends to cause an increase in the amount spent on Tylenol. But if I buy cheap Tylenol, then it kind of balances out.

Oh look, it's Ashley. Me and Ashley are already best friends. She's busy developing a personality and is now nearly two months old. 

Some people have pointed out that my legs are hairy in this photo. 

Hey, man. Stay focused on the cute baby, not the hairy legs.

She gets very excited by milk. When she's about to be fed, she opens her mouth and starts hyperventilating. And sometimes she smiles when she dreams.

I assume it's because she's dreaming about milk.

This photo is from when we were still in the maternity ward. Heather and I are proud parents. Having a kid is definitely no easy task, but a good thing to do. Hat tips go out to all the other parents and those who appreciate them.

And now it's time for me to start the day. 

Have a good one, everyone. 

South River Toastmasters - Speech Competition

Every once in a while, the South River Toastmasters hold a club speech competition. These events are similar to normal club nights, except that they have 6-8 contestants, five judges, a larger audience and a greater tendency to induce pant-wetting in the speakers.

I signed up for the competition a couple of weeks before the event, and the wheels of destiny were set in motion. Backing out of a speech competition has no real repercussions, except for the ones that your conscience will inflict upon your ego for doing so.

Here's my speech, entitled "What are you wearing?"

I think it turned out fairly well, although there were some delivery errors that I noticed after watching myself on video (a peculiarly unsettling affair). I need to work more on audience engagement, as well as better transitions and more pauses between sections. In the end though, I was awarded second place which is a pretty good result. It simultaneously gave me a pat on the back as well as room to improve.

Thanks go to Heather for sitting through rehearsals with me on the weekend beforehand. She played an excellent one-person mock audience, complete with canned laughter at the appropriate times. The feedback I received really helped turn the speech from a regular affair into something more presentable.

Toastmasters is more than just about improving your public speaking skills.  It's a great way to work with motivated people while having fun at the same time. If you still haven't visited your local Toastmasters club yet, I think it's high time that you gave it a try.

2010 SRTM Summer Wine Party

After a good month of planning, and due to the excellent aforementioned research, the SRTM summer wine party came off as a roaring success. We attracted exactly 99 guests, from various clubs around Seoul and consumed enough wine to keep the importers in business.

We started with a few announcements from club presidents, including the elusive Joseph Jeong, who is back from Chicago for the summer. Joseph is a Malaysian food enthusiast, and I've been meaning to cook for him for so long that anything I come up with will probably fall short of inflated expectations.

And Korea appears to be one of the rare countries without a single microgram of belachan.

Here are my two favourite nunas, Alice and Judy. Even though they're Korean native speakers, when they're talking to each other at Toastmasters events, they usually stick to English. I often wonder if it's because they're being polite to eavesdroppers like myself, or just because it's confusing to switch between languages too much.

Only the nunas themselves would know...

Later in the evening, we all went up to the rooftop garden for some lively mingling. Wine parties are interesting creatures because at the peak of the night, nearly everyone is at the same level of tipsiness. If you charge $30 per person, only those who drink will attend. But because they're more civilised than a beer or a vodka party, very rarely will anyone go overboard too early.

Getting drunk and causing a scene at a wine party is technically referred to as a party foul, I believe. Such rules are more relaxed at parties featuring other drinks, say for example, Tequila.

Look, it's Chris Lee. Chris is quite popular with the ladies, and not only because he's tall. It's also because he knows how to listen well, and that's exactly what ladies look for in a man.

One day I need to confirm with Chris whether the secret is actually listening to people, or pretending to listen. My mind tends to wander after a while.

Before long it was time for the second round at the nearby Izakaya. You can tell how successful a night is by the percentage of people in attendance at Round 2. By this time we were all in pretty good spirits and having trouble coordinating a group menu together.

Tipsiness is fun, but it also distracts you from questioning the wisdom of dropping a shot of soju into a glass of beer and drinking it all at once.

And there's Yulim Sung, evidently delighted at such an enjoyable night. Yulim is one of our favourite drinking friends, but we only started hanging out with her relatively recently, and we drink less these days. If she had met us back when we were young whipper-snappers, oho... there would have been a lot of pavement collisions.

Here's a mystery man being saved from an impending pavement collision by Chris Lee. Chris's long arms allow him to handle such situations with relative ease.

And here's our very own Robert Cha, taking care of a prominent member of SRTM. On American Forces Network (a TV channel here), they call friends like Robert a 'Battle Buddy'. You need one when you go out drinking, to make sure you don't get into more mischief than you can handle.

In Australia, when we drink too much and can't remember how we magically got home the next day, we attribute it to the mythological Beer Scooter.

When was the last time you rode one?

Korea Toastmasters 3rd National Conference

Toastmasters events are great places to strike up a conversation with friendly strangers. Even if you go by yourself, assuming that you're relatively sane and can string a coherent sentence together, you'll make friends. On the other hand, when I go to science conferences, people seem less friendly on average and more socially awkward. And conversation generally revolves around a narrow topic field. Not to dismiss the scientific community entirely though, they have been known to drink a post-conference beer or three and duly experience 'declining social inhibition as a result of ethanol intoxication'.

But at Toastmasters, the whole focus is on improving communication and interpersonal skills. So if anyone gave you a cold shoulder after you greeted them, it would be they who were in the wrong place.

The 3rd Korea Toastmasters conference and speech competition was held at the Dragon Hill Lodge, on the US army base at Yongsan.

I'd never been here before, and was impressed with the gardening. You know you're getting old when you go to a garden party and get more excited by the garden.

Ka-Hee likes Toastmasters, but doesn't often get to attend due to work commitments. Every time I post a photo of her on this blog, I promptly ask her if she's seen it yet.

The answer is usually no.

One thing we both like are refreshments. I usually wait until she takes the lead.

The conference kicked off in the main building. The MC for the night was the same as last year, a funny man who runs the show with military precision.

"Testing! Testing! 1..2...3! Your attention please! The conference will begin in exactly 2 minutes. Exactly 2 minutes ladies and gentlemen. 2 minutes. Be ready!"

During the event, one of the workshops we attended was on voice projection, run by Jinsuk Lee (a reporter for MBC). Apparently if you practice trying to speak clearly with a chopstick in your mouth, your clarity will improve. Sitting next to my wife in this photo is Ka-Yong, who we just met. She's a student in my department, in the forest ecology lab.

Inspecting the pink camera in this photo is Ju-Hee, an SRTM member who found my blog online. She said she really likes it. Thanks Ju-Hee!

To the right of her is Pil-Soo Oh, the CEO of Lundbeck Korea. I still tutor his employees during the week. He likes to play golf and is a pretty friendly guy.

Around 240 guests showed up for the event, and more wanted to come but tickets were limited. I'm guessing next year they'll have to do it someplace bigger. No one in Korea Toastmasters is paid a penny, everyone is a volunteer and all proceeds go into further club events.

The food was not very good, and there wasn't enough to go around.

But we're a forgiving bunch.

Here's our very own Ron Cahoon who represented SRTM in the speech competition.  Ron is a gifted speaker and has a very powerful presence. The standards of all of the speeches were admirably high.

And this is Keith Ostergaard, an international Toastmasters director who flew here from Beijing for the event. He has three DTM awards, which means he has completed at least 165 prepared speeches, plus various other leadership activities. If you earn the DTM award, you get a wooden plaque and a letter from HQ to your employer, explaining what you have accomplished. A single DTM would take a focused person quite a few years. 

DTM: The Distinguished Toastmaster award.

And here's our table. We're a happy bunch. Next month we plan on going to the beach together.

Want to get involved?

www.srtm.org