Well, this speech is a bit different, and I am ever more proud of this one. I made all the others speechs by myself but this one was a bit different. It was a humorous speech. With the toastmaster international you have 2 type of contests: the Speech contest and the Humorous Speech contest. Starting in your club, then in the district, in the country, and internationally. I think i m funny, I like to make some jokes, I m a big fan of Muriel Robin and Florence Foresti who are 2 talented french comedian. I used to imitate them in France during a diner with my family or friends.
So, for my speech 4 I decided to make a humorous speech, and trust me, this was damn hard, I am always nervous before starting a speech but for this one I was freakin' scared!!!!!! cause you never know if they re gonna laugh at your joke and if they don t laugh the first 20 seconds you are pretty much screwed right! So I made a speech based on a story between a me and boyfriend, and my experience with Diet and nutritionist.

Project (Stage) 4: How to say it

Time: five to seven minutes
Objectives:
1) Select the right words and sentence structure to communicate your ideas clearly, accurately and vividly.
2) Use rhetorical devices to enhance and emphasize ideas
3) Eliminate jargon and unnecessary words.
4) Use correct grammar.

Has anyone here been on a diet? You don't have to answer, just give me the look (do the look), well I have been, as a matter of fact, many times. But I remember one in particular:

BF(boyfriend)- Honey, I think we need to talk

ME- Yes dear what is it?

BF- you know that I love you right? I mean no matter what, I really really love you

ME- yessss (look suspiscious)

BF- well, I noticed that over the past year that you gained a little bit of weight

ME (to the public)- oh by the way, I'm not blind, I know i gained weight, however this is the kind of discussion you don't want to have with your boyfriend.

ME - indeed, and

BF- I still find you very attractive, especially when you do...

ME - (cut him before he finishes his sentence) ok ok I got the idea, so-

BF- I have a friend who went to see a nutritionist and she lost 20 pounds like that, in 3 months

ME (to the public)-Well, in the name of love, one week later, I was sitting on a chair waiting for Miss Healthy the nutritionist to meet with me.

NU- oh hello there, so why did u come here?

ME (to the public)Do they really have to ask this question...always, what do you think i'm here for? A manicure? No, i'm here because my boyfriend who loves me, gently reminded me that I have gained weight. But of course you can't say that to this gorgeous, thin, healthy, blonde pageant nutritionist.

ME- well I gained some weight recently

NU- (she looks at me from head to toes) I can see that

(I make the ugly look when i m not happy)

ME - so I would like some advice.

ME (to the public) And here comes the most dramatic moment that every woman fears....

NU- can you please step on the scales

ME - do we really have to do that

NU-yes

ME - can I just tell you how much I weigh ...on average

NU- no

ME - fine (me looking at the scale),(to the nutricionist) ok i m ready (closed my eyes and step on the invisible scale), can u please not tell me how much I weigh, ok, just take that damn number and don t say anything

NU- so your weight is...

ME - ssshshshshshsh, no, shshshshshshs

ME (to the public) so after a series of questions on what I eat, how much I eat, about my food shopping, with whom, for who, how do i cook , they are always sure they find the perfect diet for u, always, like you have never tried them before ;)

NU- u told that your blood type is A, so i have the perfect diet for u

ME (to the public)- of course she has it

So 60 euros later, I come back home looking at my new super diet.

As you can see, or maybe you don't see it, but let me explain (have a doc in my hand with table and chart), you have different types of food: meat, vegetables, oil, oil, cheese, fruits, Here u have 3 categories, the pink one, the beneficial one naming all the food that could help u loose weight, the green neutral category, you don t gain weight but you don t lose weight, and the RED one, blinking like ALERT ALERT, this is the 'AVOID these foods' list. So, you can see a very tiny column of healthy food, and a huuuuuuuuge column of do not eat these, sounds great.

Now as u know I'm French, I do love food. Let's see the list in details:for the meat, i m looking at the healthy pink column and what a surprise - it's empty, and when i go to the Red column: ALL THE MEATS YOU COULD NAME, I was definitively not planning on becoming a vegetarian. It was a very sad day for me.

Now let's talk about the cheese: I am a very big fan of cheese, the healthy cheese option on my new diet: soy cheese, soy cheese? well first of all i ve never understood how they could make cheese with soy, I thought we need milk from real animals to get some cheese, not from vegetables and I look at the avoid list: camembert, brie, blue cheese, milk, butter, omg, i'm getting emotional again.

Ok let' s change category, let's go to the vegetables, since i have to eat them, jeeeezzzzz, even on the pink column I have the worst vegetables ever like dandelions green - it's a flower, why should i eat that, there are even names that i've never heard of, like Alfafa, what the hell is Alfafa? could not even find it on wikipedia, it is apparently a sort of plant, how am i supposed to cook that since I cant use olive oil, vinegar or butter? Tofu, I hate Tofu, this is a nightmare!

So after these 30 terrible mins of reading my blood A diet - let me give you some advice for the future if you decide to go on a diet:

- first of all: never EVER listen to your boyfriend when he starts a conversation by "you know that I love you no matter what", ever

- 2nd of all: don't trust the skinny gorgeous nutritionist with her miraculous diet

- and 3rd of all: you can always count on your best friends, and that's what I did, I called my two best friends Ben and Jerry to bring me some chocolate flavor to make me feel better!

Mister toastmaster.

After that speech, people encouraged me to participate to the Humorous Speech Contest... what do u think, should I?

Positive thought of day: spammed my blog ;)

Project (Stage) 3:Get to the point

Time: five to seven minutes
Objectives:
1) Select a speech topic and determine its general and specific purposes.
2) Organize the speech in a manner that best achieves those purposes.
3) Ensure the beginning, body and conclusion reinforce the purposes.
This speech with accompanied by a preso, i ll try to do some screen shot of my preso on my blog.

MALTA Is there any one here who went to Malta, raised your hands? Good, because today I am going to talk about the islands of Malta. One month ago, I took a flight to Malta during the Good Friday bank holidays. I will do a quick introduction about Malta, then I will tell you the big differences and interesting facts I have noticed during my trip.
Lying 90 km to the south of Sicily, 290km to the north of the African mainland, 1830km to the east of Gibraltar and 1500km to the west of Siria, Malta and its islands might be said to occupy a position in the centre of the Mediterranean. (i ll try to put some pics from my preso)
The group is composed of the 3 inhabited islands of MALTA, GOZO and COMINO, and 3 smallest uninhabited islands of Cominotto, Filfla and St Paul.
The longest distance in Malta in a sout-east/north-west axis is about 27km and the widest distance is 14km.
With a population around 400 000 crowding an area of 320km square, the Maltese islands (picture of the Maltese flag) can clain to form the most densely populated country in Europe. The country's official languages are Maltese and English.
Malta gained independence from UK in 1964, the country joined the European Union in 2004. And recently in January 2008 they changed currency from the Maltese lire to Euro.
Now let s talk about the differences I ve noticed compare to Ireland:
Price: everything is so much cheaper in Malta, for instance I went to a very fancy restaurant in the area called Portamaso where you can see these kind of boats, with very expensive flats.
I spent 35 euros for a bottle of water, half bottle of wine, an entry, a main course, a cappuccino and a tip. Here the main cuisine type is italien. 35 euros, here I went in Dublin to not a fancy but in overall good french restaurant I spent 50 euros.
The number of cats: omg, i have never seen that much cats, called here the Maltese cat, they are everywhere, sleeping on top of the car, in the street, on a stairs, here waiting for his owner to bring some fresh fish (PICS)
The maltese bus: all of them are orange and white, like that, some of them are new, some of them pretty old, like most of the bus I took, and by the way to go from a city to an other I paid 47 cents, here, from Dublin 4 to Dublin 1 it s 1.05E.
The standing taxi fair: there is the same price when you are going from a place to an other place, let s say from the airport to Saint Julians, you go to the taxi point information, you will pay 20.35E and that s it, no matter where u are going in that city, neither if there is traffic it still will be 20.35E
As for the interesting facts I have noticed that there is :
Different type of ports: you have the super rich tourists port with all the yatchs here you have the bateau a voile port and for my favourite the fishing port. I went down to the Xlendi on the Comino island and to the south of Malta to a fishing village called Marsaxlokk, the fishing boats called Maltese Luzzu are very popular, as you can see by their very colourful colour.
And maybe u don t really see that, but on each boat they have the Eye of Malta like here (PIC) which is the eye of Osiris an Egyptian God of the Underworld, to protect fisherman from dying in the sea.
The number and different shapes of church, unbelievable, some ultra modern like this one (PIC), compare to those like that (PIC). They are very catholic there, I went during Good friday and Sunday Saint, on the online of Comino there was a procession where they carried a big status of Jesus, sometimes they even run while carrying it. They are running mess every hour during the day, this the first I ve seen people queuing to go to the church.
The gorgeous beach with light blue water, like on the island of Comino with the Blue Lagoon, the Blue grotto in Malta where u can see the reflection of the water on the cave roof/sky . (PICS)

To conclude this speech I will mention the biggest fact that Dublin and Malta have in common, it is the number of time the weather may changed, the first day I arrived, I got sunny day, followed by a very windy grey sky and finishing by an heavy 20 min rain, I had to run to a small shop as soon as I went out after buying an umbrella it stopped raining!
Mister Toastmaster.

Organize your speech
Time: five to seven minutes
Objectives:
1) Select an appropriate outline which allows listeners to easily follow and understand your speech.
2) Make your message clear, with supporting material directly contributing to that message.
3) Use appropriate transitions when moving from one idea to another.
4) Create a strong opening and conclusion.

For my second speech I talked about my grandpa that I ve never met actually, but I know him through my mum, I had a powerpoint preso with it, with pictures and map to make my speech more entertaining.

Léonce
Mister Toastmaster, Madam President, fellow toastmaster and welcome guest.
Léonce, was my grand father. Well I never had a chance to met him, he died before I was born. But if there is one thing that my mother is proud of, because she can talk about it forever, it is the reason why my grandpa had to wake up each morning.
Back in the past generations, in France, when a family had sons, the elder one was usually doing the same job as his father and get the properties that belong to the family, the second was working for the army and the 3rd one was working for the church as brother, or father.
My grandpa was the first one of the family and he worked as a ... wine-maker.
Tonight, I m going to make a toast to my grandpa and talk a little bit about his passion in a small village called Chusclan.

View Larger Map

At the end of this speech u won t have the knowledge to start your own wine s company but hopefully i will bring a little flavour from where i m from.
So before we can start, to be sure we have a full understanding of what it is to be a wine-maker in Chusclan, we need to travel there. So, lets use our imagination, everybody if you could close your eyes for 10 seconds, let s pretend that today is a beautiful day, blue sky, no cloud, a gigantic sun, u can feel a warm air coming through your face, it s like when u are opening a warm oven... it s a small village, usually quiet, the only thing you can hear is this small insect ... a cicada, and it makes a sound like this kssss kssssssssssssssssssssss, and now the only thing you can see in front of you is a huge grapevine field.

Here we are, welcome to Chusclan,a small village located right here: (see map of france)
On the next slide, you can see a satellite view of Chusclan with the yellow circle, the green circles, so pretty much all around the village you can find a part of the grapevine fields, and then here with the red sqare, u see the cellar where the wine producers are making the wines. (it was on my preso so you can really see it ;)
My grandpa was one of the vineyard owners and wine growers in Chusclan. He and approximately now 100 others are members of The Cave des Vignerons de Chusclan since for the elder one 1943. Cave des Vignerons in english means The Vineyard owners ' cellar.

This implies around 50 individual vineyards, with a total of 1,125 hectares of vines, 950 of them have the AOC quality.

So what is the AOC quality: in 1935 the Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée (AOC) system was born. It gives strict guidelines to the wine industry, for example, the AOC guarantees that when you buy a Bordeaux, the grapes came from the Bordeaux region, they were treated in a certain way, there was a given amount of alcohol in the finished product, and specific grape varieties were used.
These vines from Chusclan come under a number of appellations among them we have Côtes du Rhône Villages Chusclan , Côtes du Rhône Villages Saint-Gervais, Lirac and Côtes du Rhône., the variety most typical of Rhône wines, Rhone which is a river and a county or region in South France and Chusclan is a part of it, Syrah (20%), Carignan (13%), Cinsault (5%) and Mourvèdre (2%). We have also Grenache Blanc, Clairette, Viognier and Roussanne which are the main white grape varieties grown.
Regarding the sales: the cellar sells around 3 million bottles a year, generating a turnover of around 10 million euros, including 40% in exports.
For the Cotes du Rhone Villages Chusclan which is the ones my grand father was dedicated the, there are 13 different wines at the moment red, white and rosé like Les Genets, Les Monticauts, Les Ribieres red, Excellence, Seigneurie de Gicon rosé.
So today to conclude my speech, I m gonna go through my favourite wine a little bit more in details.

Name : Les Genêts

Color : Red

Vintage : 2005
Appellation : Côtes du Rhône Villages Chusclan
Volume : 75 cl
Degree : 14.5 °
Ageing : 2 years
Grape varieties :
Grenache 60% Syrah 25% Carignan 10% Mourverdre 5%
Wine making :
It will stay between 15 to 18 days into the vat (picture) (en cuve),100% traditional processing at controlled temperature, grape stemming (provenant) from selected parcels including my grandpa s one, (show pic) which u can see here. Actually he and his family used to live in front of his grapevine field, one of the best view to wake up the morning.
Tasting notes :
a deep shiny black, beautiful luminosity
Nose: dense and tasty, there are of course plenty of other words to describe the flavour but the French have the tendencie to use really complex combination of words for the nose which is pretty hard to translate in english.
Gourmet advice :
With delicate meat like pigeon or veal.
Awards :
Or Vinsobres 2005 Or Foire d'Uzes, Vinsobres and Uzes are cities in France.
so tonight, I hope, wherever my grandpa is rite now, and lets pretend that he understands english, that I honored him today. Cheers
mister toastmaster, thank u

Is there anyone here who heard about the Toastmaster International, don t remember if I mentionned it in my blog already but I am part of the Club Hellfire in Dublin since January this year.


What do we do during our 2 hours sessions: we have generally 4 speeches made by members of the club, then we have a debate pro/cons between two members, followed by the topicmaster who is one member of the club who asks questions to the audience who has 2 min to answer it, and to finish each speeches are evaluated by others members. Here you learn to do speech using different techniques and time allowed for it, which help you, at least me, to gain some self confidence delivering speech in front of an audience.
So I decided to share my speeches with you guys, and I hope i can have some feedback, you have to remember that i m french, and I m doing it in english so there is always areas of improvments ;)
My first one was the ice-breaker, you have basically 4 minutes to break the ice and introduce yourself to the Club, here is mine:

Madam Toastmaster, Madam President, Fellow toastmasters and welcome guests.
My name is Cecile, I was born in January 1980.
I am from France, and more particularly from the best part of it, which is south of France. The reason why it s because we have something call... shoot I forgot the name, it did happened in Ireland but rarely though... mmmm.. oh Summer... bright and shinny, great!

Anyway, my dad picked my name Cecile because of one of his favorite s singers, his name was Claude Nougaro. He made a song for his daughter which begin by... and please pardon me for my poor vocal performance.... Cecile .... ma fille! which means Cecile, my daughter.
I m glad he called her Cecile it could have been worst.

Speaking of my father he is a sales director, my mum is nurse, I have one brother, 4 years younger than me, who is a salesperson too.

Now, I think the second week when I came here, Florian and I got two toastmasters magazines, and the one that he gave me was so perfect for me, it was the special Humor issue, and I do love humor, I think I m quite funny well at least I make myself laugh which is a good start. And I will definitively live longer.
So in that magazine I read an interesting article called 'Want to be funny? You can t go wrong if you name that song", ... speakers will used several songs from a famous group or singer to introduce their speech so ... I figured it out that I can try it to describe myself, and because I m living in Ireland I choose U2 of course.
And here are the 5 songs that I selected.
First one: A day without me... It will be so boring, seriously after the ice breaker since you re going to know me, you will be looking forward every Tuesday.
2nd song: I still haven t found what i m looking for: ... true, I kind of figure it out but still ... I am not 100% sure of what will be my career path within the next 10 years, but ... i m working on it.
3rd song: Last night on earth....I think ... I will probably go to the best French restaurant ever and... kiss Brad Pitt.
4th song: Ocean....As i say i m from South of France, was born next to the sea, and I can t really live without it, I always have to go there not necessarelly for swimming, but just watch the sea to get rid of negative feelings, when u are angry, if u have never done that u should try once.
And last song to conclude my ice breaker: Indian Summer Sky, I love to travel, as a matter fact, 3 weeks ago I celebrate my 20th move in 27 years. Every time my dad has a promotion we had to move, so I ve been traveling from south, to north and then north to south again and then... out of nowhere my parents stop moving, I told them ...'are we going to stay in that city forever? OMG. I m going to be so bored ' so when I did my Master degree in Marketing and New Technologies i start moving on my on, from south to Paris, then I went to USA for a year to definitively improve my English, you would not have spoke to me before, then to Cork, Ireland and last year I moved to Dublin, and ... this year ...hopefully I will go to India with my work for two months and enjoy a beautiful summer there.
Madam Toastmaster.
Thank u