Hello, Netherlands!

- October 15, 2013

We’ll learn about different cultures of the world this October. The first country we talk about is the Netherlands!

Our Toastmasters of The Meeting for the night, Sukardi, gave us an insight of the country. We know that it’s a country with most dams in the world, but he also told us that people there mostly use bikes for transportation and marijuana is legalized in the country to reduce illegal use. His information gave us a new, different look of Netherlands.

The guests for the night.

Starting the prepared speech session, we had Debbie who talked about relationships. In her BM2, she talked about points in a relationship. Physical attraction, passion, and commitment. People can have either point more than others. The balance of these three points would make a good relationship.

Next, we had Sukardi who told about a Netherland’s folktale. A long time ago, there lived The Lady of Stavoren who had everything, but she was selfish and greedy. One day, she ordered a merchant to sail all over the world to find her “the most precious thing”. The merchant obeyed and left. When he came back, he brought wheat as much as his ship could hold. But the Lady of Stavoren was furious, insisting for the merchant to throw all the wheat into the sea, though it could feed the whole city. “Why can’t you keep this until you need the wheat?” the merchant asked.

The lady arrogantly threw her ring into the sea, saying “I don’t need this ring. When I need it, it will come back to me”. So the merchant threw all the wheat into the sea. Unexpectedly, the wheat grew under the sea, making it hard to sail through, even causing flood. By that time, The Lady of Stavoren was eating a fish and found her ring inside it. It means she needs the ring. Why? Because then a big flood came and she lost everything. Thus was the story of the greedy Lady of Stavoren.

Moving on, we have Tara from British Toastmasters, explaining about how better it will be to do mono-tasking than multi-tasking. Mono-tasking allows you to concentrate more and actually make you finish your work faster. Multi-tasking divides your attention and makes you less efficient. It’s much better to finish your tasks one by one, than doing several things all at once.

The last prepared speaker for the night was Yoshi the VPE from British Toastmasters. She presented her Technical Presentation about writing effectively. She displayed two paragraphs to compare. The first one has a mix of positive and negative statements, while the second only had negative statements.

Asians usually prefer the first paragraph, while the Westerners prefer the second. Actually, it is more effective to choose the second paragraph. In the second, the reader could easily understand the aim of the writer, to stress that a point is negative. But in the first, the reader will be confused whether the point is negative or positive.

Yoshi-san definitely gave us good information about writing and delivering our points in a better way. Asians culture taught to not offend, and tend to wander in a circle before getting to the point. By being more direct, we can save much time and make people understand better. So try to use either only negative or positive approach when writing and doing a business presentation, rather than mixing it up. Thank you for the tips, Yoshi-san!

To be on time, we changed our strategy. Usually, the Table Topic session is at the beginning, but last week, we put it as the last session. And we could finish on time because of that, yay!

Our Table Topic Master was Erwin. He had a unique method. Playing a background song as he asked the speaker to imagine something. Then the speaker had to speak based on that. Tara, Debbie, Yoshi, and Agi joined the session. Everyone liked the surprise. Awesome Table Topic session!

This is how Erwin played the music for each speaker: