Blue ribbon for the girl with the most names

"Good Evening Ladies and Gentlemen, Fellow Toastmasters and Guests..."

That's the opening line for my Toastmasters IceBreaker Speech that I keep practising for the pass 3 days in front of a few of my closer colleagues, so much so, that they run away from me each time I go near them. And thus each time I only get to practise this opening line. Nobody seems interested in my toastmasters ice breaker speech. Yes, ice breaker speech can be boring for some....

So, I tried to practise in front of little b and he thought I was playing a game with him and started acting out the Sam Witwicky Classroom scene in Transformers 2, whereby Sam had a mental breakdown and started talking gibberish.

And Mr. Big B, not to pleased with me laughing at his name in my speech, also avoided me whenever I tried to practise in front of him, and gave me weird advice, like doing the Michael Jackson moonwalk while doing my speech or doing the human boom-box to catch people's attention like those who auditioned for the American Idol.

Anyway, all my "hard work" of practising inside my car while driving to work these 2 mornings have paid off well because tonight I won the Blue Ribbon for the Best Speaker for Prepared Speech. I guess I won because I was the only one who didn't use any notes and my speech was presented in an interesting "storytelling" mode instead of the usual "chronological introduction to my life" kind of presentation. (*Note: The icebreaker speech is a 4-6 minute speech to introduce the speaker to the rest of the club members.)

What makes winning this award all the more special is, I was up against 6 other more "seasoned" speakers as they hold positions in the office which required them to give presentations on a daily basis while I seldom (if ever) talk in the office. (Boss, if you are reading this, please do not start assigning me with presentation work, ok?).

Actually, you cannot imagine how estatic I am now with my achievements tonight. Yes, it feels great having so many people congratulating you and clapping for you. Kinda motivating in a way, especially for the other newbies seeing a nobody like me can actually be 1 up against all the other giants or "hot favourites".

I just reviewed my video, and I found that my speech wasn't that great but I feel it was still one of the best among those who spoke tonight. (Actually, I think my boss's speech was very good too and I probably won due to popularity vote, but hey, isn't this world about popularity nowadays - just look at all the reality shows they dish out to us on the idiot box which we call TV). Whichever way it is, the bottomline is I still won the ribbon, and tonight was MY NIGHT. Wooo Hooo!! Yeeee Haaaa!!! AHAHHAHAHAHA (Allow me to gloat for just once, ok? This doesn't happen to me very often... :)

So I guess I will bask in this euphoria for another 2 weeks before they crown another Blue Ribbon winner for the next meeting. But right now, having the best speech for the night is ....... priceless.

==============================================

Here's the speech I delivered earlier tonight...

A rose, by any other name, is just as beautiful.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, fellow toastmasters and guests.

It is very intimidating for me to stand up here to talk in front of all of you after all those superb speeches given by my colleagues. Everyone knows that I am a shy person, and it took me a lot of courage to stand up here and open up myself. Even as I speak now, my heart is beating like [thud thud thud] 100 times a minute and my brain is working 1000 harder to control myself from having a heart attack. In fact, I think that there should be another role introduced into the Toastmasters Club, which is the Paramedic Role, to save people when they actually have a heart attack and collapse right here at the lectern.

Ok, now that I didn’t collapse, I have no choice but to continue with my speech. The title of my speech is “A rose by any other names is just as beautiful”. What better way to introduce myself than with my name. Once upon a time, not so very long ago, (I won’t tell you how long ago because it will reveal my age), my half-Japanese grandmother wanted to name me, Keiko Kawashima, meaning “the adored one on the river islands”. But the name on my IC, the last I checked, is XXX *(Censored to protect the writer's identity). My Chinese father, insisted on my Chinese roots and named me XXX instead. What does it mean? I don’t really know actually because I don’t read Chinese. My parents tell me that they got the name from the fortune teller when I was born.

The told me that my name was carefully and painstakingly chosen and they had to go through so much hassle to book the famous fortune teller in town just to get me my name. But I don’t believe them, because much later, I found out that my name is similar to the Taiwanese singer, Teressa Teng and she was very famous around the time I was born, thus I think they just conveniently took her name and gave it to me.

So all through my childhood, and teenage life, my friends call me by my Chinese name. Then I went to college and suddenly there was a fad in having an English name. I resisted the temptations of having one until later I went over to UK to further my studies. And then Oh My God!!! Most of my foreign classmates could not remember my Chinese name and had difficulty pronouncing it, and it sounded so horrifying that I don’t even want to mention it. In order not to allow them to further degrade my beautiful name, I chose to be called Kelly. And that is how I am better known as in the REAL world… as Kelly Kong.

REAL world? Yes, you heard me right. Because I live in another world too - the cyber world. I am very active online. I participate in forums, and online chats and have facebook, friendster and twitter accounts to keep in touch with my friends and family. Naturally, being a cyber citizen, I also keep a blog to log all the happenings in my life. One of the main reasons why I kept a blog was because I have very bad memory, thus I like to write down all the good things that has happened into the blog. Yes, it’s a little like keeping an online diary, so if you would like to get to know me better, you can just go to my blog and read all about me. Incidentally, it was my blog that landed me the task as the editor for ING Leadership Toastmaster’s Club newsletter. You can comment on my writings when you read the newsletter when it is published later. If it’s good, let me know. I’d try to pretend to be humble when you praise me. If you don’t think it’s good, you can just keep quiet. Haha, kidding, constructive criticism is welcome as I am always looking for ways to improve myself.

Back to my name. In the cyberworld, I go by the pseudonym Kelly Rivers. Why Rivers? My surname Kong means Rivers in Chinese.

And then there is one name that I seldom use or try to avoid using. I went on to marry my husband and automatically I inherited his name and guess what? His surname is Bean. Mr. Bean. So I become Mrs. Bean. I don’t think I need to explain why I don’t use this name.

So as you can see, I have many names, but essentially there’s only one me. I am the same nice person irregardless of all the names you call me, just like the saying goes, a rose by any other names, is just as beautiful.