Confessions of a House husband

A speech delivered to Mosman Toastmasters in 1990.

Most of you in this room work for someone else – you have to report to a boss. And we all know what bosses are like!

When you apply for a job, how do you know what the person will be like? Can you interview him and ask if he tolerates long lunches. Does he give unreasonable deadlines? And if you are happy in your present job and a good boss gets replaced with a bad one – that really kills the satisfaction.

It seems to be a law of life doesn’t it? There’s always one turkey in every flock of eagles.

Why you need to set goals

A speech delivered to Mosman Toastmasters in 1989

Do you remember Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland?

Do you remember her conversation with the Cheshire Cat? Alice was lost and asked…

“Cheshire Puss.. .would you tell me please which way I ought to go from here?”

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to”, said the cat.

“I don’t much care where”, said Alice.

“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go”, replied the cat.

I want to encourage you all to define your goals and set out to achieve them, so that you get what you want out of life. Remember the words of the Cheshire Cat — If you don’t know where you want to go, you could end up anywhere! Given enough time, you’ll achieve certain things in life, but will they be the things that you really want for yourself?

Photograph your life!

A speech given at Mosman Toastmasters club in 1989

How many of you own a camera?

How many of you would like to take photographs that show creativity and say what you mean?

I want to talk to you about photography – being able to make creative photographs that communicate your vision and to make a visual statement.

Yes that’s right – photography can be used to make visual statements and we all think visually as well as verbally.

My very first Toastmasters icebreaker speech

Icebreaker Speech presented to Mosman Toastmasters 1987
Guests and fellow toastmasters … My name is Charles Cave and I would like to introduce myself by giving you a portrayal of my job, my interests in Japan and music, and my penchant for being a perpetual student.

Banana Cake – with choc chips (recipe)

Continue reading this post for the recipe.

A Funny Place – Japan and Japlish

A speech delivered in a Toastmasters Area level contest in 1989.
Konnichiwa!

Have you ever been to Japan? It’s an incredibly funny place because they speak a strange dialect of English.

I went on a holiday to Japan with my wife and I knew it would be a funny place when I was going through customs. My wife being Japanese joined the queue for Japanese nationals. I had to join a queue headed ALIENS – I felt like ALF from the planet Melmac. I didn’t see any short hairy aliens with big noses and a wart, but rather some fellow Australians and a few Americans.

Japlish – Version 1

This is the text of a speech I delivered to Mosman Toastmasters in 1989.  I was coached after this speech by Peter Fortune, a contest-winning Toastmaster, and produced a revised version of the same speech which I delivered at an Area Speech Contest
While Japan opens its trading doors to the West and we are penetrating the Japanese markets, little attention has been focused on intelligent communication.

As a result, two distinct dialects have developed, causing havoc to businessmen and tourists alike from both countries.

These two dialects are called JAPLISH and ENGANESE or Japanese English and English Japanese and were created through unprofessional translating. A good example of Japlish was found on a menu in Tokyo – SMOKED SERMON – well, reasonably obvious, but how about finishing your meal with ROGUE FART CHEESE AND CLACKERS?

Happy Bastille Day!

Today is Bastille Day, so here is some French humour for you. I delivered this joke at my Toastmasters meeting this morning.
Did you hear about the Frenchman who jumped into the river in Paris?  He was declared to be insane (in Seine).

Speaking of the Seine – the central landmark of Paris is the Louvre Museum located on the Right Bank of the Seine. It contains a magnificent collection of art works with over 35,000 objects and is the most visited museum in the world.

How to dispose of a dead donkey

I was once fond of saying  “If the horse is dead, get off it”, meaning walk away from anything that doesn’t support you, your enjoyment of life and/or your personal growth.

However after giving consideration to the entrepreneurial nature of the following story, I now amend that to “get off and see how much you can get for it.”

Harry bought a donkey from a farmer for $100, arranging to collect it the following day. When Harry called to collect his donkey, the farmer said that it had died the night before.  He refused to return the money saying that, as Harry had paid him the day before, it had been Harry’s donkey when it died.

Harry then demanded the farmer hand over the carcass of the deceased animal, explaining that he would raffle it. The farmer said that would not work, but Harry insisted it would as he would not mention that the donkey was dead.

A week or so later the farmer rang Harry to ask how the raffle went and was told it was a great success as 400 tickets had been sold for $2.00 each. The farmer was amazed that no one had complained about a dead donkey being raffled.

Harry said, “Well the winner did, so I gave him his $2.00 back.

Harry is now considering offers from a major political party and several financial institutions, who want him to advise them on financial policy.

Autofocus Task Management System

I uploaded my first presentation to Slide Share. The topic is how I use the Auto Focus Task Management system developed by Mark Forster.

I wanted to create a comic book/graphic novel feel so I used a free comic book style font downloaded from www.blambot.com. I created the presentation in Powerpoint then made a PDF file (to include the font) then uploaded to Slideshare which created the show automatically.

You can see the slide show at Slideshare.