TM - Speech 5 - Your Body Speaks - False assumptions can get you in all sorts of trouble

A couple of years ago an interesting thing happened to me. I was on my way to work. Like any other day, I was riding in the first car of the train, because I knew when I get off the train at Finch station there will be an escalator that takes me to the main level. I got on the escalator and started taking steps up. But, I noticed my steps were not bringing me closer to the top of the escalator. All of a sudden, I lost my balance and fell on all four. At this point in time I panicked, my brain logic system shut down and it started working in survival mode. I had to survive whatever was happening to me. So, I dropped my bag then I got rid of my lunch box. And took hold of the hand rail with both hands. My grip was so tight my knuckles turned white. I started literally climbing up the stairs. Finally, when I got to the top of the escalator, I looked down for my bag and lunch box; I noticed that the escalator that I assumed was going up, is going down.

Obviously, this assumption got me into trouble!

As human beings we usually make assumptions based on past experiences, cultural stereotypes and social stigmas. We see a tall guy we say, oh he must be a good basketball player, we see an Asian gal, we say she is definitely good in math, we are introduced to an Italian and we think he must like pasta. By way of assumption, we are taking a shortcut in our decision making process. We avoid fact gathering, analysis and deduction.

Let's take a look at one example together. How many of you think that the express lane of a supermarket is faster than other lanes?

I found this example on Dan Myer's weblog. Dan is a math teacher. He uses this example to teach his students math reasoning. The students, in order to find an answer for this question, go to a supermarket and observe how fast the lines at the registers are moving. They collect two piece of data, the number of items in a customer's baskets and the time it took for the customer to pay for these items. The graph, based on this data, looks like this.




When I looked at this graph, two things caught my eye.
1. there is a nominal time spent in front of a cash register even if you have no items to pay. Interesting? What may you be doing at the cash register if you have no items. Well you may ask the cashier where you can find soap.
2. the second thing were the outlier data. e.g. it look less for an individual with 26 items to pay for his items than it did for another individual to pay for 17 items in the express lane. How could this be? Well, we often overlook that methods of payment such as debit or credit can take longer than cash.

The point I am trying to make is assumptions may not yield the right answer. As we clearly see in this example.

I'd like to suggest that we become more aware of our thinking process. Realize when our decisions are based on assumptions. And ask ourselves what those assumptions are based.

TM: Speech 4 - How to Say it

Project 3 for Competent Communication manual is a hard project to tackle. Some masterfully play with meanings, words and figures of speech to vivify an experience for their audience. I don't! I have notebooks of phrases that eloquently convey the meaning. I take them down as I come across them in written or spoken language. But, I rarely use them!

For this project, I consulted with family, my Toastmaster's mentor, and a friend on what topic to talk about. After many brainstorming discussions, talking about a Recipe got the most number of votes. I delivered the speech on April Fool's, Thursday April 1. So take the wrapper text around the cooking tips with a grain of salt. :)

Here is the text for my fourth TM project --How to Say it.

"Welcome to the Fool's edition of our Cooking Show. I am glad that you could join me today because today I have a rare opportunity to bring to you the international recipe for April Fool's day on the day it was discovered.

This one of a kind recipe originated in a small, cute town in France. The French man who first discovered it was a veterinarian called Jacques. On April 1, 1832 Jacques was performing an autopsy on a cow when he accidentally touched the meat around the back rib cage of the animal. It felt so smooth and soft. If it feels so tender when it is raw, imagine how succulent it tastes when it is cooked, he thought. He took a sharp knife cut a thick piece from the tail end of the loin and took it home with him. He stayed up all night, toiling away in his kitchen until he perfected his idea. Jacques discovered one of the most delicious, luxurious, expensive dishes in the world. He called it fool Mignon since it was on April's fool's day that this genius idea came to him. But later the French changed it to a more sophisticated name: fillet Mignon to literally mean thick slice of dainty.

Like flowers on Valentine day, this dish could be quite expensive when dining out on April fool's day, but it is much more reasonable if you make it at home. On that note I would like to share with you a few tips on cooking fillet Mignon at home.

• When selecting tenderloin or fillet Mignon slices choose the lighter colored ones over the dark ones. The lighter the color the more marbling it has which makes the meat more tender.
  
  
• Since the beef has little fat on its surface, it is often wrapped in a bacon or some sort of fat to make it more favorable.
  
  
• Use a dry high heat method of cooking: such as broiling, roasting or grilling.
  
  
• Avoid cutting into the meat to check doneness, because all the juice will ooze out. Use the touch method. Press the meat with two fingers, if it feels soft and mushy and leaves imprints, it is rare. If it is soft but slightly resilient, it is medium rare. The minute it begins to feel firm it is over-done start over again.
  
  
• You can garnish fillet Mignon with garlic, salt, pepper and some rosemary.
  
  
• To match a wine with fillet Mignon look for dry, red wines. The top matches are Merlot, Cabernet sauvignon, pinot noir, or Shiraz. don't try all at the same time.
  

With these tips you can make a tasty fillet Mignon at home that is so tender you can cut it with a fork and so juicy that it will melt in your mouth. And since today is the day this recipe was discovered you have a strong motivation to make it today. Try this recipe out today!

Thank you for joining me. I hope you enjoyed this edition of our cooking show and you join me again next week when i make another world renowned, exotic dish simple enough for you to make it at home."

TM: Speech 3 - Get to the Point

I am delivering my third Toastmaster speech in half an hour. For this speech I feel the butterflies as much if not more than the first time I stood in front of the crowd and gave my Ice Breaker speech. It is going to be OK. The worse could happen that I blank out. If that happens, I can pause, smile and pick up where I left off. Easy to say!

The objective of this speech is: Get to the Point. I will be talking about happiness. I have 7 minutes! My Toastmasters mentor and I have been working on the structure of the speech for many hours. It has been a --task to make boundaries and bullets for happiness.

So, here is a sneak peek at what I will say:

I will talk about health, wealth and purpose and the impact they have on our well being. I picked these three firstly because they rhyme with my speech opening line :) and secondly because they are simple facts that audience can relate to. The most important part of the speech is sandwiching the philosophy of happiness with a good dose of real life example. I am good in writing the philosophical part but no so good with the second part; to help me find examples I used google! I used keywords: happiness, prosperity, wealth, health, purpose, correlation many times.

To get an idea about my speech, my evaluator was kind enough to meet with me yesterday. I will append her evaluation here.

Wish me luck!

I am an extraordinary person aspire to be ordinary

Wednesday 10/29/09 - 12 PM The Lab Z4-029 - Toastmasters meeting running backwards, from future, the end, to present, the beginning. A bunch of us were there. Some had roles, some had to deliver a talk. I had to deliver a talk. My first talk, the Ice-breaker in Toastmasters' lingo. Since everything was going backwards, my talk was last of the three. It was so painful to wait. Finally, I was introduced. I went up and faced my biggest fear. Public speaking!

"Fellow Toastmasters, dear guests. Today, I am here to tell you about my extraordinary life and how I aspire to be ordinary. I live on Avenue Road, in a two story house. I drive a CLK320. I am married. My husband is a university Professor. I have two kids, twins, well-behaved. They are 10 years old. I am a CIO, Chief Intelligence Officer. My job is to put intelligence back into products. The product that my team and I work on is called IComp. IComp stands for Intelligent Compiler. IComp takes the user specification, requirement orally or in written form and translates it to an efficient, high performing executable for the target hardware architecture. There is no need for the user to write high level, abstract, unintelligent program. In fact, high level languages such as C, C++, or Fortran are so yesterday. Today IComp supports 143 languages and is widely used around the world. It's perfect. Except there is one problem. IComp doesn't exist. IComp, the gorgeous house in the posh neighborhood, the Mercedes, the professor is all in the future!
Today, I am a software developer. I develop code for the compiler back-end. If you ask me what does the compiler back-end do. I'll tell you short and sweet, it does everything that the compiler front-end doesn't do. The effect the long and detailed description of the back-end of the compiler has on people is, let's just say, not good! One of my hobbies is to learn new languages. I have a feeling that it may come handy in the future, given that compilers may one day support up to 143 languages. I know German, ein bisschen, and French, un peu. I live in a condo that I call home. I have to admit, I do prefer houses over condos. But, I can never see myself living in a posh neighborhood, I am far too logical to feel comfortable with showing off. ;) I take public transit to work. It's far better way of getting to and from work. I am a book fetish. Public transit means more time to read. My boyfriend is a PhD student. I do believe teaching is a good profession for a man. It's amazing how extraordinary my life has become now that I have lived it backwards. I do have to say one thing though, no matter how ordinary I sound at present, I feel extraordinary. Thank you.
Madam, Toastmaster."

Done. Complete. Sigh.

Time for speech evaluation. Let me know what you think. :)