Earlier his week I was on a business trip to Ontario Canada from US and
visited a TM club on Mon evening and another one on Tue evening.

I am scheduled to give a 45 min presentation about public speaking at a
professional as association meeting next week.  To help rehearse, I had
offered for the Monday club to be on the agenda for the 15 minute
keynote speech of the professional speaker manual. They accepted. I took
my 45 minute speech and adapted the first part to a 15 min speech. The
speech at the first club was a hit. Everything worked well. I got one
comment that made polish the beginning further for more impact th next time.

I had offered to make speech at the Tue club, too, but they didn't gave
me an answer. At their meeting, one person on the agenda for a speech
canceled the speech and I offered to make a speech. They offered me 5-7
min. I condensed 15 min speech on the spot to about 8 min. The delivery
took 10 min. The speech went well. I missed the punch line for the
ending story but nobody really noticed because it was a story and not a
joke. I would have probably stayed on time if I had time in advance to
test the material for that time. I was voted the best speaker even
though I went over time. They gave a ribbon and a trophy to the best
speaker, the best evaluator, and the best table topic. I said "wow, I
like this trophy." Before I could pack away the trophy, they took it
back--they take the trophies back!

..PC