Toastmasters Club - Speak More in Learning Environment (SMILE)

It is a quite day in the office, so I can take the opportunity to publish new post today. I thought I should share my personal experience with Toastmasters Club.
For those who don't know me, I am the quite one who sits in the back and never volunteer for presentations or speeches. In the office, I don't like to talk either, I like actions (thats why it is so boring today) but, I find it difficult to survive in this corporate world, if I focus on tasks or actions alone, somehow I need to express my thought and feeling in professional manner at all levels.
I was lucky that a trainer from the presentation and communication skill course recommended me to continue improving my presentation skill by attending Toastmasters Club at the end of the course. I remembered when I saw myself on the video recorded by the trainer, it was really really horrible (wrong posture, bad eye contact not sure why I always look at my shoe, so many ah, eh, etc...). I don't think I can convenience the audiences.
From that day onwards, I decided to go ahead to search for Toastmasters club in my neighborhood. Officially, I joined a Toastmasters club on Feb 8th 2004. Frankly, I find it very hard to go to the meeting fortnightly, most importantly, I find it so embarrass to foul myself in front of members, therefore, I have not been very active at the beginning. I took my sweet time to prepare my projects and avoid attend meeting.
But now, when I looked back, I must said that it has an excellent 10 series of projects with specific objectives for beginner and depending on the club, the meeting is full of fun, learning new thing and meeting new peoples. By the way, I still have problem with table topic, sometime my mind goes blank, cannot think fast and speak within the given 2 mins, but I know that every attempt that I made either table topic or prepared speeches, I will learn and I know I will learn, speak more in the positive learning environment. Do take a look at this website, Toastmasters International and consider to join as a member.