Script and Film of Jason Wu's A31 Speech

Congratulate to Jason Wu for being voted as best speaker of Meeting No. 286.

The following is his A31 speech script and film.

If you have no idea about how to do project 1 of the storytelling manual,

you can take a look for it and it may trigger your inspiration.

Please refer to the following link for the film of Jason's' speech .

https://youtu.be/OwnqCL7fIqs

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2006/12/05 John's A5 Speech

Speech project: The Touching Story (A5)

Speech title: The Most Important Thing in Life

Time limit: 6 to 8 minutes

What is the most important thing in your life? Is it money? Work? Family? Friendship? Relationship? Ladies and gentlemen, tonight I am going to tell you a story about a young man learns what the most important thing is in life from an old man next door. You will find the most important thing in your life is always with you.


Jack was a young man who worked in Wall Street, New York. He was as ambitious as the other people in finance business, trying to make a big fortune from the richest place in the world. Like most of office workers in Wall Street, he devoted himself to his job. He worked twelve hours a day. So Jack had very little time to think about the past and often no time to spend with his wife and son. He was working on his future, and nothing could stop him.
Tom Hagen was an old man who lived next door to Jack when he was a child. Tom had no child and his wife passed away. He had taken care of Jack since Jack’s father died when Jack was 7. Tom stepped in to make sure Jack had a man’s influence in his childhood because the rest of Jack’s family members were all female, his mother and two sisters. Jack had spent a lot of time in Tom’s house in his childhood. They played together and Tom taught Jack lessons in life.
It’d been years since Jack had seen Tom. One day, Jack received a phone call from his mother. Over the phone, his mother told him, "Mr. Tom Hagen died last night. The funeral is on Wednesday." Suddenly, all the memories flashed through his mind like an old silent movie as he sat quietly remembering his childhood days.

And his mother kept saying” Mr. Hagen didn't forget you. Every time I saw him he would ask how you were doing. He liked to talk about the time you spent in his house when you were a child.”
"I wouldn't be in this business if he’s not there. He spent a lot of time teaching me things he thought were important...Mom, I'll be there for the funeral," Jack said.

Jack caught the next flight to his hometown. Tom's funeral was small and peace. Only a few people were there.

The night before he had to return home, Jack decided to see Tom’s house one more time with his mother.

Standing in the house, Jack paused for a moment. It was like crossing over into another dimension, a leap through space and time. The house was exactly as he remembered. Every little thing held Jack’s memories……Suddenly, Jack stopped.

"What's wrong, Jack?" his Mom asked.

"The box is gone," he said.

"What box?” his Mom asked.

"There was a small box on the top of Tom’s desk. I must have asked him a thousand times what was inside. And he always told me it was the thing most important to him.” Jack said.

It was gone. Everything was there in the same place except the box!

"Now I'll never know what was so valuable and important to him," Jack said. He went home disappointedly and caught an early flight to New York the next day.

Jack took a taxi to his office right after his airplane arrived at New York. Jack thought he had spent a lot of time in his hometown; there must be a lot of things to do in the office. When he got in the office, he saw a small package on his desk. The package was packed like it had been wrapped up for a hundred years. Jack opened the package; it was the box and a note. Tom Hagen mailed the box to Jack two days before he died! He knew he was dying! Jack took the note with his trembling hand and it read” Jack, this is the thing I value most and most important in my life”. It took his breathe away after reading the note. Then he opened the box and found a valuable watch and another note. The note read” Jack, thanks for your time—Tom Hagen”. At the moment, Jack realized the whole thing. “The most important thing in his life…..was….my time!”

Jack held the watch for a few minutes, then walked out his office and cleared his meetings for the next two days. "Why?" Jessie, his secretary asked. "I need some time to spend with my wife and son," Jack said. "Oh, by the way, Jessie...thanks for your time!"

Ladies and gentlemen, "Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take but by the moments that take our breath away,"

Time has a way of getting away from all of us...TAKE THE TIME...NOW.

2006/11/07 John's A4 Speech

Speech title: An optimist

Speech Project: the moral of the story(A4)

Time limit: 4 to 6 minutes

A person who is optimistic is an optimist. On the contrary, a person who is pessimistic is a pessimist. Do you know the difference between an optimist and a pessimist? An optimist sees the donut. A pessimist sees nothing but the hole of the donut. An optimist sees the sweetness of the chocolate. A pessimist sees only the calories of the chocolate. Ladies and gentlemen, do you believe your attitude can change your life?

John is one of my best friends. He is also a member of toastmaster club somewhere in this island. John is an excellent speaker and optimist. Actually, he is an incredible nature-born optimist. John was born in a poor family. When he was still a little John, all the kids in the family could only get red eggs as birthday gifts. When John’s sister received a red egg on her birthday, she cried because other kids in the neighborhood got more and better gifts on their birthday. However, when John received his birthday gift, still a red egg, a weird thought came to his mind. “Where there is an egg, there must be a chicken! My mother must have prepared a fried chicken dinner for me”. Neither John nor his sister had the fried chicken dinner on birthday. But John was happily waiting his fried chicken, his sister was crying on birthday.

As I mentioned earlier, my friend John is now an excellent speaker. But he wasn’t a nature-born speaker. He really sucked before. He blew up his very first formal presentation when he studied at the graduate school in National Taiwan University. It was in a big conference room, all the people in the graduate school, the professors, all the PH.D candidates, his classmates and including a beautiful girl who John had admired for a very long time were all there. And John was going to present his research in two years to all of them. He had prepared a 30-paged material and the time limit was 15 minutes. When he got on the stage and looked at the audience, he saw nothing but hundreds of eyes staring at him. At the moment he knew he would be finished because he was totally frightened by the audience. The air was shattering and he was stuttering. Then he started mumbling. After ten minutes, he was still on page 2. When the time was up, John only finished 3 pages of his 30-paged material. John was defeated from head to toe in the presentation.

After the presentation, my friend John was very sad. He might loose the respect of his classmates, the trust of his professor, the beautiful girl’s heart and even worse, his master degree. It was all because of his bad performance in the presentation. But I told you he’s a nature-born optimist. Only after one day, another weird thought came to his mind. “Can it be worse? No, this is the worst result of a presentation. And if it can not be worse, I can only be better next time!” After he got straight of this, John was happy again. Because he’d been through the worst, it can only be better next time. He started working really hard for his next presentation. He believed that it could only be better next time because he got nothing to loose. At last, he succeeded in his next presentation, earned his master degree and won the beautiful girl’s heart as well.

Ladies and gentlemen, have you been through setbacks which may change your life? If you have one next time, please calm down first and then think what will happen. If it is not the worst, congratulate to you my friends, because it is not the worst. And if you’re in the worst shape, congratulate to you my friends, because it can not be worse. It can only be better next time. Work harder on it, and then you will win the victory eventually.

Toastmasters!

2006/5/16 John's A2 Speech

The saint of lovers---Valentine’s story

Good evening ladies and gentlemen,

Tonight I am going to tell you a story of a very famous lover in the history, St Valentine. We all know that Valentine’s Day is on February 14th. But before I go further into the story, there is still some information need to be known. So, ladies and gentlemen, shall we take a short quiz now?

Quizing….

Thank you ladies and gentlemen, you guys are just too good at history. I believe it will be easier for me to help you understand the whole story.

Long long time ago….. In the early days of Rome, at that time, Rome was ruled by an emperor named Claudius. Nobody liked the emperor very much because he was very cruel. Claudius wanted to have a big army. He expected men volunteer to join the army. But there were not many men joined in the army because they didn’t want to fight in the war and leave their lovers or wives as well. This made Claudius really mad. So the bad emperor had a crazy idea. He thought if men didn’t get married, they would not mind joining in the army. So the emperor decided not to allow any more marriages. Getting married became illegal at that time!

St Valentine, a priest, was the first one to against the stupid law. He encouraged young people to go for their love and most importantly, he still kept on performing marriage ceremonies for young couples—secretly in the basement. Gradually, he became famous to all the young couples who wanted to get married. As he was getting famous, his life was getting dangerous too. Eventually, he got caught after he had married hundreds of couples. He was thrown to jail and sentenced to death immediately.

Even he was in jail and would be executed anytime, St Valentine was still very optimistic. It might be the power of love because he’s the one who truly believed in love. That’s the reason he took life risk to marry hundreds of young couples. And many young people came to the jail to visit him. They brought flowers and notes to the jail to show their supports to St Valentine. One of these young people was the daughter of the prison guard, whose name was Emma. Because of her father, she was allowed to see St Valentine in his cell. Sometimes they talked for hours. St Valentine knew that Emma really liked him but he’s the one who couldn’t be love because he’s going to die. So on the day of February 14th, he left a farewell note to express his appreciation to Emma before he was executed. He signed the note, “Love from your Valentine”. Many people believed this is the origin that we send people Valentine’s cards and exchange love messages nowadays.

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s a simple story, isn’t it? Love is simple yet memorable. That’s why Valentine’s Day has been celebrated for nearly 2000 years. Do you remember what was the gift you gave or you received from your lover on last Valentine’s Day? Chocolates, candlelight dinners, gold, diamonds and romantic nights in luxury hotels, Valentine’s Day is just over-commercialized nowadays. Let me tell you some Valentine traditions in the old days. In the Middle Ages France, if you like someone, you can draw someone’s name on your sleeves and wear the cloth for a week during Valentine’s Day. And if the special someone likes you, he/she will draw your name on their sleeves too. Then you can draw a heart on the sleeves and people will know that you’re in love with someone. Another tradition was in Wales England. Hearts, keys and keyholes were carved in wooden spoons as gifts given out to your loved ones. It means, “You unlock my heart”. It’s really romantic, isn’t it?

Ladies and gentlemen, I have been keeping telling the old traditions and the story of Valentine to my ex-girlfriends for years. And guess what, after they knew the real meaning of Valentine’s Day, they wouldn’t ask expensive gifts from me. That saved me a lot of money. Of course, you can only use the story to one girl for one time only. After all, Valentine’s Day is all about exchanging of love messages but not exchanging of expensive gifts. Toastmaster!