Engage Your Audience With Humour

Objectives Of The “Engage Your Audience With Humour” Project:

 The purpose of this project is for the member to determine their style of humor and apply it to a speech that centers around a central message. Give a 5- to 7-minute speech on your point of view and what makes things funny to you. Your speech should include at least one anecdote or story intended to entertain or bring humor into your presentation. It is a compulsory project in the Engaging Humour Pathway Level 3 projects.

Engage Your Audience With Humour – Daniel Sun’s Pathway Project

Speaker: Daniel Sun, CC, EH2

Pathway: Engaging Humour

Level 3, Project 3: Engage Your Audience With Humour

Title: Toilette

Date: 19 September 2024

This project was delivered at The Open Alumni Toastmasters Club.

Inspiration Behind This Project

Prior to delivering this compulsory project in my Engaging Humour Pathway, I chose to first deliver two level 3 elective projects. I delayed this compulsory project because I deemed that this project required much preparation. I needed not only a few funny stories/anecdotes, but they must have a common central theme. Accumulating a few funny stories/anecdotes would require quite some time and effort on its own. Even so, these stories/anecdotes would most probably be unrelated to one another.

Somehow, I soon knew the speech that I could deliver after completing my two other level 3 elective projects.

Each time I visited a public toilet, my mind would be saturated with thoughts about the toilet, especially when I could not find my way out of the toilet. In the past, I had from time to time posted funny notes as well as complaints on social media about public toilets with misleading signs, funny notices found in the toilet pleading the users to do and not to do certain things.

It dawned upon me that I could piece all these experiences together and compose a speech with a central theme on toilet. As usual, I had more than enough materials to write a speech where I have to trim again and again down to just a 7-minutes speech.

I first researched about the different terms used for toilet. They are

• toilet
• lavatory
• washroom
• bathroom
• washing closet
• loo
• restroom
• 厕所
• 洗手间
• 卫生间

I would have spent easily more than 7 minutes discussing all these different terms used for toilet, but I had funnier stories to tell. Thus, I began with the etymology of the term “toilet” which came from the French word, “Toilette”.

So the flow of my speech content was an opening with a verse of the song, “Love Is All Around”., followed by:

• fragrance –>
• perfume –>
• smell of durian –>
• toilet –>
• toilet euphemism –>
• notices in toilet –>
• toilet is like a labyrinth –>
• entering a wrong (female) toilet –>
• gender reminder versus gentle reminder –>
• conclusion

Speech Introduction

Sing and dance, snapping fingers to the tune, “Love Is All Around” by Frogg: 

“I feel it in my fingers, I feel it in my toes. Fragrance is all around us, and the feeling grows.”

(Spray air freshener into the air.)

Club President, Distinguished Toastmasters, fellow toastmasters and friends, what is “Toilette”? It is a French word. “Toilette” refers to the act of dressing and grooming.

A French word. Upon hearing a French word, wouldn’t you slavishly esteem it to be something tastefully high class and fragrantly endowed with French parfum (perfume). 

Perfume Versus Durian

(Look at the air freshener in my hand, startle a little and then turn to Elaine.)

Elaine, may I have your expensive French perfume?

Ten years ago, I brought durians for the club chapter meeting refreshment. Elaine emptied half a bottle of her expensive perfume and told me, “Don’t bring durians, the community club does not allow durians to be brought in.” 

Do you prefer the smell of durian or the smell of perfume? To me, durian and perfume are synonymous. To some others according to my secondary two teacher, the white man says …

Sing from Elvis Presley’s “Can’t Help Falling In Love”:

“Wise man says, only fool rush in.”

No, not wise man, but white man, … I meant “Ang Moh”, says that eating durian is like eating ice cream … in a toilet.

Euphemisms For Toilet

Oh yes, toilet! that is the subject of my speech tonight. The word “toilet” originated from the French word, “Toilette”. Somehow the word “toilet” has lost its finesse and many words have been invented subsequently to take its place. In the United States, they called it, “Restroom”. I recalled the American TV programme, “Candid Camera”. 

Sing: “Smile! You’re on Candid Camera.”

In one episode, they played a trick on the members of public. When someone entered a room labelled, “Restroom”, they entered the room to find many people lying down on couches literally resting.

Today in Singapore, the most common term used is, (pause a little while) – “Bathroom”. 

“Excuse me, I need to go to the bathroom.” (Act ladylike.)

Whenever, someone tells me that, I would reply, “Oh! You are going to take a bath. Please do not take too long, because …

Sing Richard Marx’s “Right Here Waiting”: “Wherever you are, whatever you do, I will be right here waiting for you.”

In China, the word is not 厕所 (ce4suo3), but 卫生间(wei4sheng1jian1). It literally means hygiene centre.

Nevertheless, this so-called hygiene centre, as we all know, is not that hygienic. You wouldn’t bring your lunch into the toilet and eat it, would you?

Toilet Hygiene

In the Gents, I usually find the floor wet around the urinal areas. I wonder how most people use the urinals. Did they actually take a bath there besides urinating? Oh, they thought that it was a bathroom.

I believe the janitors know this fact all too well. Not too long ago in a community club toilet, I saw a sign right on top of each urinal. It says, “WE AIM TO PLEASE. YOU AIM TOO PLEASE.”

Five to six years ago when I visited China for the first time in my life, I saw something similar on top of a urinal in China’s public toilet. It says, “踏前一小步，文明一大步“, which means, “a small step forward, a big step for civilisation”.

I noticed that this sign in the community club’s toilet has those similar Chinese words too. Someone must have seen that in China’s toilets and borrowed that idea.

That sentence in Chinese is very poetic. In China you have poetries everywhere. Poetry in the toilet, poetry in the train station, poetries everywhere.

Singapore Public Toilets Are Like Labyrinths

Apart from the hygiene factor, toilet has become more and more like a labyrinth in Singapore’s shopping malls. Not only is it confusing finding your way into one, but it is a bigger challenge finding your way out.

Sometimes in the toilet, there is more than one compartment, you will have to make a few turns before you find either the urinals or the cubicles. Once, on my way out, instead of finding the exit, I almost open the door to a storeroom. When I finally step out of the toilet, there were walls all around me. I do not know whether I should walk straight, turn left or turn right. There were a few times when I walked straight, …, I almost entered the Ladies. 

At VivoCity, when I stepped out of the toilet, I was overjoyed to find a sign right in front of me which read, “To Shop” with an arrow pointing to the left.

I thought to myself, “How ingenious!” On second thought, it was not an ingenious act. It was just someone who was really thoughtful. Someone who understood the plight of people like me. I can tell that I am not alone in this matter.

My Experience Of Entering The Wrong Toilet

Now, what if I had entered the Ladies by mistake? Actually, I did enter a Ladies by mistake once. Other times, almost.

It happened in my twenties. I was having a long conversation with someone in a restaurant, and I needed to go to the toilet. My mind was so preoccupied with the conversation as I entered the toilet. I couldn’t tell if there was anyone in the cubicles, but there was certainly nobody outside the cubicles. I paced up and down the toilet, again and again, but I could not find the urinals as any Gents should have. I thought to myself, “This toilet is very strange.” It did not occur at all to me that I was in the Ladies.

Instead, I responded to the situation as if it was a mathematical problem to be solved. Then, I heard a voice at a distance behind me. It was someone at the sink facing the mirror talking to someone in a cubicle. That person must have come out of one of the cubicles when I was pacing down in the other direction. I turned around and saw at a distance, where the voice came from. The person talking was a figure with long hair and she was grooming herself.

A Eureka moment! Immediately, I realised that I had entered the wrong toilet. I quickly made my way past her and headed for the exit. As I passed by her, I said, “Sorry ah!” At first, she did not notice me until she heard me. How did she react? She wagged her finger at me and said, “Gender Reminder!”

No, she did not do that. Actually, she was startled for a split second and then she laughingly cried out, “Walau! 有沒有搞錯?” Translated into English in an equivalent way, meant “Oh my gosh! What on earth is happening?”

Gender Reminder Versus Gentle Reminder

Speaking of “Gender Reminder”, I have heard far too many people using the phrase, “Gentle Reminder”. I would get so annoyed whenever I heard that. A reminder is simply a reminder. Why is there a need to add the word, “gentle” as an adjective. Many times, they sounded like they were saying “Gender Reminder”, especially an old man who used to be my school’s Head of Mother Tongue Department. He would make an announcement and said, “This is a gender reminder.”

No, I don’t need any “Gender Reminder”, but I certainly try my best not to enter the toilet of the wrong gender.

So, please use the toilet responsibly and be careful not to enter into a wrong toilet.

Back to you, Toastmaster!