My First Speech In ToastMasters

Mr/Ms Toastmaster, fellow toastmaster and guests.

Good Evening.

I do not know whether the speech should have a name or not. The title of my speech is "The identity"

My name is Pankaj Goyal. I got my independence in this world in just a day before all of us got our independence. Can anyone guess my date of birth ? Yes he/she got it right I was born on 14 Aug. I was born on 14^th Aug in 1981 in Delhi; a place u all must be familiar with. Sorry but I don’t remember anything about the first two or three years of my life but interestingly I still remember the first day of my nursery school. I went to school with my elder brother and I refused to sit away from brother. The teacher wanted me to move to my class but I refused to go. She try to give me chocolates / candies etc but not able to convince me. She also tried to force me but I started crying that I will sit with my brother in his class. For the first few days I sit in my brother’s class and then my parent were called to school and finally I started sitting in my class. For the first 5 years I was an ordinary child in the school. Now I will tell you about the day I got enlightenment. I was setting in an award ceremony and looking at the people receiving awards. I was tired of clapping for the people receiving award. Then I thought that from next year I have to be there to receive the award. After that I never looked back and I was always the first ranker in my class. This becomes my compulsion to be first in the class. In fact I started enjoying being first in the class.

After this very successful school life I started my college life from NSIT. This is the first time when I suffered an identity crisis. People do not know about the college and we used to give them the reference of DCE and how NSIT is related to DCE. Etc College life was full of fun and entertainment and a new Pankaj was born. I will never forget those days of my life.

After passing from college I have several offers. I choose STMicroelectronics from them as that was the best paying company among the entire 4 offer I had. The working in the ST was really a fun. But your social life is never easy if you are working in ST. When people used to ask what your company do. Initially I used to tell them the innocently that I work in a chip manufacturing company. And they used to ask me why you are working in a chips company. This was kind of second identity crisis.

After working there for about 2 year I switched to Cadence. I worked there for more than 2 years. There also I faced some identity issue. Some of you might know that Cadence develop software tools for chip designing. But when u tells someone about the tools he/she conjure a image of mechanical tools made of metals and all. And it was always difficult to explain the difference bw normal tools and sw tools.

Thank God that now after joining Adobe I do not face such type of identity problems as most of the people know about Photoshop, flash and Pdf etc.

About my interests. I like traveling. One of the most interesting things about travelling that I like to travel to different places. I have been to lot of hill stations with my friends. I have been to Shimla, Manali, Nanital, agra, Goa, Jaipur, Udaipur, mount Abu, Dharmshala etc. BTW if any one of you is planning to go any of these places you are welcome to consult me. I will provide you free consultancy :-) . Another thing which I want to tell you that I want to learn new things. When In cadence I learned Salsa. I am learning Guitar playing now.