SBTMMeeting #654: Home, Bibimbap and Happiness
On the afternoon of Sunday, 4 October 2026, we held our 654th meeting on the theme "Home". It was a holiday weekend, so fewer members than usual attended and some roles stayed open until just before the meeting, but it was a warm, story-filled hybrid meeting with people in the room and on Zoom.
Theme and question of the day
| Item | Details |
|---|---|
| Theme | Home |
| Question | What is the image of your home? |
| Date | Sunday, 4 October 2026, from 4 PM |
| Format | In person + online (Zoom) |
Role takers
| Role | Member | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Chairperson | Sean Park | Opened the meeting |
| Toastmaster | Katie Moon | Hosted in English |
| General Evaluator | Sean Park | |
| Table Topics Master | Karen | Roulette-style session |
| Reviewer | Sean Park | Verbier Festival |
| Timer | Nadia | |
| Ah-Counter | Helen Lee | |
| Speaker 1 | Yeonsu Kim | Korean, evaluated by Katie Moon, online |
| Speaker 2 | Sujin Sim | Korean, evaluated by Sean Park |
Opening
Chair Sean Park opened the meeting, greeted everyone in the middle of the holiday week, read the club mission and introduced Katie Moon, who was hosting for the first time in a while. Many members were away for the holiday, so some roles, including a speech evaluator, were still open just before the meeting and were filled in as we started.
The Toastmaster and the General Evaluator on the theme
Toastmaster Katie Moon said in English how good it was to be back after missing almost a month because of company events, and that she would soon travel abroad again. Then she introduced the theme.
| Part | Content |
|---|---|
| The spark | A large exhibition by the artist Do Ho Suh at a Seoul museum. It is so popular that reservations are hard to get. |
| The artist and the works | Born and educated in Korea, later living in the US and the UK and now settled in London. Works include a huge paper replica of a traditional Korean house and the homes of London, New York and Seoul connected to each other, asking "where is my real home?" |
| My home and my hometown | For her, the image of home and the image of hometown are different; the time she spent exploring around Seoul feels like a hometown. |
| The question | "What are your home and your hometown like? It can be a story, an image, any description." |
General Evaluator Sean Park greeted us with his own visit to the same exhibition with his family. Tickets were sold out online but available on site, and the 3D works were especially impressive. He said home is where we rest after a hard day outside, and that without a home we cannot rest; he joked that more time at home also brings more quarrels, but it remains precious. He then introduced the timer, the ah-counter and the other role takers, explaining that the ah-counter counts fillers such as "ah" and "um" to help the next speech.
Review session: Verbier Festival
Reviewer Sean Park continued the story of his trip to Switzerland from the previous meeting: the Verbier classical music festival he joined this summer.
- A world-famous summer festival; this year it ran from mid-July into early August with about 60 concerts.
- Three concert halls in the village, with concerts every day for about ten days.
- Masterclasses by great musicians and free street performances too.
- The festival's academy invites talented students from around the world to learn directly from the masters.
Prepared speeches
| # | Speaker | Title | Project | Language | Evaluator |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Yeonsu Kim | Do you really know bibimbap? | Free Speech | Korean | Katie Moon |
| 2 | Sujin Sim | Pursuit of Happyness | Engaging Humor, Level 3: Inspire Your Audience | Korean | Sean Park |
Speech 1: "Do you really know bibimbap?" (Yeonsu Kim)
Presented on Zoom with shared slides; a short delay with slide sharing, then smoothly on.
| Part | Content |
|---|---|
| Opening | "What city comes to mind when you hear bibimbap?" Most people say Jeonju. |
| The Jeonju story | The founder of a major Korean conglomerate, who often travelled to Jeonju, missed the taste and asked a restaurant owner to open a branch in Seoul. Jeonju bibimbap was served at the 1981 Kukpung festival and became a symbol of Korean food after the 1988 Seoul Olympics. |
| Checking sources | In an age of fake news someone should ask "where is your source?", so the speaker asked a translation/AI tool and also cited a history TV programme. |
| The Jinju story | During the siege of Jinju Fortress in the Imjin War, women mixed rice with meat and vegetables for the soldiers. Bull fighting in Jinju explains the meat, and a restaurant there is said to be about 100 years old. The programme reported that its guests hesitated to pick up their spoons because of the solemn origin. |
| Conclusion | Whether Jeonju or Jinju, it does not matter as long as it is delicious, like the saying "black cat or white cat, as long as it catches mice". |
| Closing | "We are SBTM members. Why not enjoy bibimbap while thinking about a piece of history?" The speaker ended with a joke, recommending bibimbap to anyone who had skipped dinner. |
After the speech, everyone sent feedback to the speaker through the Kakao open chat for one minute.
Speech 2: "Pursuit of Happyness" (Sujin Sim)
| Part | Content |
|---|---|
| Opening | A funny story of a driver who realises she must find a restroom, reaches one just in time and feels "so happy", then forgets it and gets annoyed again. "When are you happy?" |
| My happiness | Every morning she opens the curtains and sees Ulsan Rock: a winter-wonderland in winter, a crisp ridge on clear days, mysterious on cloudy days, a different face every day. She honestly admitted that this happiness lasts only one minute before worries return. |
| What happiness is | Happiness comes not only from gaining something new but also from feeling that you have not lost what you have: a healthy family coming home safely, shopping without worrying about prices. |
| Insight | Feeling unhappy can be an inner problem rather than an outside one. Happiness is already around us; we may simply not notice it. |
| Closing | "Find your own Ulsan Rock today, even for one minute a day. And when you see a rest area while driving, do not pass it by: happiness is close, but the restroom is far." |
Both speeches met the requirements, so the audience voted for the best prepared speaker. We then took a 10-minute break.
Table Topics
Table Topics Master Karen chose the order by spinning a roulette wheel. Speakers could pick Korean or English for the question and take a second spin if the question was hard. Each answer took 1 to 2 minutes.
| Question | Speaker | Summary of the answer |
|---|---|---|
| If you could spend the next two holidays any way you wanted, what would you do? | Katie Moon | A story about a big family gathering at the holidays: planning outings so that the family member who always cooks can finally rest. |
| If you could trade jobs with someone for one day, whose job would you try? | Nadia | A pet sitter. |
| You are stranded on a deserted island and can bring one person and one object. Who and what? | A participant | Nobody, to avoid arguments, with a nod to the movie Cast Away. |
| Which unwritten social rule would you make law from tomorrow? | Yeonsu Kim | A fine of at least 1,000,000 won for shops that refuse customers because of their age (for example "no entry over 50"). |
| What is the most memorable gift you have received? (the host's own question) | A participant | A warm midnight snack brought home by a family member. |
| If you gave someone a short tour of your neighbourhood, where would you take them first? | A participant | A quiet little path. |
The Table Topics Master closed with: "It was a well-prepared session and everyone had a chance to speak."
Evaluations
| Speech | Evaluator | What worked well | Suggestion |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yeonsu Kim | Katie Moon | A familiar topic told in a fresh way; the opening question that caught everyone's attention and questions that kept the tension throughout; showing the sources behind his own questions; closing with the identity of "our SBTM". | Hard to find anything to add, only the wish that more of us could have heard it in the room. |
| Sujin Sim | Sean Park | A bold opening for a universal question; honestly connecting happiness to her own life; the insight that sadness can be an inner matter. | Number the points ("first, second...") to make the structure clearer. |
A vote for Best Evaluator followed the evaluations, and then the awards.
Awards
| Category | Winner |
|---|---|
| Best Speaker | Yeonsu Kim |
| Best Evaluator | Sean Park |
| Best Table Topics | Sujin Sim |
Toastmaster Katie Moon thanked everyone for coming in the middle of the holiday and invited us to continue after the meeting, since the holiday lasts until the next day and the evening was relaxed. She said she enjoyed hosting.
Closing
We did not fix the next meeting in the meeting itself, and agreed to settle it in the group chat. There was also a request to host the next meeting in English. Those in the room took a group photo to close the meeting.
SBTM meets on the 1st and 3rd Sunday of every month. If you would like to visit or join, please write to sbtm-info@gmail.com.