Kavindu Walisinghe from Grade 14 recently became 1st Runner Up in a Humourous Speech Contest held on Zoom. The contest was organised by the Gavel Club of University of Colombo.
The competition, themed Enliven’21, was divided into Inter-School and Inter-University with two speech contests ‘Humourous Speech’ and ‘Speech Evaluation’. The preliminary rounds were held on 9th January 2021, the semi-finals on the 17th of January 2021 and the finals with 6 contestants held on 23rd January 2021.
Kavindu who participated under ‘Humourous Speech’ category won his place among 170 other contestants.
The final results were:
Omar Azari (Royal College) – Champion
Kavindu Walisinghe (Trinity College) – 1st Runner Up
Posondi Wethalawe (Lyceum College) – 2nd Runner Up
You can listen to his speech below.
DO WHAT YOU LOVE AND YOU WILL DO YOUR BEST
“When you were a kid, have you ever wanted to become a doctor, an engineer or a pilot? I did too.
When I was a kid, I wanted to become like every single person that I see in front of me. For an example, we had a servant named “Sumane”, the very first day I saw Sumane, I ran to my mother and said “Ammi, when I grow up I want to be a person like Sumane.” Then my mother laughed and replied, “I don’t know son, JUST DO WHAT YOU LOVE, AND YOU WILL DO YOUR BEST.”
Contest chair, toastmasters, Gaveliers and of course my dear good looking judges.
Ever since that day I got motivated and I started helping Sumane.
When he was watering the plants, I helped him. When he was cleaning the toilets, I helped him. I literally loved to do what he did. Yeah, I was kind of a weird kid back then.
But my mom was right, I became the best servant of Sumane.
Growing up, I was sitting on the couch watching television. It was a science program done by a scientist. And this scientist had the best attention grabbing opening, better than mine. And his hand gestures were amazing, better than mine. And his eye contact! Well……it was quite the same because we both were looking at a screen.
Since that day onwards I wanted to be one a scientist. Day by day the enthusiasm and the passion for science started developing inside me. I started doing many scientific experiments. I even had a mini science lab!
One day I wanted to build a model of a volcano, so I went to my laptop and stared typing “how to”, and the top searches said “how to make baby!”, “how to kill a person!”, “how to make a bomb!”. And at same time my brother walks in to the room and he said, “Ahhh, you want to make babies now? Wait, wait till I tell mom, ammi, Kavindu wants to make babies now”
I shut the laptop and ran away! I was so humiliated! I never thought science would let me down like this.
It was 2015, my father took me to a medical exhibition, where I saw a bunch of doctors taking actual stones out of a human body. It was like “wow”.
As soon as we got back home I called my mom and said, “Ammi, when you come home can you bring a fish? Yeah, of course a dead one”. Then I took the fish and started cutting it in the exact same way, and I took a stone and placed it inside the fish. And I called my sister and said, “now look, this fish is in great danger!, and I am going to save it”. So I opened the it up and took out the stone and closed it using my mothers knitting tools. That day I became the hero of my sister.
Ever since that day I had many patients, and my sisters teddy bears were very popular among them. I did skin transplants, hair transplants and even “head transplants”. I’m pretty sure that you are aware of how much enthusiasm I had for science inside me.
It was 2018, December, I had to face my O Level examinations. The results were out, and guess what, I got 8 A’s, and one S. Yes, S for Science.
I fell down on my knees. And there were inner voices , outer voices screaming, shouting out loud “Kavindu stop! You are not a science person, You’re not a nerd” and my relatives started telling me “Kavindu putha, don’t even think of doing science for your A Levels. Do something like English, it’s very easy A for Apple, B for Ball, and of course S for science. Just do something like English.
But then, I herd this teeny tine little voice whispering into my heart, “Kavindu, just do what you love and you will do your best at it”. I ignored all the negative voices, and I took that teeny tiny voice. I stood back on my knees and I thought to my self “ I love science , and I’d do whatever it takes to make my dream come true”. My dear friends, I chose science for my A Levels, guess what! I was able to become the first in my class.
So my dear friends, don’t even take a second to think to do what you love. Because when you do something that you love you’d enjoy it , you’d have fun doing it . At last just “ Do what you love, then you will do your best”
