Our club had a splendid and
memorable 2012. The club had a series of activities organized in 2012 like 10th
Anniversary Celebration, joint club meetings, and our 1st Open House. It
was indeed an exciting year in 2012.
"January is named
after Janus (Ianuarius), the god of the doorway. Therefore, January is the door
to the year, the door to any possibility in the year"
We started the year fresh with the International
Speech Contest and Table Topics Contests. It was superb with great participation.
This was followed with our
3rd meeting of the month, which was held on 29th of
January, a date which was approaching to the year of the SNAKE.
We started our meeting at
7:10p.m; with the recital of “A Toastmaster’s Promise”. Our Club President, Ken
Chan, ACS, ALB, welcomed the General Evaluator Liew Shaw Kang, CC, CL; members and
guest Fang Chung Yong.
Our Grammarian, Mathew Philippose,
CC introduced us the theme of the night “The Year of Snake” and the word of the
night “Propitious”; which means Benevolent, Auspicious, Advantages. We make
yearly resolutions. What are you
committing to this year? Our brave and eager role players, Kyle Kuah, TM, (Table
Topics Master), Angel Law, TM (Time Keeper) and Ron Yeap, CC (Prepared Speech
Evaluator) started being bold and played their roles for the first time.
In the Invocation session, Francis Ng, DTM enlightened the evening by highlighting the 4 core values of the
Toastmasters. “Toastmasters
International’s core values are integrity, dedication to excellence, service to
the member, and respect for the individual.” He also emphasized the
FOUR critical success factors of a Toastmasters club, i.e. CARE (4CCs, 2ACs, Retention
and Extension of membership).
After that, Kyle Kuah, TM
led us to a very interesting session, i.e. the Table Topics session. A young,
creative and energetic Table Topics Master provided some imaginative questions
like: “Adding Chinese Zodiac or the benefits of snake bring to us…” The first speaker was Mathew Philippose, CC.
He was like “AlNiCo Magnet”, he spoke confidently and attracted our attention.
Followed by enthusiastic Cindy Foong, CC,CL courageously to test her fear
limit. She was indeed a rough diamond that wanted to show her brilliancy and
prismatic colours. She was someone who dares to stand a good deal of cutting
and smoothing. Ron Yeap, CC, on the other hand, was a diamond that was made
good under pressure, Victor Wan, ACB, ALB exhibited good control over his
topic, with good attack, lots of body movements in his speech.
Next, Victor Wan, ACB, ALB
hosted the humor session before the toastmaster of the evening (TME), Serena
Kong, CC proceed to the project speech session.
Our 1st speaker
was CP Lau, CC, was completing his speech #5- The humorous speech from
humorously speaking manual, and delivered it with his title “Procrastination Is
No Joke”.
The 2nd speaker
was Ken Chan, ACS ALB. He was starting his project speech from the entertaining
speaker manual. His entertaining speech title was “Monkey Business”.
We then, went through a
special session- International Speech Practice with Open Evaluation. It was our
club culture to assist our club representatives by giving our constructive
comments so that they could improve their speech presentation in the
contest. Francis Ng, DTM briefed the
members on how to do the evaluation scale based on the official judging form. Mathew Philippose, CC our club first
place winner for International Speech Contest presented his speech,
“Nick of Time”. Ken Chan, ACS, ALB and Francis Ng, DTM advised him to carry a strong
message while Victor Wan, ACB, ALB suggested for him to look into 'stage marking'.
At 8:30p.m., it was a
propitious time for a break. Members and guests mingled and dined for about 10
minutes and the meeting resumed. That night was a special night. We came to the
new members' induction session. The Club Vice President Membership, Serena Kong,
CC took the exercise of voting the new members before the induction. Four new
members: Sunny Low, TM Mahadevan Arumugam, TM Angel Law,TM and Anwar Ahmad
Abidin, TM were voted in as our club members. However, only Angel Law, TM was inducted
as the other three new members were absent for the meeting.
General Evaluator (GE),
Liew Shaw Kang, CC, CL took over the evaluation session. He invited the table
topics evaluator, Francis Ng, DTM to his evaluation to the speakers. He touched
the body language, vocal variety and speech organization of each speaker.
Ron Yeap, CC besides, pointed that CP Lau’s speech was
very relevant as many liked to procrastinate. The story was filled with few
humorous examples.
Cindy Foong, CC,CL comment
that Ken Chan, ACS, ALB started with sound of laughter that triggered the
laughter from the floor. The common phrases and words used in speech, made it sound
humiliating yet entertaining was not an easy task. With this he met his speech
objectives.
After the evaluation
session, the GE called the role players Grammarian, Ah-Counter, Time Keeper to
make their reports.
And now, the control was
once passed back to the TME for the award presentation. The best topic speaker
was none rather than our lovely Mathew Philippose, CC, besides, our club president, , Ken Chan, ACS,
ALB handed a certificate of Appreciation to our GE. The Meeting adjourned after
the award presentation and closing speech by our president. We then proceeded
to our Chinese New Year celebration of “Yu Shang” with our guests.
