Toastmasters Meeting #346

As the saying goes “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail”.

The first meeting of the year 2016 for Money Mastery-KL is always an exciting one. We had our club International Speech and Table Topics Contests on 12^th January 2016. The contests organizing team were led by Toastmaster Wendy Sim and worked with several newly joined members. 

Wendy exercised her remarkable leadership. She is a person who thinks things through and then follows through. Although this is her first time to organize the club contests, she has the ability to recognize the problems before they become emergencies. 

On 6^th January, she called all the role players to discuss the flow of the contests. Wendy, Vijayakumar, Eugene Chun, CS Quah, Ooi Yee, Fung Jiun, Ji Sheng, Serena and Ron attended the meeting. All of the role players took time to set up the contests venue and played their respective roles when Vijay acted as Contest Toastmaster to lead the contest. This rehearsal had provided the role players the opportunity to familiarize with their up-coming responsibilities. It also helped to reduce potential hiccups on the contests day, essentially for the newly joined members who had not witnessed the contests before. 

On the contests day, all the role players reached the venue before 7 p.m. The briefing for both role players and contestants were began at 7pm in two different rooms. Our club contests toastmasters were CP Lau, ACB, ALB and Dr. Thilla Chelliah, ACS, ALB. The contest chief judge was E Son Lee, DTM.

 

Chief Judge: E Son Lee, DTM

The meeting was called to order by SAA Fung Jiun. He was steady and did not show any nervousness at all. Kudos, SAA Fung Jiun! The contest chair, Toastmaster Wendy Sim thanked the supports and helps given by the role players within the clubs and from other clubs. Club President, Mathew, CC, CL on the other hand, was very pleased to see the club members actively participating the club contests.

We had 5 contestants for International Speech Contest and 7 contestants for Table Topics™ Contest. Each of them gave very interesting speech. 

Ken reminded us that life is like a dance. Life isn’t waiting for the storm to stop, it is about learning to “Dance in the rain”. We may have no control over the circumstances but have a choice on how we respond to the situation.

“Friends helping friends” was presented by Kelvin Chong. He shared his election experience and how he realized who the real friends in life were. 

Manish Kumar told that we would have some important questions unanswered in life. However, we were not in presence in every moment and often ended up with lots frustrations. He advised us when we got confused and felt frustrated, “Find the answer” and work on what is the important things in life to opt for greater satisfaction. 

KL Loh, on the other hand, gave a very touching story about how his son regained consciousness after a car accident and his faith to God.  Nothing is happier than seeing his son gaining back consciousness and it was “The best Christmas gift” that he had ever received.

We had the entertaining speech from Kevin Khoo. He made us laughed on how he procrastinated to make a sales call. He caught us kept listening to his speech as we used to say, “No, I am not ready yet” when we want to procrastinate.

We had a short break and after that Dr. Thilla Chelliah, ACS, ALB took the control and led us on the table topics™ contest. 6 of contestants were being escorted to the holding room and the left the first contestant in the room. Dr. Thilla Chelliah, ACS, ALB prepared the topic “Do you think peace still exist in this world?” for this contest. All the contestants attempted and answered the questions within the time frame. 

While the chief judge and the ballot counters were deliberating the results, SAA Fung Jiun took over the session and began the certificate presentations. The Contest Toastmasters, CP Lau, ACB, ALB and Dr. Thilla Chelliah, ACS, ALB gave certificates to all the contestants and the Contest Chair, Wendy Sim presented the token of appreciation to all the role players.

The contests came to the exciting moment when the chief judge passed the results to both contest chairs. The results as below:

Congratulations to all the winners as well as to the contestants. The greatest gift was to witness the breakthrough of each contestants. Well done and don't give up!

After that, our Area Director, Srinivas, ACB, CL presented "Simply Distinguished" pins to President, Mathew as the club had achieved 5 DCP goals. The meeting ended with the birthday celebration between Lakhmichand, DTM and Serena Kong, ACB.

 

Written by,
Serena Kong, ACB