Be Bold for Change

The theme of the day was lined up with the International Women’s Day on 8^th of March 2017. This was to honor the achievements of women. These days, the average woman wears many hats. Today women are bold and they are capable to achieve everything.

The venue before the start of the meeting was arranged by whoever comes early, some of those who were earliest were Serena, Mathew and EK Yeo. Normally we begin with refreshments as early as 6.30 pm but on this day due to heavy down pour the food arrived late and there were no refreshments. However, we have a break time at 8:35 pm. Heavy rain can be a challenge, however our members managed to arrive on time. Our Distinguished guest General Evaluator Advanced Communicator Bronze (ACB), Competent Leader (CL) Amelia Chan, also arrived to the venue on time despite the rain. Assistant Sergeant At Arms, (ASAA) called the meeting to order at 7:15 pm. She led the club in reciting the Toastmaster’s promise”.

@7:18 pm: Acting President Wendy Sim took over the meeting in the absence of the President. She is club Vice President of Education and this role she took up for the first time. In her welcome address, she greeted the distinguished guests who came from other Toastmasters Club, non-Toastmasters and Club members. Then she invited the Grammarian Distinguished Toastmaster Dr. Thilla, DTM to introduce the word of the day “Courageous”. She invited members and guests to introduce themselves and encouraged to use word of the day and theme of the day “Be bold for change”. All the members and guests did well during self- introduction.

@7:38 pm:The Toastmaster of The Evening (TME), Competent Communicator, Competent Leader (CC, CL)EK Yeo CC, CL took control of the meeting. He shared a brief history on Toastmasters International and our club. He mentioned how TI (Toastmasters International) was founded and inspired millions of people across the world to extend this Toastmasters family.  He also explained the benefits of the Toastmaster’s educational program. He then introduced the role players in the sequence, Grammarian-Dr, Thilla, DTM, “Ah” Counter-Shain Anand our new member who took up the role for the first time, Timer- Serena Kong, ACB, and the General evaluator from Maxis Toastmasters Club Amelia Chan ACB, CL. All of them introduced their roles and objectives. 

@7:50 pm:  Our sweet and charming Table Topics™ Master Serena Kong, ACB was invited to the stage to take over the control from TME. She has prepared 12 topics related to the theme of the day and pasted on the card board. Members and guests were encouraged to participate. She explained the objective of Table Topics™, time limitation for each speaker and the rules before all the Table Topics™ speeches. The purpose of Table Topics ™ session is to develop the impromptu speaking skills which include opening, body and conclusion in a speech.

The order of Table Topics™ speakers who volunteered were as below:

1) Manish Kumar Jha–“When is the time you need to be bold”

2) Hj. Hashim Adnan – “Do you think girls or women need to be bolder these days”

3) Jun Hua – “Why bold doesn’t have to be big”

4) CP Lau – “When is the time you make bold in your office”

5) Crystal – “Why do we need to be bold for change?”

A big applause to all the 5 speakers and a vote was to cast for the best Table Topics speaker.

@8:05 pm:TME took over the session from Table Topics Master to proceed with the assigned speeches from Competent Communication Manual.

1^stSpeaker- Mathew Philippose, CC, ALB Speech Title- “Compassion”

His speech evaluator was CP Lau, ACB, ALB

This is his project speech no.4 “How to say it” from Competent Communication (CC) Manual. Mathew has used this speech for his Area C1 International and Table Topics Contests on 12^th March 2017. He ended as 1st runner up in this contest. The speech was well crafted with passion, vocal variety and body language. He gave the speech in accordance to speech 4 of the competent communicator manual. So we should say he was doing both the speech and practicing for upcoming Division Contest.

2^nd speaker- Foo Fung Jiun, Speech Title-“The Non-S0-Sweet Truth about Diabetes”. His speech evaluator was Manish Jha, CC.

Fung Jiun was doing his 8th speech from competent communication manual “Get Comfortable with Visual Aids”. He shared with us the root cause and type of diabetics, measure to prevent and overcome it. It was very informative and educational to the audience.

As a Pharmacist with his vast knowledge and experience he was able to give us many insights in this related field.

3^rd Speaker Ken Chan, Speech Title-“Present with Power”.

His speech evaluator was Tuan Hj. Hashim, DTM.

If we are not mistaken, it was the 7^th times Ken Chan DTM was doing his speech from the CC Manual. He gave the speech based on No. 8 from the CC Manual. The topic of the speech was “Get Comfortable with Visual Aids”. In this speech delivery, he has demonstrated to us how to use visual aid in the presentation, vocal variety, body language, pause and interact with audience. It was a marvelous speech caught the heart of the audience as he shared how to present with Power.

A vote was caste for the best speaker.

@8:35 pm: Break for refreshment for 12 minutes.

@8:47 pm:ASAA Chitirra called meeting to order after the refreshment. Now was the time for Induction for new member. Being the Vice President Membership, Chitirra herself conducted new member’s induction for Shain Anand with the support from club members. She then passed the control of the meeting to TME.

@8:55 pm: General Evaluator (GE)Amelia Chan, ACB, CL was invited to chair the meeting in invitation of the TME. She led the session with her panel of evaluators. She begun by explaining the purpose of the evaluation followed by evaluation from all the four evaluators, role players’ reports and her general evaluation. Evaluation is the breakfast for the champions because a constructive and specific evaluation helps to improve speakers and make them better in future than yesterday. There is no vote for the winner due to time disqualification from one of the evaluator. For a vote we need three or more participants qualified by time.

The Best Table Topics™ Speaker was CP Lau, ACB ALB and the Best Assigned Speech Speaker was Ken Chan, DTM.  The Acting President Wendy Sim invited the GE Amelia Chan ACB, CL to receive a token of appreciation for presiding over the meeting and for her invaluable advises.

  

Finally, Mdm. Acting President Wendy Sim summarized the entire meeting and asked the guests to share their thoughts about our today’s meeting. The meeting was adjourned at 9:45 pm followed by group photo and cake ceremony to the winners of Area C1 International and Table Topic Contests on 12^th March 2017:

In record our Champions of the Club for Area International Speech and table Topics Contest are as follows:

Table Topics Champion: Ken Chan, DTM

International Speech 1^st Runner Up: Mathew Phillippose, CC, ALB

International Speech 2^nd Runner Up:  KL Loh, ATM-G.

Sincerely, 

Thanks to the Team,

Manish Jha, CC

Money Mastery –KL Toastmasters Club

Vice President Public Relations 2016/2017

P/S: 

Thank you so much to the whole team including writer -Ekey Yeo, editor, reviewer- Mathew Philippose and critics to provide your timely sincere support and feedback to keep up the good work.

Lessons Learned the Hard Way

On this day, I was assigned as an ASAA (Assistant Sergeant at Arms). However, I could not make on time. Hence, the Toastmaster of the Eveing, Kevin Khoo, CC, took over the control and ran the meeting without delay. This is how we learned to support each other sincerely when the situation called upon to do so.

Our Club President Ron Yeap, CC open the floor from his presidential opening address. We had our theme of the day “Lessons Learned the Hard Way” and word of the day “Kaput”. Each one of us shared our best life lessons learned the hard way to illuminate each other’s life. It says, experience is a master teacher, even when it’s not our own.  Most importantly, everyone was happy to speak in the meeting as we always provide very friendly and comfortable atmosphere.

The Toastmaster of the Evening, Kevin Khoo, CC, took over the floor from the president. He quickly announced the changes found in the agenda so that everyone could follow the flow of the meeting. Also, he made sure all the role players like Ah’ counter, Time keeper, Grammarian including General Evaluator were in place. Not only that, he provided an informative session to our lovely guests about the history of Toastmasters International and the benefits of Toastmasters offer. 

After that, he introduced Table Topics™ Master, EK Yeo, CC,CL to handle the Table Topics™ session. I am so happy that we had four courageous self-driven speakers and they are:

 1. Kevin Khoo 2. Vijay Kumar 3. Ravi from IND, 4. David Tan from PJ TMC. All the topics were related to theme of the day and what they spoke very well. They shared their life best story that left us touched.

Now our Toastmaster of the evening, took us to another segment of the meeting and he introduced all the prepared speech speakers one after another.

First speaker- Carim, his speech title “My Origin”.

Our first speaker brought up his very first prepared speech with his speech title “My Origin”. He set a new milestone as he had broken his ice in front us. He was brave, audacious, and he made a valiant attempt to his ice-breaker speech. Well done, Carim! In fact, we had been given the opportunity to know you well.

According to him, his name “Carim” means kindness and generous. He comes from Philippines, and now he is working in Malaysia. He mentioned about his childhood, about his big family, his siblings. He was born in a big family and he was the fourth kid in the family. Maybe because of this, he learned how to tolerant and be patient. He loved playing chess and his father was his teacher. He taught him how to be a quick learner, become a more mature person and be a critical thinker. I listened attentively as I don’t want to miss any single thing about his speech. 

He deserved a standing ovation from all. Well done, Carim!

2^nd Speaker- Mathew P. CC ALB, his speech title “Magic Words”. He was doing his second round CC, speech no. #3 Get to the point. He is a proficient speaker. He is a corporate trainer by profession. He shared how three magical words changed his life whenever he encountered the toughest situations. Words like “Sorry”, “Thank you”, “Please Forgive Me”were very powerful. It was a very entertaining speech and we broke to laughter when he acted how he was lifted up by someone. I love his facial expression and how he switched off someone’s anger.No wonder, he won first place in our club international speech contest. Mathew, keep it up!

3rd Speaker: Joel, Speech Title “Development of Money”- Joel was doing his fourth speech from the competent communication manual- How to say it.  He touched about the topic of the inflation and deflation and how they affected the development of the money. It was very informative and learned something from his speech.

After Inspirational and educational talk, our VPE brought next speaker to have some entertaining talk.

4^th Speaker- Ron Yeap, CC. Speech Title- Presents for Your Love Ones. He was doing this speech from his advanced manual –Entertaining speaker (Resources for Entertainment). In his speech he put a lots of humor and surprises to educate the married and unmarried men example, how to surprise our loved one even with small surprises. I believe, he came up with his personal story which kept the audience giggling and captivated for 7 minutes. Ron was so comfortably in delivering his speech, maybe in the near future, he should try to talking on standup comedy. hahahaha..

 Give your wife pleasant surprises, she will love you more -Ron.

It was time for a break as our stomachs were growling. Therefore, our generous Toastmaster of the evening, Kevin, CC announced the break for 15mins.

The meeting resumed by having the General Evaluator, Edwin Wong CC to take the lead. He is from Air products Toastmasters Club. He called all the speech evaluators, in sequence to give their feedback to the speakers. This was one of the session that gave value to all of us. We were not only given the chance to learn the way to speak, but also to learn how to give constructive feedback rather than criticism. It was an art!

After that, role players gave their reports. Our General Evaluator also gave his general evaluation reports where he clearly highlighted the club strengths and pointed out some points of improvements. We appreciated the points as we should not stay complacent in where we are. 

The night was at the peak when Toastmaster of the evening announced the best performers in the meeting. The results were as below: 

Indeed, we had a quality meeting and everyone was happy.  Join us if you are around in Petaling Jaya. 

Sincerely, 

Thanks to the Team,

Manish Jha, CC

Money Mastery –KL Toastmasters Club

Vice President Public Relations 2016/2017

P/S: 

Thank you so much to the whole team including writer, editor, reviewer and critics to provide your timely sincere support and feedback to keep up the good work.