Keep your heart in wonder as I craft this piece on our 378th meeting. Yes, the theme was “Keep Your Heart In Wonder” it was not fortuitous that the word of the day was “fortuitous”. Everyone was keeping their hearts in wonder as the clock kept ticking but time felt like it was at a standstill.
The food
hadn’t arrived, the GE hadn’t arrived, the members hadn’t arrived and everyone
kept preparing the setting for the meeting this time on the highest floor of
our venue. But somehow it became 7.15 pm and everything felt normal again. Our Assistant SAA, Yap Ooi Yee called the
meeting to order, introduced the house rules and recited the Toastmasters’
Promise and kicked off the meeting by calling our President on stage.
Our
President Ron Yeap, CC aligned his opening speech with the theme and used the
word of the day and opened the floor for everyone to speak starting with the
Toastmaster of the Evening, Chitirra.
Everyone spoke their hearts out although
they were in wonder as well. The Grammarian, Shain Anand introduced the word of
the day and described it to be as something that happens by chance.
The Toastmaster of the Evening, gave a
brief history of Toastmasters and then called upon the respective role players
to introduce themselves. Today, as mentioned, Shain Anand, a very meticulous
and knowledgeable chap became the Grammarian. He was critical with the job
given to him and contributed to a great deal of grammatical knowledge to the
group that night. Wendy Sim, the beautiful and attentive VPE was all ears
tonight as the “Ah Counter” ensuring that as she hears us speak, she filters
funny sounds such as “erms” and “ahs”. We had quite a collection that night for
every crutch comes with a fine of 5 to 10 cents. Then we had our peculiar first
timer for a Timer, Joel Silas. He was so excited and engrossed in his new job
that he decided to ring the bell before time. Indeed we all learn through our
mistakes and this humourous soul was very tardy about his business. Last but
not least we had the privilege to have with us a very kind body as our General
Evaluator. It was Distinguished Toastmaster Ms. Shirley Bak, DTM. Now Ms.
Shirley was booked as our club GE way ahead of time and she kept to her word by
gracing our meeting.
Alas, it was time for the Table Topics
session. Still keeping your heart in wonder? It was a unique session and Toastmaster
Foo Fung Jiun may have just broken the world record for the longest table
topics ever. Apparently it is the current trend but we sure had a ball of a
session over the Table Topics. With that, we moved on to the assigned speech
session.
1. Mathew Philippose CC ALB, 2. Shain Anand 3. Gopi and 4 Sivadasa, CC
Ironically, we had with us 2 veteran
speakers doing the Competent Communication Manual and two young members doing
the Advanced Communication Manual. Our first speaker was Ken Chan, DTM with his
ever famous management tips and his kick ass abbreviations. This time his
speech was entitled “MYOB”. Manage Your Own Boss. Surely we employees had
learnt something from it.
Next we had Mr. Mathew Philippose, CC, ALB
who spoke about how unity creates humanity and that we must always be proactive
through his speech entitled “Fighting
against Time”.
Alas our President did his 3rd
speech from the Advanced module to entertain us all with his speech “Control Your Rage”. He laid out examples of
situations under which he managed to keep his cool despite almost having his
head blown up with anger.
Finally, with his speech “Medicine!
Medicine! Medicine!” Mr. Kelvin Chong, ACB who kept our hearts at wonder with
his title, took us by surprise by giving us an action packed speech with live
demonstrations of exercise moves for us to practice to improve our health. It
was in the end a “No Medicine! No Medicine! No Medicine!” speech.
From all that beyond the usual exercise
ritual everyone took a short break. Despite not having our usual “NasiLemak”,
we managed with some snacks and cream puffs which left us with smiles as we
stuffed the puffs down our throats.
Although we left our tummies not so full,
we braced our brains for a feast like no other in the next session which we all
know as the Breakfast for Kings. Yep, no need to keep your heart at wonder over
this one. The evaluation session was kicked off by Ms. Shirley Bak, DTM as mr.
Haji Hashim, DTM came up to give his views on the individual Table Topic
speakers.
Later on, 4 reputable evaluators came on
the floor to give their honest feedbacks on the 4 assigned speakers of the
night. Ken had Manish Jha, CC all intimated but honoured to evaluate him. Mr.
Mathew has his favourite charming Serena Kong, ACB to be his evaluator. Mr. EK
Yeo, CC, CL was Ron’s evaluator and the ever so fruitful CP Lau, ACB, ALB was
Kelvin’s personal evaluation chef that night.
Alas, after the friendly open evaluation
session, each role player conveyed their reports professionally and then it was
time for Ms. Shirley Bak, DTM to give her views both compliments and improvements
for our club. She was most delighted as she was a delightful person herself.
And so the night drew to a close as the
President gave out the awards for the winners for the night, made his
announcement and gave his closing speech. Any Grammarian would kill me for
starting a sentence with “and” but oh well. Hehehe.
The best table topics award and the best
assigned speech were both bagged by Mr. Mathew and the best evaluator was none
other than Mr. CP Lau himself. It was a great night as after the President’s
speech, we took our group photo and had a marvellous cake cutting session for
our April baby, our President Ron Yeap.
It was a memorable meeting for me as the
TME and it sure left my heart in wonder. I hope if you attended the meeting it
left your heart in wonder and if you didn’t attend the meeting but you’re
reading this, I hope it also leaves your heart in wonder.
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 -Chitirra, editor, reviewer- and critics to provide your timely sincere support and feedback to keep up the good work.
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