Siblings’ day: The Menace We Love

Meeting #406 was made possible in Restoran Safuan Petaling Jaya which was a new venue to us. It was challenging to organise things yet it was a very fruitful & fun meeting. As members progressed to arrive, we found our General Evaluator already at the venue waiting for us to arrive. It was very refreshing and assuring to see our members and guests. Our VPE decided to have the theme set to be Siblings’ Day which was celebrated in America bang on that day, 10^th of April, so we decide to celebrate it together in our club.

Meeting proceeding started by our ASAA, Joel Silas to make sure we can kick off the actual meeting. Our club President Wendy Sim, CC stepped up to the stage. The club culture is to explain the theme of the meeting and have a short intro from everyone attending this meeting. She started from herself and moved the flow from one end to another. I learnt something today, most of our members are the eldest amongst their siblings, some younger and a few worked as a junction in the middle to join the elder to the younger which makes a lovely gang of siblings.

By then around 7:40 pm our invocation speaker, a senior Toastmaster, a very committed member Hj. Hashim, DTM was getting ready to inspire the audience this evening with his awesome speaking ability. Indeed he inspired with a wonderful story.

As per the menu, our Toastmaster of the Evening led us to the next session which is very famous in Toastmasters called the Table Topics™ (TT) session. Today's Table Topics™Master EK Yeo, CC, CL prepared some awesome topics for the speakers. All TT speakers enjoyed sharing their experience of love, care and fun they had with their siblings. Thank you. The speakers who participated were in the sequence as follows: Ron Yeap, ACB CL, KT Chok, PM1, EE Lyn (Guest) and Manish Jha, CC. While the speakers were speaking, the Table Topics™ evaluator DatoDr. Mary de Silva, PM1 was listening carefully and taking notes to highlight the speakers' strengths and areas of improvement.

It was time for another interesting session of speeches called the Project Speeches designed by Toastmasters International education program called the Competent Communication and Pathways.

The 1^st speech was by Mandy Chan with her speech title “Every Move Counts”. She was doing her final speech from the Competent Communication manual to inspire the audience. She inspired the whole audience with her own journey of Toastmasters from beginning until now. Later she was also awarded with the best project speech of the evening. She truly deserved her CC award. You deserve it. You have set an example that nothing is impossible. Congrats and all the very best for your future performances.

The 2^nd speech was by Joel Silas with his speech title “What is Life?” He was doing his last project speech from the Competent Communication manual to inspire the audience. He did very well. His confidence on stage won his audience's hearts. He inspired with his principle and examples of his life. Thanks Joel, CC for sharing your thoughts on this subject. Congrats on achieving your CC award as well.

The 3^rd speech was my turn. Hahaha! My speech title was “The Whistle of Nature”. I was attempting to complete my last project from the Innovative Planning path, Level-1. I would say, I did a little better and my best at the moment.

The 4^th speech was done by Chitirra with her speech title “Passion is Purpose”.Chitirra was doing her practice speech to get enough feedback before presenting in the upcoming Division C contest where she will be representing her Area C1.

I hope you expect a break right. I forgot.

We had a break for 15 minutes then we resumed our meeting. The next session was chaired by the General Evaluator, Jimmy Lee, CC CL from Puchong English Toastmasters Club.

As his role was to be the General Evaluator, he explain ed a bit on the importance of evaluations and as per the agenda called the Table Topics™ Evaluator Dato Dr. Mary De Silva, PM1 on stage to share her verdicts. Followed by were the project speech evaluators and technical evaluators. Eventually, he shared his personal evaluation on how the overall conduct of the meeting was and how we can grow better.

The night was not young anymore when finally the Toastmaster of the Evening called the club's President to recognize and appreciate the best performances of the evening. The best performance was elected based on the maximum number of people who voted for a speaker in each category. Well... Drumrolls...

Best project speech- Mandy Chan, CC

Best Table Topics Speaker- EE Lyn (Guest)

Best Evaluation- Hj. Hashim, DTM

Finally the Toastmaster of the Evening, KT Chok, PM1, did a pretty good job being the 1^st time Toastmaster of the Evening. He handed over the control to our President, Ms. Wendy Sim, CC.She summarized the whole meeting, made an announcement for the special event and requested all to come for our Division C contest on 14^th of April UMW to support our Area Champion Chitirra.

That’s all for today guys.
Wait, wait wait...Forgot something. We also celebrated the birthdays of those who were born in the month of April.They were our IPP Ron Yeap, ACB, CL and a senior member KL Loh, ATMG. It was pure fun celebrating with what I call my brothers from another mother and sisters from another mister. Friends like family. See you guys next on 24^th April.

Blog writer: Manish Jha

#405 The Road Not Taken

Uncertain paths taken with great conviction may lead to great discoveries which is how I discovered myself when I discovered this path of Toastmasters. Today’s theme was The Road Not Taken inspired by Robert Frost’s meaningful poem, quite obviously, The Road Not Taken. Coincidentally, we had to take the road untaken by having this week’s meeting in a new venue at the UMAC House. We are in the midst of trial and error to find a good location for our meetings and along the path we have indeed discovered not just literal things but valuable lessons as well as a team.

The meeting as usual started at sharp 7.15pm with the help of our TME, CP Lau, ACB, ALB to stand in for Yap Ooi Yee, CC the SAA. He led us through the Toastmasters promises and called our President, Wendy Sim, CC on to the floor to deliver her opening address which was well done and full of depth. Following, everyone present introduced themselves, spoke of the theme and the word of the day. The word of the day today was ‘paramount’ which means of supreme importance or power.

The invocation speaker Dato’ Dr. Mary de Silva then came on stage to give her invocation which was in line with the theme.  After the entertaining invocation, the floor was once again passed to our TME, CP Lau who was actually doing his Project 5 in his Specialty Series of the Advanced Communication Manual which was about introducing a speaker. Thus, he took up this role as it was most apt for him to carry out his objectives. Upon leading us through a brief history of Toastmasters, we moved on to the Table Topics Session. Chitirra, led this session with a variety of interesting topics, some even that sunk us into deep thoughts. Most rose up to the challenge including our General Evaluator, Robert Ram, DTM.

After that, we began the main course that was a variety platter of project speeches. Unfortunately, as one of our speakers did not make it we only had 3 speeches. The first was Chitirra on her Project 3 of her Level 1 Pathways in Leadership Development. It was a research speech and thus she spoke on Insomnia, its cause, effects and simple remedies. Moving on we had K T Chok, also doing the same project and his title was ‘Snowball’ basically describing the massive multiplying effects of compounding interests. Finally we had Dato’ Dr. Mary de Silva, PM1 doing her first project in her Level 2 of the Presentation Mastery Pathway. She spoke about an incident in her life as a kleptomaniac. She drew the crowd’s attention only to eventually leave them baffled in her prank as she revealed that she was no kleptomaniac after all.

Still with puzzled faces we broke for a short break to enjoy our favourite Nasi Lemak and resumed the meeting in 10 minutes.

Beyond this point, our General Evaluator, Robert Ram, DTM took over the session. First up, our Table Topics evaluator, EK Yeo, CC, CL led us through a quick and simple evaluation of each Table Topic speaker. Following, the respective evaluators shared their ideas and thoughts to the respective speakers. We had an extra special evaluation for C P Lau, ACB, ALB by Ron Yeap, ACB, CL for his advanced project as TME. An open evaluation was given and great feedback were given out for all by all. Then, the respective role players gave their respective reports. Ron Yeap, ACB, CL was the Ah-Counter, Xavier Gomez was the Grammarian and Mandy Chan was the timer. Lastly, we had our General Evaluator, Robert Ram, DTM give such a detailed, honest and distinctive feedback for our club.

The road was coming to the end that night and our President gave her closing address and gave out the awards to the respective winners as below.

Best Speaker: None due to time disqualification and insufficient speakers.

Best Evaluator: Hj. Hashim, DTM

Best Table Topics Speaker: Robert Ram, DTM

After the necessary announcements the meeting was dismissed and everyone left with hopes that they too may step forward to take that road not taken and discover themselves.

 Blog Writer: Chitirra