Money Mastery - KL Toastmasters Club

1 Malaysia

2011-09-27T11:12:00.012+08:00

Malaysia recently celebrated its ‘1 Malaysia’ day on 16^th September, for those who still doesn’t know what is ‘1 Malaysia’ day other than just a mere holiday- here is a small intro “Malaysia Day is held on September 16 every year to commemorate the establishment of the Malaysian federation on the same date in 1963. It marked the joining together of Malaya, North Borneo, Sarawak, and Singapore to form Malaysia (Source: Wikipedia).

This is really incredible how people from different races and religions are so comfortable in this country, this is the reason that many people want to retire in Malaysia and want to make Malaysia as their second home, it’s very easy to find a proper blend of entire Asia here which is very rare in other Asian countries may be that’s why Malaysia is called Truly Asia.

Out Toastmasters is also the great example of this diversity is races and religions just like the country where we all different identities come together to make a group to help each other, we make friends who help other friends to succeed in life. Toastmasters never differentiate between people, a member is a member no matter where is he from or what religion or race he belongs to, we all speak one language – “Humanity” this program not only helps us grow in the fields of communication or leadership but also it helps us grow as a human being, it helps us learn new things, new culture. We celebrate Raya, we celebrate Christmas, We celebrate Chinese New Year and we also celebrate Diwali.
Every member is respected, given equal opportunities, in Toastmasters there is no superior or inferior thing, even a boss and subordinate are equal members, a DTM speaks the same way with a fresh TM as he speaks to the fellow DTM, everyone is ready to help everyone.

As they say, a country belongs to people or for that matter every organization is made up of people, without people nothing works, same way Toastmasters is nothing without its members and here in Money mastery we have that breed of members who is not only hard working but they are smart working and that is the reason that since 2003 we are always a president’s distinguished club and that is
the reason why new members are so encouraged and motivated to do better and better, they join the club because of the same. I would really like to appreciate and thank our members and mentors for their efforts. I would also like to highlight that even the new breed of members who joined recently are motivated so much that they are ready to take up any challenge, they are doing much more than what their role expects, they don’t hesitate to participate in contests and come out as winners. This mixture of both the breeds will definitely do wonders to our club. With this I would like to wish our club all success and luck for the next term and would also like to apologize if any of my comment has unintentionally hurt anybody's sentiments.

Signing off

Jitin Girdhar

1 Malaysia- Truly Asia

My Journey from breaking ice to Competent Communicator (9/3/10-22/2/11)

2011-04-26T18:15:00.008+08:00

My journey began well before giving my first speech, my first step was not to prepare for the ice breaker but to decide to come out of my comfort zone and join the Toastmasters, attend all the meetings and participate whenever &wherever possible, I feel making up your mind is more important than executing your plans but at the same time it doesn't make this execution less important. I would like to thank the entire Money Mastery KL TM team; who always assisted me, inspired me, motivated me and made me capable of achieving this milestone.

I still very well remember my first planned speech. It was a very different feeling; I was nervous and confident at the same time. My hands were ice cold, I could hear my tummy making weird sounds (that happens when I m scared), I was allowed to use notes but still to avoid that I was memorizing my speech, the table topic session started but I was too busy to concentrate, I had a much bigger job, I had to remember my lines, my flow and yeah a strong ending with a strong quotation. I was so focused on the preparation of my speech that even a terrorist attack would not have distracted me. But that was wrong on my part, which I realized later. At toastmasters we give equal importance to listening as well and I was not completely listening to any speaker, I was just hearing what they were saying.

The moment came- we moved to planned speeches, my evaluator Paul Tan was asked to read out my speech objectives, then Lakhmichand (commonly known as Lucky) the GE was asked to read out Note to the Evaluator and then- “Can we call upon TM Jitin Girdhar for his first speech- “My life in my own words”- Jitin” (repeated twice). Well well well a complete darkness in front of me- my legs were paralyzed, with a firm handshake, I took control of the podium and started with my childhood, my parent and my family and I don’t know how the time passed and when the timer showed me the orange light which means it was the time for me to recollect the quotations I memorized. And it ended well in time 5 minutes 59 seconds. My hands were colder than before, fumbling and shaking I reached my seat. I was not sure what had I done and how good it was but when I received the best speech of the day award, I told myself- it was worth all these efforts, everybody liked that speech- well it was my own life and who else cud have narrated it better than me. The feelings were crystal clear and the knowledge of subject made me little confident, the efforts were well paid when Lucky (GE) in his concluding remarks said that this is the best example of the ice breaker speech and that we should use this as a sample for the new comers, and Gean Lau (then VPPR) asked me to frame the speech and publish in our newsletter (later which brought me into the editing team).

These awards were much bigger than the first prize in the international speech contest, I was so happy that immediately I decided that I am giving my next speech in the next meeting and then every meeting I kept learning and cruised along to my last speech. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank Paul Tan for giving me such a wonderful and a positive feedback which really encouraged me and inspired me to give speeches regularly.

I wanted to finish my last speech at the same venue so I had to rush with my last couple of speeches and yeah the day arrived- the last speech before getting CC. The situation was totally different, my confidence was really high; no sign of nervousness, no memorizing of the speech- just remembered the bullet points and the flow. The actual speech started much before when I had to select the speech title- it had to be the best, after all I had to Inspire the Audience (yeah the speech topic) - so what could have been better than the topic of peace, love and humanity after all it touches everybody’s heart so I decided on “Live and let live” and this time my evaluator was none other than the General Evaluator himself- Distinguished Toastmaster Rohijas. This time I was well prepared with the statistics, and had all the material to substantiate my thoughts, I touched the topic of mother nature- the global warming and I was sure I’ll be able to gather everybody’s attention, this confidence was the outcome of my long journey of 11 months and the efforts put in by myself and my entire team in MM KL TMC. And the milestone was achieved with grabbing another best speech award for that day. I was very satisfied with my performance; I could easily see the difference between my first and my last speech of CC.

I would once again like to thank each and everyone who has directly or indirectly participated in making me a better communicator. I would never be able to repay you for this but would promise each one of you that I will give my level best to bring a communicator out of every Toastmaster. My journey does not end here, it is just the end of the beginning, and I will come back even stronger and will reach the pinnacle in style, with confidence.

Signing off

Jitin Girdhar, a proud CC and a member of Money Mastery KL TMC

International Speech & Table Topics Contests 2011

2011-01-14T12:23:00.007+08:00

This year, 11th January 2011 is a special day. It is written in short as "11-1-11" and in Money Mastery-KL Toastmasters Club, everyone wants to be "Number 1" because this day is the club's International Speech & Table Topics Contests for year 2011.

First of all, CONGRATULATIONS to our International Speech and Table Topics Contests WINNERS and runners-up at our club contests on 11-1-11.

INTERNATIONAL SPEECH CONTEST:
WINNER : KL Loh
1st Runner-up : MK Low
2nd Runner-up : Julia Leong

TABLE TOPICS CONTEST:
WINNER : Abd Aziz Youp
1st Runner-up : Paul Tan
2nd Runner-up : MK Low

So, KL Loh and MK Low will represent our club for the Area G1 International Speech Contest while Aziz Youp and Paul Tan will represent our club for the Area G1 Table Topics Contest. 2nd Runners-up, please be on standby in case they cannot make it to the Area G1 contests. I will let you all know the Area G1 contest’s date, time and venue once the Area G1 Governor confirm about it. Members, please go and support them when time comes.

Also, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Honorable Chief Judge Lim Lay Kun, ACB, CL for helping us running part of the show as well and also make arrangement for getting the invisible judges. Also, thanks Francis and Yeo for making arrangement to get the Chief Judge for our contests.

I would also like to thank all the role players and contestants to help and participate to make this event successfully run.

Thanks Ken G and Gean Lau for the Contest Chair role. Both of you are outstanding even though there were some error and hiccup BUT of course all these are learning process. You learn while making mistake and you have gone through it. I sincerely thank you and congratulations to both of you.

Thanks Ginny, Cindy and Francis for the role of SAA. All of you are able to control the event and the contestants as well during the Table Topics Contest.

Thanks Yeo and Francis for the role of Time Keeper. Both of you are able to keep track the contestants’ timing and luckily there are no time disqualification.

Thanks Ben Hoe, Serena and Francis for the role of Ballot Counter. All of you should have lots of FUN and EXCITEMENT to know how the invisible judges judged the contestants. I believe you have learn a lot from this role. I did when I was the Ballot Counter last time and hope you did too.

Also thanks to KL Loh, MK Low, Julia, Jitin, Aziz, Paul, Daniel, Ken, Siew Yin and Stuart for taking their initiative to take part in the contests as Contestants. You all are already WINNERS because of your participations. Congratulations to ALL.

I hope I did not miss out anyone or any name here.

Lastly, I also want to thanks all the Money Mastery-KL Toastmasters Club members, for all your replies and responses whenever I call and SMS you all for your participation and role playing in these contests. Whether you can or cannot make it to the contests, I sincerely thanks all of you for your responses.

I hope you all have FUN in the contests and let us all support our members at the Area G1 contests and see you all there soon.

Thank you.

Regards,

Victor Wan, ACB, CL
Contests Organizing Chair,
VPE 2010/2011
Money Mastery-KL Toastmasters Club.
www.VictorWan.com

My Maiden Blog

2010-11-23T14:41:00.010+08:00

Dear Friends…

Can’t believe, I am actually doing this. After planning for long time, I finally got courage and opportunity to write a blog- “The Blog” my Maiden Blog…. This is the fruit of joining Toastmasters. I would really like to thank one and all for all your support, encouragement, trust & confidence, and finally for providing me this platform & opportunity. This Blog is also the result of my speech in the last meeting (speech No. 6) titled “E for Efforts not Excuse” which self motivated me to stop giving excuses and finally write this blog as a part of my duty of being a VP Public Relations. So friends here I am with all my efforts and no Excuse (wink;)).

It was almost 2 months and I was due for my speech no. 6, I remember my last speech was delivered in the Humorous & Evaluation contest on 4th Sept organized by Hj. Naburi. And both myself and Paul Tan made MMKL TM club proud by meeting the expectations of all our supporters.
It was such a wonderful moment when they announced that both the champions are from Money Mastery KL toastmaster club and we would be representing the area G1 in the next contest…..

That was the last time I saw Hj Naburi that day, unfortunately I could not participate in that contest as I had my prior commitments and I was in my home country India for a long vacation with my friends and family

After I came back, it really broke my flow and I really got busy with work, I started giving all the excuses of not coming to the TM meetings but it was Victor’s dedication and persuasion that I finally planned to deliver my speech no. 6. It was not easy for me after this break and I was already planning all the excuses to avoid it. It was then when I remember this line which always helps me choosing the right path at the time of confusion. “E for efforts not excuse” and I realized there could not be better audience to present this topic. Well that was it; I was ready with my speech and reached the meeting room well in time.

It was really wonderful meeting all the Toastmasters after a long time, I was lucky, people still remembered me. There were few new members as well and couple of guest as usual. The session started well on time, thanks to our Time Keeper of the day Daniel. Throughout this blog, you will find lots of pictures clicked during the session on 9/11

After our president gave a motivating speech, it was time for the most awaited moment- Gean Lau- Our Gorgeous TME started the proceedings, Invocation session was handled very well by Victor which was followed by Table Topic Session conducted by Siew Yin and the topics were well connected with the theme of the day- Long Weekend (Deepawali), she got enough support from the volunteers. After Haji Hashim delivered his 2 minutes speech during this session, it really inspired me as well and I volunteered as the last table topic speaker of the day, the topic given to me was really close to my heart so I could get enough material to talk about, in my speech I also mentioned how Haji Hashim always inspire me and many like me.

I also cleared the doubt of Ginny who got to know from her aunt that in India you can’t choose your own spouse and after that she was happy to know that you are free to choose your own wife or husband to get married…. Well that was the end of very well conducted Table topic session which was followed by Humor Session. Haji Hashim volunteered to be the first one to start with a joke and from there onwards the flow went towards little dirty jokes (which was later pointed out by GE) but they sounded nice to us  Shiva Das and TM Chan Chee Keng also followed the suite.

Rest all sessions went very well too and the evaluation as usual was awesome, had real fun and we ended the meeting with celebrating the birthdays of November babies. In the end I made a comment which I would really like all of us to know. I was doing pretty good before my break and had completed my 5 project speeches and also one humorous contest speech but when I came back and delivered this speech no 6, I really felt I am back to square one, I felt the nervousness, I felt my voice was breaking,I felt I have moved down couple of steps back and have to put lot of extra efforts to come back to where I left last time, so I would advise all not to commit the same mistake I did, please be regular to the meetings don’t take a long break, keep practicing and there is lot to learn from our mentors there. This particular meeting boosted my confidence and I felt very energetic after the session. I am ready with my speech no. 7 for the next meeting. See you all there.

It was really wonderful writing my first blog, I really felt great and I m looking forward to write more and more blogs in near future, you all are also free to write your blogs and can post it here. If you guys really like this post then please post a comment.

Signing off….

Jitin Girdhar

Last night's Meeting..... (held on 24th Aug 2010)

2010-09-06T17:08:00.001+08:00

Dear friends,

It's been a while (like 2-3 years!) since I last wrote a "last night's meeting..."

Last night's meeting was truly inspiring for me, to say the least. It also made me grateful for belonging to a club where the old and the new, the young and the old are in balance, like yin and yang. I knew more about our early days of independence last night.

KH Song was poised and organized as our TME, led us through the meeting nicely, kudos. Table topics session was fresh, the topics dished out by Victor Wan were general enough that the volunteers had ample room to share for 2mins.

Then, we had a ball with 3 wonderful speeches from Eunice Tan, Jitin and Julia Leong. You guys rocked, good sharing.
Eunice delivered her ice breaker, titled Hunger for Balance in Life. We got to know her a lot more. Hometown's Rawang, married, 3 kids, loves new age music and likes to travel. Her message, life's short, live it to the fullest.

Then, Jitin did his 5th project speech, An Idea can Change your Life. He never ceases to amaze me with his choice of things to speak about. An Idea is a fruit of our thinking. So, the next time an idea pops into your head, capture it, note it down. Do it everyday, you'll have 365 ideas by year end. And share it with people around you, fertilize them. You'll never know, you can be the next Bill Gates. *winks*

After that, Julia astounded us with her storytelling ability. She started her advanced storytelling manual with The Crystal Heart, a poignant Vietnamese folk tale. She had my attention the whole time, that's a thumbs up for you, Julia...it's been awhile since I listened attentively during our meetings.

Now, every GE who visits us always say nice things only. So, let me play the devil's advocate here...the meeting didn't start out well for me til we got to the speeches. The amount of grammatical errors I heard hurt my ears badly, no pun intended.

It's a really serious problem, guys. We really have to make a conscious effort to speak good English at club meetings, with good grammar, good enunciation. Not sure how many of you noticed, even our meeting agenda had an error... Malaysia celebrates its (there's no ' in its) independence.

So, perhaps for future improvement, here's some thoughts for future roleplayers:
1. President's speech can and should be uplifting, especially when we don't have invocation session.
2. Role players should prepare themselves, with a script, very necessary, especially if you speak beyond 2mins. It's annoying to hear grammatical errors in the simplest of things. eg, our young guest, Ian, corrected the table topics he was given tonight. I was truly embarrassed.
3. Future Grammarians, take note. It's recommended that we mention the person who gave us a good quote, phrase etc. Only the good stuff. No need to mention who said the bad stuff, be it grammatical error/ incorrect pronunciation (it's been mispronounced many times even after our dear friend, DTM Azmi graciously conducted a pronunciation/phonetics class with us, it's pronunciation, not pronounciation).
4. The word of the day should be related to the "Theme of day" and we should also try to use the positive and cheerful word to make the environment positive and cheerful.

Otherwise, kudos to our first time diligent ah counter, Daniel Schwartz (he counted ah in people who usually got none, cool) and timekeeper, Fui Lien (precise reporting).

Please save this date:
*Sat, 4th Sept. Area G1 Humorous Speech & Evaluation Contests. MCOBA Building, Penthouse on 4th Flr. Jln Syed Putra. You can see the building on Federal Highway, after Kuen Cheng school if you are coming from KL.

That's all my ramblings for now,
cheers,
huey yee

Money Mastery KL Toastmasters Club Quarterly Newsletter

2010-03-15T00:36:00.004+08:00

As some of you have heard, our club has embarked on a journey to establish a club newsletter for Money Mastery KL Toastmasters Club. After months of hard work put in by the newsletter committee, along with the sweat and tears shed in the process, I'm proud to announce to you that our quarterly newsletter has been launched!

Our quarterly newsletter is dedicated to keeping members of Money Mastery-KL Toastmasters Club updated on latest happenings and events of the Club and the members. Inside you will find articles and personal stories contributed by our own members, updates on upcoming events, also the club's progress towards DCP goals.

To all of you who have not yet get and read our first issue of the
quarterly newsletter, you can download it in PDF format by going to the
website as below.

http://www.victorwan.com/248/money-mastery-kl-toastmasters-clubs-newsletter-issue-no-1/

You can also sign up for getting email alert when our next issue of
the newsletter published. Please follow the instructions given in the link
above.

We hope you would enjoy it! Please let us know if you have any comments or feedback - we promise we’ll listen carefully.

Yours truly,
Gean
VPPR 2009-2010

2009-2010 International Speech and Table Topics Contests

2010-01-18T23:37:00.006+08:00

Yes, the contest season has started! It's a momentous event that some of us have been waiting for around the year. We, Money Mastery - KL Toastmasters Club, have had our 8th. International Speech and Table Topics Contests on 12th January 2010. It was an eventful and certainly an interesting night as the following contestants showcased their speeches in style.

International Speech Contest 2009-2010:

1st speaker Abu Bakar Ngah

2nd KL Loh

3rd MK Low

4th Paul Tan

Champion : MK Low

1st Runner Up : KL Loh

2nd Runner Up : Abu Bakar Ngah

Table Topics Contest 2009-2010:

1^st speaker Hj Hashim

2^nd SM Kok

3^rd Paul Tan

4^th Abd Aziz

5^th Abu Bakar Ngah

6^th Janice Ooi

7^th Abdulrahanman

8^th MK Low

9^th Hj Naburi

Champion: Abu Bakar Ngah
1st runner up: Abdulrahnaman
2nd runner up: Hj. Hashim

A big congratulations to MK Low, who won the International Speech Contest and Abu Bakar Ngah, who won the Table Topics Contest! The champions of these contests will represent our club to the Area W1 International Speech and Table Topics Contests scheduled on 25th March 2010.
Lets give our biggest support to our champions and all the best to both of them in the contests!

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-23T19:23:00.009+08:00

On 22nd December, we had our last Toastmasters meeting of the year. To all of us who were present in the meeting, it was a jolly occasion as it was a meeting that was filled with both warm Christmas spirits as well as Chinese winter solstice festive mood. To go with both the festive occasions, most of our members dressed in either Red or Green. Some even had their Santa's hat on to add on to the Christmas mood. Thanks to EK Yeo, our dearest VPE, an ever so patient and helpful figure, we even had some balls of glutinous rice (or more commonly known as Tangyuan in Chinese) which symbolize reunion as desserts. Apart from the jovial mood and wonderful desserts, we also had a great company that night. It was none other than our old and dear friend- Azmi Shahrin, a famous DTM in both Division W as well as District 51, who acted as our General Evaluator that night. As usual, his utter sense of humour and aptitude for public speaking kept the audience entertained well all night.

Besides those, this meeting was also different in a way that we had all advanced project speeches for the night. Unlike our usual meetings which we have a mixture of both Competent Communication and Advanced Communication speakers, all 3 speakers of the tonight presented their project speeches from the Advanced Communication series. When it comes to the Advanced level, the speeches become more and more interesting because the presentation could vary from a role play, to a story telling, to a seminar, and many others.

The first speaker of the night was me :) I presented a speech titled 'Negotiating with Skill' from the Advanced Communication series- Interpersonal Communication. It was a 10-14 minute presentation that combined a speech, a role play and a discussion.

The second speaker was Abdul Aziz, CTM, who presented a 20-40 minute seminar titled 'Increase Profitability through Quality', that was from the Professional Speaker Project.

Last but not least, Victor Wan, CC, CL presented his speech 'Think for the Future' from Advanced Communication series- Speaking to Inform.

In Money Mastery KL Toastmasters Club, we always vote for the Best Project Speech and Best Evaluator of the night. It is a recognition as well as encouragement for our members for doing well in their speeches and evaluations. Here is a very big congratulations to Abdul Aziz and Francis Ng for winning the Best Project Speech and Best Evaluator of the night!

With that, our joyful meeting came to an end. That marked our last meeting of year 2009. Our next meeting will be in 12th January 2010. It is a meeting not to be missed because not only that it would be our first meeting in year 2010, it's also the night for our club International Speech and Table Topics contest! Yes, the contest season is on and we're very proud to be one of the first few clubs in our division to hold the contest for this season. It will be an interesting night, so ladies and gentlemen, make sure you come early to grab a seat yeah :)

Till then, I wish all of you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Yours truly,
Gean Lau
Vice President of Public Relations
2009-2010

Happy Go Lucky

2009-11-10T23:54:00.002+08:00

With the meeting theme of Happy Go Lucky, everyone was in a mood for a positive and easy going meeting for tonight. We are happy to have Ng Lay Choo, ACB, CL as our Madam General Evaluator of the night. As per normal meeting, the night started off with president's address from our club president, Liew Siew Yin, CC, CL. In her address, she sent a message that a happy go lucky attitude will keep us up when we are down, and ensure that we are always in a positive perspective for things that happen around us.

KL Loh, ATM-G was in charge of the Invocation session tonight. He shared that we as leaders to people in companies, we must embody a set of values that will guide us in everything that we do Values like honesty, integrity and transparency serve as the moral guide to a company practices, therefore they are crucial to the success and growth of a company.

To go along with the theme of the night, the Table Topics Master, Hoo Sze Ling (who is also a guest from D' Utama Toastmasters Club) has kept the audience entertained with topics like 'Wealth or Happiness, which one is more important?', 'What is the happiest moment in your life?', amongst others. The speakers were great, as all of them had demonstrated their impromptu speaking skills and spoke right about their given topics.

For the project speech session, we had in total 4 speakers tonight. Ginny Leng, TM spoke about how she made certain decisions in her life, and Vince Kek, TM spoke about his romantic love story. Both projects were from the Competent Communication manual. For the more advanced speakers, Abdul Aziz Youp, CTM presented an entertaining speech on (mis) communication. In short, it was about how communication could go wrong and why. Last but not least, Victor Wan, CC, CL presented useful facts and tips for the audience tonight in the topic of will writing. He advised the audience get a will done up as soon as possible for the benefits of your loved ones. As Francis Ng, DTM has also put it, "Don't let your loved ones go through hell when you are in heaven". Interesting. As an audience and Grammarian tonight, I'd say all the speakers have given their best in their speeches, and all have received positive and enlightening feedback from their speech evaluators.

In the evaluation part, the club has received some very positive feedback from the guests as well as from Mdm. General Evaluator tonight. From the comments, they are pleased with the comfortable setting of the club (except for the occasional noise from renovation next door tonight), the warm welcome offered to guests, the properly drawn up agenda (thanks to our VPE, EK Yeo and President Liew Siew Yin for this), the persisting high turn up rate of members for club meeting (yay!), and last but not least, the VERY famous and delicious nasi lemak (big thanks to Paul Tan for this one)! Thanks to all for your helpful comments and suggestions, one thing for sure is that we will work hard to keep it up!

Announcements:
1. Division W Better Speaker Series will be held on 14th Nov 2009 in ING Performance Centre. Great value and tips on communication skills you can bring home with only RM28 per person.

2. 2nd Club Officer Training is scheduled on 12th Dec 2009. Club Officers, please mark this down on your calendar. Details of the venue and others will be published soon.

3. Lovely news: our club member- Vince Kek, TM, is set to tie the knot with his fiancee soon. Congratulations to Vince!!! The couple is having their wedding banquet on 26th Dec 2009, in Golden Palace Seafood restaurant (119, Jalan Pudu, 55100, KL). All members of Money Mastery KL Toastmasters Club are welcomed to join the couple for their wedding dinner. Halal, non-halal, and vegetarian food can be arranged.
Please RSVP with Vince Kek, latest by 24th Nov 2009.

Yours truly,
Gean Lau
Vice President of Public Relations
2009-2010

Opportunities for the ones who are ready

2009-10-15T21:13:00.004+08:00

It's a meeting that is full of inspirations and energy. It was a meeting that motivates everyone in the room to BE YOUR BEST.
In the Toastmasters' movement, it is important to have this commitment to yourself, and to the club. When you put in effort in preparing your speeches, spend some time practicing your delivery, only then you will be able to produce a good speech to the audience. In that way, we can all contribute to bring ourselves up and improve the standard of the club collectively.

Acting president EK Yeo, CC, CL delivered his acting presidential address that night with a clear and concise message- all of us should strive to be our best in everything that we do, and along the way, we should motivate our peers to do the same.

There was an inspirational quote that I heard in the meeting that night, and it still lingers on my mind until this minute. "You get the best out of others when you give the best yourself". It's true, isn't it? In order to bring out the best in the people around you, you have to first bring out the best of yourself. This rule applies to all of us, and in all stages of life, whether you're a working adult, or a student. Imagine you're in a competition, when you give it your best in the game, you will motivate your competitors to outdo themselves too. In that way, all of you would live the spirit, and make a good game.

Thanks to Julia Leong, TM, our Table Topics master of the day, who had brought forward few uplifting and inspirational quotes for our Table Topics session that night. Vincent Soon, who is a guest on that night, took the trophy of Best Table Topics Speaker home with his befitting talk about how his bunch of friends always do their very own best during swimming exercise in order to motivate the rest of the group to do the same.

For the project speeches, we had in total four speakers that night. Ginny Leng, TM shared a tip with us that night that we should never display an inverted peace sign ("V" sign with your fingers with palm facing yourself) as it means a grave insult to the person that you're facing. (Hmm I should start screening my pictures to filter that...) Abdulrahaman, TM spoke about his opinion on The World Order that night; and Vince Kek, TM conveyed a strong message to all of us that we should all do something to save our Mother Earth who is in sick, after quietly enduring all the harms we have done to Her. Last but not least, Abdul Aziz, CTM delivered a keynote address 'Heal Thyself' that night. I believe the audience that night has learned a thing or two about pharmaceutical industry practice that night. We should always check and see whether we really need take the drugs that promised us youth and health on the label. Anyone are to join me for a jog at FRIM?

During the speech evaluation session, all evaluators provided good feedback to the speakers and I believe they all have received a tip or two from their evaluators. Henry Fu, ACB, CL, our General Evaluator for the night, also shared his opinion on the overall flow of the meeting and the meeting arrangements. Thanks for his comments and suggestions. As people always say- feedback is the breakfast for the champions. That's how we learn to better ourselves.

At the end of the meeting, EK Yeo, acting president of the night made some announcement on the next Club Officers training which is scheduled on 12 of December 2009. Club officers who're reading the blog, please mark it on your calendar. Also, our club is launching an exciting project- a club newsletter! Victor Wan, KH Song and I, will be the central persons coordinating the newsletter. All members of the club are welcomed to participate in this project. We need someone who can write, proof read, and take good pictures. Also, anyone in the club is welcomed to contribute any useful material for the newsletter from time to time.

With this, the club meeting adjourned and a fellowship begins.

Yours sincerely,
Gean Lau
Vice President of Public Relations
2009- 2010

Contests moments

2009-09-04T00:12:00.004+08:00

Dear all,

If you have missed the 2009 Humorous Speech & Evaluation Contests of our club, don't worry!

Thanks to Victor Wan, who has made the effort in recording and editing all the contest videos. Now we have them all here, just click on the links below. Sit back and enjoy the show!

Cheers,
Gean
Vice President of Public Relations
2009-2010

1. Humorous Speech & Evaluation Contests -

2. More Humorous Speech Contest Videos -

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Love your country

2009-08-27T22:24:00.001+08:00

Money Mastery –KL Toastmasters Club Meeting #180 on 25 August 2009.

The Merdeka Spirit continues into our 180th toastmasters club meeting on 25 August 2009. In line with the Merdeka Spirit, the theme of the night was “Love Malaysia” and the word of the day was “Independence.”

Most of the members including our GE, Lucky came in colourful batik instilling the Love Malaysia spirit in all of us. First time SAA, TM Abdurrahman called the meeting to order right on time with the confidence of a seasoned speaker.

Mdm. President, CC, CL Liew Siew Yin delivered her presidential address with passion calling us to Love Malaysia, a beautiful country where people of all races and religion lived harmoniously together as One Malaysia. Feelings of patriotism ran high that night with her delivery followed by an invocation from CC, CL Raymond Sii who inspired us to love and respect our colorful Malaysian Flag.

We stop and break fast with our Muslim friends, all in a very jovial mood. Our Malaysian food is certainly very tasty thanks to CTM, ALS Paul Tan.

CC Sook Meng, our bubbly and energetic TME was witty throughout the night as she conducted the meeting in a very well organized manner.

Our Club’s ever jovial stalwart, Tuan Hj Naburi, ACB, CL was Table Topics Master for the night and had us in stitches with his friendly but comical expressions. TM Sue Hooi, Erica, Julia, Abdurrahman and Ginny all rose to the occasion when they volunteered in giving impromptu speeches on topics relating to the theme of the night. Kudos to all for their courage!

CTM, ALS Paul Tan, as humor master, gave some interesting, highly refined and polished jokes and had majority of members breaking into hearty laughs.

We were pleasantly mesmerized by four young speakers giving informative and interesting well prepared speeches no 1, 2, 3 & 4 respectively. The speeches were delivered with confidence, light humor and very engaging with the audience. TM William Lee gave his ice breaker speech, “Where I come from”, TM Vince Kek motivated and engaged the audience with “What Make Your Life 100%”, TM Eileen shared with us on “Will Power & Self Discipline” and TM Wilson inspired us with his referjob2earn.com income generating scheme. Congratulations to all the speakers for their efforts!

Rounds of applauses was given to all first time role players, ASAA Abdurrahman, Ah-Counter, Julia Leong, Time Keeper Sharon Siew and Ice Breaker, William Lee.

ATM-B, ALS General Evaluator, Lucky gave an overall positive evaluation summary of our club filled with good suggestions for improvement while his team of evaluators were very zealous and sincere in giving positive feedback to our equally enthusiastic speakers and audience.

Awards for the best Table Topics speaker and the best project speech speaker went to TM Julia Leong and TM Vince Kek respectively. Congratulations!

Mdm. President reminded members of following date and wished all members a safe journey home.

Div W Humorous Speech and Evaluation Contest
Date : 12 September 2009 (Saturday).
Time : 1.30 p.m. (lunch will be served at 1 p.m.).
Venue : Wisma WIM, No 7, Jalan Abang Haji Openg, Taman Tun Dr Ismail, 60000 KL.

Have a very Nice and Pleasant Week-End

Julia Leong
Treasurer

The Mousetrap story

2009-08-22T18:06:00.002+08:00

The Mouse Trap and You

A mouse looked through the crack in the wall to see the farmer and his wife open a package.

What food might this contain?' the mouse wondered - he was devastated to discover it was a mousetrap.

Retreating to the farmyard, the mouse proclaimed the warning : 'There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!'

The chicken clucked and scratched, raised her head and said, 'Mr.Mouse, I can tell this is a grave concern to you, but it is of no consequence to me. I cannot be bothered by it.'

The mouse turned to the pig and told him, 'There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!'

The pig sympathized, but said, 'I am so very sorry, Mr.Mouse, but there is nothing I can do about it but pray. Be assured you are in my prayers.'

The cow said, 'Wow, Mr. Mouse. I'm sorry for you, but it's no skin off my nose.'

So, the mouse returned to the house, head down and dejected, to face the farmer's mousetrap . . . alone. That very night a sound was heard throughout the house - like the sound of a mousetrap catching its prey.

The farmer's wife rushed to see what was caught. In the darkness, she did not see it was a venomous snake whose tail the trap had caught. The snake bit the farmer's wife.

The farmer rushed her to the hospital, and she returned home with a fever.

Everyone knows you treat a fever with fresh chicken soup, so the farmer took his hatchet to the farmyard for the soup's main ingredient.

But his wife's sickness continued, so friends and neighbors came to sit with her around the clock. To feed them, the farmer butchered the pig. The farmer's wife did not get well, and she died. So many people came for her funeral, the farmer had the cow slaughtered to provide enough meat for all of them.

The mouse looked upon it all from his crack in the wall with great sadness.

So, Dear Toastmasters the next time you hear someone is facing a problem and think it doesn't concern you, remember - when one of us is threatened, we all are at a risk.

We all are together in the Toastmasters journey.

We must keep an eye out for one another and make an extra effort to encourage one another.

REMEMBER. . .

EACH OF US IS A VITAL THREAD IN ANOTHER PERSON'S TAPESTRY; OUR LIVES ARE WOVEN TOGETHER... FOR A REASON...

Regards

Lucky

http://BANGSAR. blogspot. com
http://KLADV. blogspot. com
http://IMCOSY. blogspot. com

A Recipe For Happiness...

Two Heapful cups of Patience
One Heartful of Love
Two Handsful of Generosity
One Headful of Understanding
A Dash of Humour
Sprinkle With Kindness
Add Plenty of Faith
Mix Well
Spread Over A Period of A Lifetime
Serve To Everyone YOU MEET

Merdeka Spirit

2009-08-15T00:20:00.001+08:00

August 11, 2009 was an awesome meeting! Everyone was in high spirit and the meeting room was filled with energy. There were 8 guests as well, kudos!

The President, CC CL Siew Yin delivered her presidential address in line with the theme of the meeting, “Merdeka Spirit”. A shout of “Merdeka” echoed through the room and reverberated by the members. New members ie. Vince Kek, Abdulrahaman and Eileen Lau were voted into the club and went through the induction session. CC Cindy Foong as the TME was well prepared, amiable and composed. She was even equipped with a Malaysian flag! Invocation was well delivered by ATMG KL Loh who inspired all members and guests to stand up and shouted, “Merdeka” 3 times. It was indeed a high spirit session.
Table Topics Master for the first time, CC Kok Sook Meng gave very interesting topics during her session and 3 out of 4 participants were guests. Bravo to all of you! The prepared speeches were equally creative, mesmerizing and informative. .. "When I Close My Eyes" by Vince Kek, "Fasting" by Eileen Lau and "A Twist of Fate" by Julia Leong. We were very privileged to listen to our club’s champion ie. ACB, CL Haji Naburi’s humorous speech followed by open evaluation from the floor.

Thanks to CC, CL KH Song for providing the sumptuous food. After yummy food during break, ACS, CL Johnny Yong led the interesting evaluation session. Congratulations to the role players for the first time, ie. Alvin Wong as the time keeper, CC Kok Sook Meng as the Table Topics Master and TM Vince Kek for his Ice Breaker speech.
The blue ribbon of the President Distinguished Club 2008/09 from Toastmasters International was presented by the Area W1 Governor, Syamala to the our Immediate Past President, CC, CL Haji Hashim Adnan. Syamala delivered a very informative speech and further enhanced by the “Frog Story” in her delivery. Thanks to TM Julia, we had very tasty Secret Recipe cake for our August babies’ birthday celebration.

Some dates to note:

1. Area W1 Humorous Speech and Evaluation Contest. Venue: MIA Resource Center. Date: 13 August 2009. Time: 7pm
2. Div W Humorous Speech and Evaluation Contest. Date: 12th September 2009 (Saturday) Time: 1:30pm (lunch will be served at 1 pm)
Venue: Wisma WIM, No. 7, Jalan Abang Haji Openg, Taman Tun Dr Ismail, 60000 Kuala Lumpur.

Have an awesome week ahead!

Liew Siew Yin
President
2009-2010

Merdeka Spirit

2009-08-15T00:20:00.000+08:00

The Contest Night that is full of Laughter!

2009-08-02T20:10:00.004+08:00

It's contest season again!

For Toastmasters, it's a time to get our blood pumped up. On 28th July 2009, we had our club's 2009/2010 Humorous Speech and Evaluation Contests. It was an event that brought all the club members as well as Toastmasters from other clubs together. Apart from that, we are honored to have our Division Governor, DTM Soh Fong Wai as our Chief Judge that night. And this time around, we had in total 15 contestants from our club:

Humorous Speech Contestants:
1. Abd. Aziz Youp
2. Khoshim Malim
3. KL Loh
4. Paul Tan
5. Haji Naburi
6. Victor Wan
7. MK Low

Evaluation Contestants:
1. Abd. Aziz Youp
2. Paul Tan
3. Haji Naburi Idin
4. Gean Lau
5. Victor Wan
6. MK Low
7. Khoshim Malim
8. Tan Ben Hoe

As usual, Victor Wan is kind enough to bring along his camcorder gadget to record the entire contest night! He will be doing some editing before showing us the final footage. So stay tuned folks.

As you can imagine, the Humorous Speech Contest is all about humor! On that night, we had some good laugh throughout the contest, as MK Low humored us about 'Contractor', as KL Loh revealed 'The secret of Staying Young', as Paul Tan answered the question of 'Where do you come from', as Abdul Aziz gave us some tips on 'The Best time to Invest', and amongst others. It was an enjoyable and entertaining session for all of us.

For the Evaluation Contest, we had Cheah Soo Chuan from MIM Toastmasters Club of Kuala Lumpur as the Test Speaker, and he gave an Ice Breaker Speech for 5-7 minutes. All the contestants are to evaluate the speech and provide their feedback in the allocated time of 3 minutes.
So after the Test Speaker had spoken, all the Evaluation contestants (including me!) had to leave the room and got quarantined in another room (not for AH1N1 purpose, of course). After that, each of us will enter the room to give our evaluation speech, one after another.
Though I was not in the room to hear all the evaluations, I believed all of the speeches were good and carried out in their unique style. Why? Because except me, all the contestants are very experienced speakers, not to mention their evaluation skills!

After a hard time deciding, the winners were announced at the end of the evening.
To all the winners and contestants, I wish to give my heartiest CONGRATULATIONS to all of you!

Evaluation Contest

CHAMPION : Low Meng Koon
1ST RUNNER UP : Paul Tan
2nd RUNNER UP : Tan Ben Hoe

Humorous Speech Contest

CHAMPION : Hj. Naburi Idin
1st RUNNER UP : Khoshim Malim
2nd RUNNER UP: Low Meng Koon

MK Low and Haji Naburi, both seasoned, humorous and powerful speaker that I know, will represent Money Mastery-KL Toastmasters Club in the Area W1 Humorous Speech and Evaluation Contests on Thursday, 13 August 2009 in MIA Resource Center in Brickfields! Good luck to both of you!

Apart from that, I'd like to thank the role players that night as well. Though some of them are first-timers in their roles that night, they have done a marvelous job! Without you, it would not have been such a wonderful and successful night.

THANK YOU to:

Chief Judge :
Soh Foong Wai, DTM

Organizing Chair:
Julia Leong

Humorous Speech Contest Chair:
Cindy Foong

Evaluation Speech Contest Chair:
Kok Sook Meng

Test Speaker :
Cheah Soo Chuan

Timers:
1. Chong Huey Yee
2. Siva Das

Ballot Counters:
1. EK Yeo
2. Ginny Leng
3. Eileen Lau

Sergeant at Arms:
1. Wilson Ten
2. Francis Ng
3. Vince Kek

Last note to all, we will be posting the links to the Speech videos soon, so stay tuned!

Yours truly,
Gean Lau
Vice President of Public Relations
2009-2010

NEW TERM, NEW PEOPLE, NEW EXPECTATION

2009-07-16T01:43:00.002+08:00

Fellow Toastmasters, distinguished guests, friends, ladies and gentlemen, good evening. As you know, a new team of Exco members has been installed last Friday 10 July 2009. This means, the term of my team has expired.

Fellow toastmasters, I would like to take this opportunity to thank each and every member of Money Mastery-KL Toastmasters Club for having given me all your support and cooperation during my term as President. On behalf of your Exco, I would like to express our sincere and deepest appreciation for your contributions to the club. We are very proud of your dedication in toastmasters’ activities which have made Money Mastery-KL Toastmasters Club to achieve yet again the President's Distinguished Club for the 6th time in a row. You must be proud too because you have also made Money Mastery-KL Toastmasters Club as one of the most admired clubs in Area W1.

To my colleagues in the Exco, I want to thank each of you from the bottom of my heart, for whatever support you have given me during the past year. Together, we have achieved many things during the past one year for our club. So to Siew Yin, EK Yeo, Haji Naburi, Gean Lau, KH Song, a million thanks to all of you. Of course, not forgetting our IPP Ben Hoe and Advisor Francis Ng, who have always given your unselfish advice and guidance to me and to the Exco. To both of you, thank you for being an excellent mentor for all of us.

I also want to recognize a very good friend of mine. This man is also a very good friend to all of you. This is the man who had untiringly been buying the nasi lemak for all of us for our meeting every fortnightly. He is non other than our fellow Toastmaster Paul Tan.

Finally, it is time for us to move on to a NEW TERM and to hand the baton to the NEW PEOPLE with their NEW EXPECTATION. I would like to congratulate the members of the new Exco which is led by President Liew Siew Yin. This new dynamic team, I am sure, will take this club of ours to a new height in the next term. Our prayers and best wishes are always with you.

Thank you.

Haji Hashim Haji Adnan
Immediate Past President
14 July 2009

Posted by
Gean Lau
Vice President of Public Relations
2009- 2010

A New Term, a New Beginning, starts with the Installation Dinner!

2009-07-14T00:32:00.008+08:00

10th of July marked the very first event of the new term 2009- 2010 for Money Mastery-KL Toastmasters Club. It was the joint installation dinner for Money Mastery-KL Toastmasters Club and MIA Toastmasters Club, held in a stylish restaurant called PADI House at Jalan P. Ramlee.

It was an important occasion for Toastmasters because this is an annual event where the baton will be passed from the last term club committee to the newly elected club committee. On this special night, the newly elected Exco-members for the term will get installed into their new roles and positions.

To our honour and pleasure, we had a few distinguished guests namely DTM Geoff Andrew, DTM Dominic Gerard Joseph, current Division W Governer DTM Soh Fong Wai, Past Division W Governer Azmi Shahrin and our current Area W1 Governer CC Syamala Murigiah, to join us on this lovely evening. We had full attendance of our club Exco on that night, though our Immediate Past President CC, CL Haji Hashim was absent with apologies due an important business trip that he had to make.

Organizing Chair CC, CL KH Song did a marvelous job in planning and setting up the whole event. Scrumptious food in a beautiful restaurant, what a perfect ambiance for a gathering amongst both old and new friends. In addition, thanks to Immediate Past President of MIA Toastmasters Club Kelvin, we got a great deal on the food and venue that night! Score!

During the installation ceremony chaired by our Area W1 Governor Syamala, each exco member of both club pledged to serve his or her club with utmost integrity and aspiration in his or her respective role.

Now I present to you, the official Exco of Money Mastery-KL Toastmasters Club (2009- 2010):
President Liew Siew Yin, CC, CL
Vice President of Education Yeo Eng Keng, CC, CL
Vice President of Membership Kok Sook Meng, CC
Vice President of Public Relations Gean Lau, CC
Secretary Abdul Aziz, CTM
Treasurer Julia Leong, TM
Sergeant-at-Arm Wilson Ten Kine Hong, TM

At the end of the ceremony, the president of each club presented their very first presidential speech to the club members. For our club, our new Mdm President, CC, CL Liew Siew Yin appealed to the new exco members to do their very best in serving the members in the club, and achieving the 10 DCP goals for 2009 - 2010, in order to live up the Division W motto - FORWARD, CHANGE, GROW.

After the ceremony, it was time for Table Topics - one of the widely favoured activities of Toastmasters. DTM Geoff Andrew, the Table Topics Master of the night, had conducted the 40 minutes session brilliantly. Firstly, he planned the topics around the idea of Money, quite apt for the occasion as we had both the money managers (MIA) and the money makers (Money Mastery) in the room, as he puts it. Secondly, the rule of the game is that after one volunteer from a club has spoken on a topic, a volunteer from the other club should follow and speak on the same topic. Back and forth, we had in total 8 Table Topics speakers that night, 4 from each club.
All the speakers spoke enthusiastically on their given topics. Guess that when it comes to money, we all have much to express, especially when you're a money manager, or a money maker =)

As for the winner, CONGRATULATIONS to DTM Dominic Gerard Joseph, who won the title of Best Table Topics speaker of the night with his humorous and clever speech on the title 'If you have $1 million, what would you do with it?'

Overall, it was a splendid night and I think the members and guests who were there would all agree with me when I say that. It was indeed an marvelous event to pump up our energy and kick start for the new 2009-2010 term!

As our Mdm president put it, it's time for us to move forward, grow and change! All the best to the new leadership and all the members of Money Mastery-KL Toastmasters Club!

Yours truly,
Gean Lau
Vice President of Public Relations
2009 - 2010

We're on Facebook!

2009-07-14T00:25:00.002+08:00

Dear all club members, non-members,

We're now on Facebook! Click on us and get updates of our club events and members!

Yours truly,
Gean Lau
Vice President of Public Relations
2009- 2010

THE FINAL MEETING FOR THE TERM 2008-2009 #176

2009-06-25T17:32:00.007+08:00

23rd June, 2009, 4th TUESDAY of June marked the end of the current term of 2008-2009 and Money Mastery - KL TMC recorded yet another well attended and successful meeting with the presence of two guests and the signing of one new member,TM Eileen Lau.
Well Eileen, welcome to the Club and you yourself had declared that you had attended two other TM clubs meetings and yet you chose Money Mastery-KL TMC to be a member. Congratulations to you and you have made the right choice.

The meeting started with the opening remarks by the acting President cum incoming President, VPE Liew Siew Yin who stood for the President Hj. Hashim who regrettably could not make it to the meeting due to unforeseen circumstances and conveyed his apology. So we missed out his words of wisdom. Perhaps he will make it up by giving an invocation speech in future meetings. Siew Yin welcomed Distinguished Toastmaster Low Yat Seow who honor us by being the General Evaluator for the evening. She also welcomed the presence of DTM Azmi Shahrin, the Immediate Past Division W Governor who came on behalf of DTM KK Chee, the Immediate Past District Governor to present a plaque and a certificate to our member, CTM, ALS Paul Tan, for being a President Distinguished Area W6 Governor for 2007-2008. Congratulations to Paul Tan who added another laurel to our club.

FIRST TIMERS:
TM Abdulrahaman from Nigeria for being the Time Keeper,
TM Alvin Wong for being the 'Ah' Counter. Both of you did an excellent job.
Tm Ginny Leng for delivering her Ice breaker speech, well done and congratulations.

As announced by the Club Advisor DTM Francis, the club has achieved THE PRESIDENT'S DISTINGUISHED CLUB AWARD with 10/10 DCP points for the 7th year running. The District will present a special award to the club in the coming semi annual convention to be held at Genting Highland in October. Please check out for the announcements in your email or contact Francis.

Come 1st July, 2009, the club is officially the home of the Lieutenant Governor Marketing for District 51 (Peninsula)in the person of DTM Francis Ng.

DTM Low Yat Seow, who was the District 51 PDG, and who mentored us during the early years of the formation of our club gave a very interesting 19 minutes talk on "Letting Go". For those who have gone through the process of becoming leaders in any organizations will understand and appreciate the real meaning of letting go. In my opinion this has something to do with human beings egoistic needs as expounded in Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Those who studied management will know what I mean. In Toastmastering, it's true what was said by Yat Seow that you will only learn the core values of Toastmasters when you hold the leadership positions in Toastmasters Organization, which are Integrity, Dedication to Excellence, Service to the Member, and Respect for the Individual. While you are holding the post, you receive all the recognition and appreciations by people especially the members. When you become an " X " or" past" people tend to forget you. In plain language, "you are nobody". So we have to learn to " let go". I was the Charter President of our club way back in 2002. I felt great then but not anymore as I have learn to let go.....

ACB, CL, Chong Huey Yee was the right person to be the TME for the final meeting. As usual, true to her chilly padi title as awarded by the club, she kept everyone on their toes reminding everyone the theme of GO GREEN and CONSERVE (Word of the Day).
When she realized that the members were too obedient to her "orders", she jolted them into not conserving with their claps, and start paying more attention and be pro active with whats going on. She was well praised by DTM Low Yat Seow and DTM Azmi for job well done.

TM Julia Leong once again stole the show by delivering such energetic and dramatic speech #5. winning her the best speaker award for the evening. Congratulations Julia and definitely I am voting you the champion speaking in the making. Keep it up.

All in all it was a very interesting meeting enjoyed by everyone present. KUDOS MONEY MASTERY-KL TOASTMASTERS CLUB. KEEP UP THE GOOD SHOW!

Foot note:
This is my last posting in the blog as VPPR for 2008-2009 for the Club. CC Gean Lau,
the incoming VPPR will take over from now on. Thank you for your cooperation.

Posted by:
Hj Naburi
VPPR

PRESIDENT'S WORDS OF WISDOM - MEETING 9TH JUNE

2009-06-16T21:40:00.002+08:00

In addition to the report of the meeting blogged by Siew Yin which I find it very enlightening and well done, below I am posting the Presidential words of wisdom which he delivered at the meeting which he crafted cleverly around the word of the day..."FRUITFUL".....

SUCCEED FRUITFULLY

The majority of men fail because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to succeed fruitfully. If you can’t think of a new fruitful idea, find a way to make better use of an old one. “Where we cannot invent, we may at least improve” said Charles Caleb Colton.

Fellow Toastmasters, ladies and gentlemen, Don’t look for the answer to your problem; look for many answers, then choose the best one. There is always a way - then there is always a fruitful way. The more you truly desire something, the more you will try to find a better and fruitful way.

But what holds people back, ladies and gentlemen? ‘We are waiting until things change, until there is more time, until we are less tired, until we get a promotion, until we settle down – until, until, until. It always seems that there is some major event that must occur in our lives before we make a fruitful decision.

A successful man continues to look for work after he has found a job, to have a fruitful live. Take the offensive. Cause something to happen. Don’t waste time defending your present position. Create a habit of taking the initiative. Ladies and gentlemen, find a better way, and make that way a fruitful way.

Thanks

Hj Hashim,
9 June 2009
Posted by: Hj Naburi
VPPR

SECOND LAST MEETING FOR THE TERM-#175 TUESDAY, 9 JUNE 2009

2009-06-15T18:27:00.002+08:00

Wow! Another awesome meeting - a fruitful (word of the day) meeting. Thank you to all the members and guests.

The theme for the meeting was "Be Young at Heart", aptly chosen by TM Julia Leong as the TME. The theme was adopted by Huey Yee, ACB, CL in her invocation and DTM Francis Ng in the Table Topics session. "Join Toastmasters and you will always be young", that was Huey Yee's tagline in her invocation.

The President delivered his opening speech with deep powerful voice. He looked young and charming as always...

It was an eye opener for those who present in the meeting to witness DTM Francis (as the Table Topic Master) exercising his persuasive skills into coaxing a reluctant guest to attempt the Table Topics Session. The guest (Mr. Tan) was overwhelmed by the encouragement, persistence and support provided to him. Finally, he completed the Table Topics session within the allocated time! Great job to all!

FIRST TIMERS:
Congratulations to:
TM Ginny Leng for playing the role of "Ah" Counter
TM Julia Leong for playing the role of TME

TM KC englighted us on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). He definitely put in a lot of effort and research for the speech. Keep up the good work. TM Atefeh taught us how to be happy. :) She effectively delivered her speech with her unique conversational style. TM Erica Soon who emerged as the Best Speaker mesmerised us with her love story, a modern fairy tale. Can't wait for her next love story...

Our General Evaluator from Premier Advanced Toastmasters Club and Taman Indrahana Toastmasters Club, Chrristine Ngiam, ACS, CL was delighted to be invited and impressed with the flow of the meeting. She even offered some tips for improvement. Thank you Chrristine! Please visit us again in the future.

THIRD LAST MEETING FOR THE TERM-#174 TUESDAY, 26 MAY 2009

2009-05-28T06:52:00.004+08:00

Another successful and well attended meeting for the club. Total attendants: 24 with 5 guests present, including Toastmaster Rebecca all the way from Singapore, who obliged us to play the role of Grammarian at the last minute. Thank you Rebecca for being so sporting and you took 16 mins for delivering your thorough report on the meetings performance in the usage of the English language.

The theme for the meeting was "Happy Parents Day" which was well picked up by Tan Ben Hoe for his Table Topics session, though the topics crafted by Ben Hoe were very challenging for the TT speakers but they managed to talk around them. TM Abdulrahaman from Nigeria, our new member emerged as the most voted speaker for the session.

The President however had nothing much to comment on the theme of the meeting and decided to chose the word of the day..."deliberate" as his talking point in his Presidential address/message, as thus...

DELIBERATING ABOUT LIFE

Fellow toastmasters, ladies and gentlemen. As I was looking at the word of the day “DELIBERATE”, I thought it would be an opportune time for me to talk to you about life, to see how ready we are to face the reality of life.

If you look at life the wrong way there is always cause for alarm. It’s the same way a RM20 bill can look so big when it goes to charity and so small when it goes to groceries. What you see depends mainly on what you look for. Some people complain because roses have thorns. When you deliberate on it, you are thankful that thorns have roses.

To one person the world is desolate, dull and empty; to another the same world looks rich, interesting and full of meaning. How we position ourselves to see makes all the difference. You can never see the sunrise by looking to the west. The choice is up to deliberate.

Fellow Toastmasters, position yourself to receive, not resist. How you see things on the outside of you depends on how things are on the inside of you. Norman Vincent Peale said “Any fact facing us is not as important as our attitude towards it, for that determines our success or failure.” Example, don’t pray for rain, if you are going to complain about the mud.

As you deliberate, you will see success, whereas others see only failures. Expect something good to happen. That expectation will energize your dreams and give you momentum. You’ll find that life responds to your outlook. We go where our vision is. Life, ladies and gentlemen, is mostly a matter of expectation.

Hj Hashim CC.CL
26 May, 2009

Very right indeed, Life is a matter of expectation. To be on the safe side, adhere to this principle of life: "I AM NOT BORN INTO THIS WORLD TO LIVE UP TO YOUR EXPECTATIONS, NEITHER WERE YOU BORN INTO THIS WORLD TO LIVE UP TO MINE." Something for everyone to ponder!

FIRST TIMERS:
Congratulations to:
TM Atefeh for playing the role of Asst. SAA..job well done.
TM Kelechi for playing the role of "Ah" Counter

TM Julia Leong once again mesmerised the audience for her speech on her yellow jet boat experience in New Zealand and she was voted the best project speaker. A champion speaker in the making,and may be even a writer, kudos to Julia and keep it up.

Our invited General Evaluator from MIA TMC, Johnny Yong, ACS, CL was very impressed with the meeting and the speakers and offered himself to be our guest in the future.

WELCOME to Ginny Leng who signed up to be our newest member and there was an indication from one of the guests that he may join our club soon.

The President announced that we have just received from TI the Talk-Up Toastmasters! ribbon for recruiting 5 members in the early part of the term.

Posted by Hj Naburi
VPPR

THIRD LAST MEETING FOR THE TERM-#174

2009-05-28T06:52:00.000+08:00

"Our Attitude and not Aptitude that will Determine Our Altitude"

2009-05-18T14:32:00.003+08:00

That's the theme for our Club meeting #173. This is what the President had to say about it:

ATTITUDE is a way of thinking, acting, or feeling and manner. Or a behavior of a person towards a situation or a cause. A person could change his attitude to positive or negative, depending on what has influence him/her. For example: as the work became more familiar, his attitude towards his work changed from dislike to great enthusiasm.

In life, we must have a positive attitude. With positive attitude, you will not fear failure. A life spent making mistakes is more useful than life spent doing nothing. To expect your life to be perfectly tailored to your specifications is to live a life of continual frustration.

What is the difference between champions and the average person? Tom Hopkins says "The single most important difference between champion achievers and the average people is their ability to handle rejection and failure through positive thinking"
S I Hayakawa said "Notice the difference between what happens when a man says "I failed 3 times" than what happens when he says "I am a failure". Failure is a situation, never a person with positive attitude.

Remember, a stumble is not a fall. In fact, a stumble may prevent a fall. Herman Melville wrote "He who has never failed somewhere, that man cannot be great" Louise Boone said "Don't fear failure so much that you refuse to try new things. If you learn from them, mistakes are very valuable. Cultivate this attitude and you will never be ashamed to try. William ward said "Failure is a delay, but not a defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end street."

Hj Hashim
May,12, 2009
Posted by Hj Naburi
VPPR

We had another very successful Club Meeting held on 12th May, 2009 After which we had our Annual General Meeting for the 7th year running. The attendance, as usual was good with many guests and two of the guests have indicated their intention to become members of the Club. One of them is Abdul Rahman from Nigeria.

Some of the highlights of the evening:

CONGRATULATIONS to Gean Lau, who completed her CC manual project speeches thus contributing the final 1/2 point for the DCP club program. Let's pet our backs for achieving 100% DCP points. That means our club has achieved the President's Distinguised Club Status by completing 10/10 points in the TI DCP Programs.
This was also highlighted by the VPE, Liew Siew Yin in her AGM report as thus:

To date, we have completed all the educational goals in the Distinguished Club Program, hence contributed 6 out of 10 points to the DCP performance indicators.

Names and the educational goals mentioned are not in any particular order.

Edu Goal 1 : 2 Competent Communicators (CCs) – CC Cindy Foong & CC Calista Chan

Edu Goal 2 : Additional 2 Competent Communicators (CCs) – CC Kok Sook Meng & CC Gean Lau

Edu Goal 3 : 1 Advanced Communicator (AC Bronze, AC Silver or AC Gold) – ACB, CL Haji Naburi Idin

Edu Goal 4 : 1 Additional AC Bronze, AC Silver or AC Gold – ACS, CL Marcus Chee

Edu Goal 5 : 1 CL, AL Bronze, AL Silver, or DTM – CTM, ALS Paul Tan

Edu Goal 6 : 1 Additional CL, AL Bronze, AL Silver, or DTM – CC, CL Haji Hashim Adnan

In addition, we have successfully conducted the Humorous, Evaluation, International and Table Topics contests. For the first time in our club, the International and Table Topics contests were conducted separately due to overwhelming response from the members.

We also have successfully organized a Speechcraft for Mechmar Corp.

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL THE FIRST TIMERS:

Kok Sook Meng for being the Toastmaster of the Evening...well done
Atefeh for delivering her ice Breaker speech and won the best speaker for the evening
Hilary Kelechi for delivering his Ice Breaker speech and should tremendous improvement..Kudos
K. H. Song for volunteering at the eleventh hour as a General Evaluator and doing it for the first time...Well done.

Interesting statistics:

We started this year with 46 members in the register. Until the end of April 2009 we had 113 guests attending our meetings. Up to date we have 19 new members and lost 29 members for non-renewals of membership. Up to the AGM date we have 36 registered as active members. That means we have a net loss of 10 members before the term ends in June 2009. Congratulations to VPM E,K. Yeo for the job well done and to all members who helped to build up the club membership.

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE FOLLOWING WHO ARE ELECTED TO THE INCOMING EXCO FOR THE TERM 2009-2010 WHICH BEGINS 1ST JULY 2009:

President: Liew Siew Yin, CC, CL

Vice-President Education: Yeo Eng Keng, CC, CL

Vice-President Membership: Kok Sook Meng, CC

Vice-President P. Relations: Gean Lau, CC

Secretary: Abdul Aziz Yop, CTM

Treasurer: Julia Leong, TM

Sergantt - At-Arms : Wilson Ten, TM

Posted by Hj Naburi
VPPR

ACT TO INSPIRE AND MOTIVATE

2009-05-10T15:24:00.002+08:00

This is the theme for our club meeting #172 held on Tuesday 28th April, 2009. This is what the President had to say...

"To be inspired and motivated is not easy and to consistently doing it, is even more difficult. Whenever you are inspired, take a small step at a time so that you can stay motivated. After that small step, you will look back and be able to say "I'm still not where I want to be, but I'm not where I was"
Julia Carney said, "Little drops of water, little grains of sand, make the mighty ocean and the pleasant land" Author Louis L'Amour wrote "Victory is not in miles but in inches. Win a little now, hold your ground and later win a lot more." Dale Carnegie said, "Don't be afraid to give your best to what seemingly are small jobs. Every time you conquer one it makes you that much stronger. If you do little jobs well, the big ones will tend to take care of themselves."

Never be discouraged when you make progress, no matter how slow or small. Instead, be inspired and stay motivated. The most important thing is to begin, even though the first step is the hardest. I believe that you should care just as much about the small things in your life as the big things. I agree with Vince Lombardi "Inches make champions" Take one small step right now. Don't ignore the small things. Remember, the kite flies because of it's tail. It's the little things that count.

Value the little things. One day you may look back and realise that they were the big things. I hope you are inspired and stay motivated in whatever you do, regardless how small it is.

Hj Hashim,
28th April, 2009
Posted by Hj Naburi
VPPR

CONGRATULATIONS TO Marcus Chee, ACB, CL for completing his ACS manual. So now Marcus is an Advance Communicator Silver (ACS)that fulfilled the requirement of 9 points in the Distinguished Club Program thus putting our club once again on the status of President's Distinguished Club for the sixth year running. Bravo and Kudos to all Toastmasters of Money Mastery. Keep up the good work comrades!

TM Hilary Kelechi (KC) did a splendid job as a first time Asst.SAA. He was also the best Table Topic Speaker for the evening. He has improved a lot in his speech and I am sure he will overcome his speech problem in no time soon. Looking forward for his Ice breaker speech in the next meeting.

Well done to Wilson Ten for delivering his ice-breaker speech. Congratulations to Atefeh (Ati) for being a good time keeper for the first time.

Our heartfelt thanks goes to Sandy Tan, CC, for being an appreciative and commendable General Evaluator for the meeting.

It was a very successful and fun filled meeting where we had 11 guests and 20 members
in attendance. We welcome the guests who had pledged to join the club.

SEE YOU AT OUR 7TH ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING (#173) ON TUESDAY 12TH MAY 2009

P.s. My apology for the very late reporting in the blog as I have not been feeling well lately.

Posted by Hj Naburi
VPPR

THE SPEECH THAT WON FRANCIS NG DTM THE DISTRICT 51 LGM POST

2009-05-10T15:08:00.005+08:00

At the Annual Convention of District 51 of Toastmasters International held recently in Kuching, Sarawak, Francis Ng DTM, our club Advisor was elected the Lieutenant Governor Marketing (Peninsula) for the term 2009-2010.
Before the election was carried on 17th April, 2009 each candidate was given two minutes to deliver their election speech. Francis Ng delivered the following speech that gave him his victory. Congratulations Francis., You made our club proud of you.

My fellow Toastmasters,

This election is not about the candidates. This election is not about me as an individual.
This election is about ALL of us - Toastmasters who share a common vision of empowering our members through better communication and leadership skills.

It is about the individual member who has many priorities in life – family, friends and work - and yet still makes the time to come to club meetings regularly, because he/she is seeking to achieve a dream to become a better speaker … a better leader … and ultimately … a better person.

And, it is about those clubs that are struggling to keep afloat and yet continue to march on because of the commitment, dedication and perseverance of their club Presidents and VPEs.

Yes, it is about ALL of us, who believe that we ARE making a positive and enduring contribution to making this world a better place, by helping our clubs to help our members to become better communicators and better leaders.

My fellow Toastmasters,

I truly believe in the mission of Toastmasters. With many of you I have sweated blood and tears in the service of Toastmasters.

Like all of you, I'm always guided by our 4 Core Values:
• Integrity
• Dedication to Excellence
• Service to the Member
• And, Respect for the Individual.

One day, we will all be called to stand up and make a difference.

For me, that day is TODAY - I'm answering this call to service by standing here.

Today, my friends, I ask YOU to answer this call with YOUR votes.

Vote Wisely, Vote for Service, Vote FRANCIS!

Posted by Hj Naburi, VPPR

KOK SOOK MENG COMPLETED HER CC MANUAL IN FIVE MONTHS, A RECORD BREAKER

2009-05-01T23:13:00.002+08:00

Toastmaster Kok Sook Meng completed her 10th project speech from the Basic Communication Manual at the Club meeting #171 held on 14th April 2009, thus achieving her Competent Communicator educational award and thus contributing towards the club DCP points bringing towards achieving the President's Distinguished Club status. For the record I believe Sook Meng completed her basic manual within five months, by far the shortest record time in the club. Congratulations to Sook Meng and you are an inspiration to the new club members and a good role model. You have shown to the others, it's a matter of whether you want to do it or not. If you want you can and once you have started you never look back...you move forward until you achieve your target. Indeed you have "seize every opportunity and take chances" and that's the theme for the meeting, a historic ocassion for Sook Meng's life in her toastmastering journey. Well let's see what the President has to say about the theme.

TAKE CHANCES!

SEIZE EVERY OPPORTUNITY. TAKE CHANCES.

For many years "safety first has been the saying of the human race.....but it has never been the motto of leaders. A leader must face danger. He must take the risk, the blame and face the brunt of th storm,says Herbert Casson. If you want to be successful, you must either have a chance or take one. Please remember fellow toastmasters that you can't get your head above water if you never stick your neck out.
If you never take risks, you will never accomplish great things. Everybody dies, but not everyone has lived. As Elizabeth Kenny said "It is better to be a lion for a day than sheep all your life" If you dare for nothing, you might as well hope for nothing. If you don't risk anything , you risk even more.
Whenever you see a successful person, I guarantee that person took risks and made courageous decisions. Become known for doing what people said couldn't be done. If you found yourself throughout life never scared, never embarrassed, never disappointed or hurt, it means you have never taken any risk.
You have an opportunity to improve yourself. If you want your life to get better, you'll have to take risks. There is simply no way you can grow without taking chances.
Hj Hashim
14 April, 2009
Posted by: Hj Naburi
VPPR

Other members who presented their project speeches were:
TM Julia Leong who delivered her speech #3 - Get to the Point: titled Angels of My Life" a very inspiring dramatic story about her experience being a victim of Fire, which won her the best project speaker for the evening. Congratulations Julia.
Another inspiring speaker was TM Erica Soon with her delivery of speech # 5: Your Body Speaks: titled-"Winners Never Quit and Quitters Never Win.
TM Sharon Siow making a strong come back by delivering her speech #7: Research Your Topic - titled: "Lack of Sleep"

Our appreciation and thanks to ACB, CL Yau Chau Foong for his generous and encouraging comments as the General Evaluator of the meeting.
Congratulations to TM Atefeh for being the first time "Ah" Counter and Wilson Ten for first time ASAA

It was another good and successful meeting enjoyed by all. Kudos everyone and keep up the good work.

Posted by Hj Naburi
VPPR

NOW IS YOUR TIME-THEME FOR CLUB MEETING #170

2009-04-01T00:01:00.004+08:00

THE PRESIDENT'S WORDS OF WISDOM
Now is your time.....there are two distinct times when a person is most likely to quit; after a mistake or a victory.
Ladies & gentlemen, once you are moving you can keep on moving. Does Michael Jordan stop shooting after making his first basket? Did John Grisham quit writing after his first best-seller? Successful people know that each victory buys an admission ticket to a more challenging opportunity. Now is your time....

One of the greatest benefits of success is the opportunity to do more. The more you do, the more you can do. Perhaps it is good thing that you haven't seen all your dreams come true. For when you get all you wish for, you will be miserable. To be forever reaching out, to remain unsatisfied is the key to momentum.

Fellow toastmasters, now is your time...the first step towards going somewhere significant is to decide that you are not going to saty where you are. When you have a victory, comfort and money will come but don't confuse comfort with happiness and money with success.

It's not what you get that makes you successful; rather, it is what you are continuing to do with what you've got that's a better yardstick. The person who is satisfied with what he has done will never become famous for what he will do. So now is your time....I wish you the very best.

Hj Hashim Adnan
24 March, 2009
Posted by: Hj Naburi Idin

A NEW CC IS BORN IN OUR CLUB....

CONGRATULATIONS TO Calista Chan for delivering her 10th speech and thus completing the basic communication manual and achieved her Competent communicator award. Well done Calista and thank you for your great effort in contributing the 9th point to our DCP goals thus making the club achieved the PRESIDENT'S DISTINGUISHED CLUB Status. Hopefully by the next meeting which is due on 14th April, 2009, TM Kok Sook Meng will achieve her CC and thus contributing another point making the club achieve 100% DCP points. Kudos to all you wonderful toastmasters for your great performance and work.

NEW MEMBERS WERE INDUCTED

The induction of new members were officiated by Liew Siew Ying, the VPE, and we welcome the following into our family of Money Mastery KL Toastmasters and congratulations for being voted in as members to:
TM Julia Leong (Julia)
TM Hilary Kelechi Anabi (KC) from Nigeria.
TM Atefeh Sadat Ajaghi (Ate) from Iran.
TM Alvin Wong Thean Kiat (Alvin)
TM Wilson Ten Kine Hong (Wilson)

Special thanks and appreciation to DTM SK Ratnam,from extol TMC for being our General Evaluator for the meeting.

Everyone played their roles to the expectation of the members and kudos to CTM Aziz Youp who kept tickling everyone's funny bones throughout the meeting being the TME for the evening. To all the first time role players kudos and well done to all of you especially to Alvin Wong, as Ah counter and Hilary Kelechi as Time Keeper.

Our thanks and gratitude to CTM Paul Tan our nasi lemak caterer who made everyone happy and delighted enjoying the nasi lemak after his long absence.

Posted by: Hj Naburi Idin, ACB, CL.
VPPR

NEWS MAKER IN THE CLUB

2009-03-24T03:00:00.004+08:00

At the coming District Annual Convention to be held in Kuching on April 17th to 19th, among the highlights of events will be the election of District Officers. One of the posts that will be for grabs is the Lt. Governor Marketing. Our Club Advisor DTM Francis Ng is vying for the post. He has all the qualifications and experiences to be elected to the post. For the record he is our charter secretary, past VPE, Past President, Past Area Governor (President's Distinguished), Past Division Governor (President's Distinguished), Immediate Past District 51 Public Relations Officer, the first member of the club to achieve the Distinguished Toastmaster Award. Currently he is the Division W Club Extension Chair. He was selected as our District's Area Governor and Division Governor Of The Year 2005/2006 and 2006/2007 respectively. As a recognition for his contribution and tireless effort to ensure our club maintain it's high standard and President's Distinguished Status, the club honored him to be the unofficial honorary adviser to the club. As members of Money-Mastery-KL TMC it is our obligations to help Francis in campaigning for his election for the post of District 51-Peninsula LGM (2009/2010) Remember our Club Motto "Friends Helping Friends To Succeed". Those members who has signed up to be delegates at the convention must continue to campaign for Francis until the voting day. Good Luck Francis. Your success is our success and you will add another notch to our club's achievements.

Posted by:
Hj Naburi
VPPR

LATEST REPORT ON CLUB PERFORMANCE IN DCP GOALS

2009-03-24T02:25:00.004+08:00

GOAL RECOGNITION
Achieve any five of 10 goals Distinguished Club
Achieve any seven of 10 goals Select Distinguished Club
Achieve any nine of 10 goals President Distinguished Club

Club 8141 - "Money Mastery-KL Toastmasters Club"
District: 51 Division: W Area: 1
Membership Base: 46
Membership to Date: 48
GOAL ACTUAL ACHIEVED
[1] CCs 2 1
[2] Additional CCs 2 0
[3] ACs 1 1 *
[4] Additional ACs 1 0
[5] CL, AL, or DTM 1 1 *
[6] Additional CLs, ALs, or DTMs 1 1 *
[7] New Members 4 4 *
[8] Additional New Members 4 13 *
[9] Officers Trained (both required)

June-August 4 7
and December-February 4 6 *
[10] Submitted on time (both required)

October or April Renewal 1 2
and Officer List 1 1 *

Total Goals Achieved To-Date: 7

We are SELECT DISTINGUISHED CLUB as of today, 24th March, 2009. The Latest point was contributed by Hj Naburi Idin who achieved ACB on 19th March, 2009. Congratulations! This is possible with the cooperation of our advisor DTM Francis Ng.
We need only 3 more points to be President's Distinguished. At tonight's meeting Calista Chan will deliver her 10th speech to complete her CC project speeches. Well done Calista who will add another point to our DCP goals. So those who have committed please do your part in order to keep the Club's record of President's Distinguished Club for the 7th consecutive year. Kudos and keep up the good work to all members of Money Mastery KL TMC.

Posted by:
Hj Naburi
VPPR

Meeting #169 = 10th March, 2009

2009-03-12T00:45:00.003+08:00

DWELL IN POSSIBILITY

That's the theme for our first meeting in March. It is appropriately coined by our TME Gean Lau especially under the present Economic Slowdown faced by all Malaysians as a result of Global Economic Downturn. As usual the President, Hj Hashim expounded his words of wisdom in tune with the theme of our meeting.

"To dwell in possibility is good, but to act when you see a possibility is more important. Seize the moment! Opportunities are coming to you everyday... that's the possibility...you must believe in it. Today was once the future from which you expected so much in the past. Live for today. Don't let what you have within your grasp today be lost entirely because only the future intrigued you and the past disheartened you.

Doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment. When can you live if not now? All the flowers of tomorrow are in the seeds of today. Ellen Metcalf said, "There are many people who are at the right place at the right time but do not know it" It is OK to take time to plan the possibility, but when the time of action has arrived, stop thinking and go for it.

The most important thing in our lives is what we are doing now. Know the real value of today. I agree with Jonathan Swift when he said, " May you live all the days of your life" The future that you long and dream for begins today. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "Write it in your heart that every day is the best day of the year"

The regrets that most people experience in life come from failing to act when having the opportunity. Albert Dunning said, "Great opportunities come to all, but many do not know that they have met them"

So ladies and gentlemen, dwell and act on those possibilities.

Delivered by Hj Hashim
and posted by Hj Naburi

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HOPE AND CHANGE - The Theme for Club Meeting #168

2009-03-12T00:02:00.003+08:00

The President, Hj Hashim Adnan, CC, CL in his opening remark for the meeting held on 24th February, 2009 expounded his words of wisdom as follows:

HOPE AND CHANGE

Most People stop growing in life because they are unwilling to make changes but they have lots of hopes.

All mankind is divided into three classes:
(1) those who are unchangeable,
(2) those who are changeable and
(3) those who cause the change.
You cannot stand still and make changes only through hopes.
You must go forward and be open to those adjustments that improve you.
The most unhappy people are those who fear change.

It has been said many times: You can't make an omelet without breaking an egg.
Accomplishment automatically results in change.
One change makes way for the next, giving us the opportunity to grow and achieve our hopes. You must change to master change. Playing it safe is probably the most unsafe thing in the world.

So open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values. You are custom-built for change. You are not a rock.
AT any point, at any age, any of us, you and me, can change.

Delivered by Hj Hashim
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The meeting was called to order by TM Sanjay and did a very good job as ASAA for the evening. KH Song as TME for the meeting guided us very well through the agenda which presented five speakers who did their assignment speeches in an excellent manner. The best project speaker went to Calista Chan who need only to deliver two more speeches to complete her BASIC manual to gain her CC award. Congratulations Calista and keep up the good work.
Hj Naburi aptly gave a toast to EK Yeo, whom he knighted as the unsung hero of the club for going the extra miles for the club and making sure that the club keep to the already high standard set.
The club happily welcomed our four guests comprising of Natalie, KC, Ati and Alvin who indicated that they were happy with what they witnessed and declare their wish to join the Club. KC and Ati are both foreign students from Nigeria and Iran respectively.
The evaluation session was led by the General Evaluator DTM Lee Swee Seng from Premier Advanced TMc who gave high praise to the club and our sincere thanks and appreciation to him.

Posted by Hj Naburi, VPPR
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RECENT EVENTS

2009-03-11T23:05:00.006+08:00

Your writer was on strike, not really, but was not in the best of health and that means not in the proper state of mind to awaken the inner strength and to pluck the courage to tap on the key board of the laptop. So my humble apology to all.
Late postings.
Feb. 10th, 20009 - We had our Table Topics Contest and the Winners were:
1st. and champion Liew Siew Yin
First Runner Up: Hj Hashim Adnan
Second Runner Up: Marcus Chee

Liew Siew Yin represented our club at the W1 area Table Topics Contest held on 7th March, 2009 at the MIA venue in Brickfields. However the champion was Ms Fisher from KL Advanced TMc, Johnny from MIA TMc came second and Ra Delina from KPMG KL TMc came third.

Our K L Loh, the International Speech champion from our Club this year also came first runner-up at the W1 area contest held at the same time and place. The champion went to Raja Ahmad Muzamir of KPMG KL TMc. Karen Pang from MIA TMc was placed third.

The Division W International Speech and Table Topics Contests 2008-2009 will be held on Saturday, 28th March, 2009, at Sunway University College at 2:00 pm.
Anyone who wants to buy tickets for the contest may do so by contacting or informing the President, Hj Hashim Adnan.

All the speeches given by the contestants at both the International Speech Contest and the Table Topics Contest were recorded and posted into youtube by Victor Wan. Thanks to the initiative taken by Victor and job well done for it will be in youtube for eternity. All you have to do to access the speech is simply by typing the full name of the speakers at Google Search. So enjoy yourself. And congratulations to all the winners and to the brave members who took part in both the contests.

INCOMING AREA GOVERNOR FOR W1 was elected at the Area Council meeting held after the contest and she is Miss Syamala from Bangsar TMc.

Posted by: Hj Naburi, VPPR
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AAADD

2009-02-21T13:52:00.002+08:00

People, this is so me, it is so not funny!

Pat

AAADD - KNOW THE SYMPTOMS

Thank goodness there's a name for this disorder. Somehow I feel better, even though I have it!!

Recently, I was diagnosed with A.A.A.D.D. - Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder.

This is how it manifests itself:

I decide to water my garden.

As I turn on the hose in the driveway,

I look over at my car and decide it needs washing.

As I start toward the garage,

I notice mail on the hall table,

I decide to go through the mail before I wash the car.

I lay my car keys on the table,

Put the junk mail in the waste bin under the table,

And notice that the bin is full.

So, I decide to put the bills back on the table and take out the rubbish first.

But then I think,

Since I'm going to be near the post box

When I take out the rubbish anyway,

I may as well pay the bills first.

I take my cheque book off the table,

And see that there is only one cheque left.

My extra cheques are in my desk in the study,

So I go to my desk where I find the cup of tea I'd been drinking.

I'm going to look for my cheques,

But first I need to push the tea aside, so that I don't accidentally knock it over.

The tea is getting cold, so I decide to put it in the kitchen to wash up.

As I head toward the kitchen with the tea,

A vase of flowers on the worktop catches my eye -- they need water.

I put the tea on the worktop and

Discover my reading glasses that

I've been searching for all morning.

I decide I'd better put them back on my desk,

But first I'm going to water the flowers.

I set the glasses back down on the worktop,

Fill a container with water and suddenly spot the TV remote.

Someone left it on the kitchen table.

I realize that tonight when we go to watch TV,

I'll be looking for the remote,

But I won't remember that it's on the kitchen table,

So I decide to put it back in the sitting room where it belongs,

But first I'll water the flowers.

I go to pour some water in the flowers, but most of it spills on the floor;

So, I set the remote back on the table,

Get some towels and wipe up the spill.

Then, I head down the hall trying to Remember what I was planning to do.

At the end of the day:

The car isn't washed

The bills aren't paid

There is a cold cup of tea sitting on the worktop

The flowers don't have enough water,

There is still only 1 cheque in my cheque book,

I can't find the remote,

I can't find my glasses,

And I don't remember what I did with the car keys.

Then, when I try to figure out why nothing got done today,

I'm really baffled because I know I was busy all damn day,

And I'm really tired.

I realize this is a serious problem,

And I'll try to get some help for it,

But first I'll check my e-mail....

Do me a favour: Forward this message to anyone you know,

Because I don't remember who the hell I've sent it to.

Don't laugh -- if this isn't you yet, your day is coming!!

Enrich Your Speech Content

2009-02-08T13:21:00.001+08:00

A Five-Part Formula for Making a Content-Rich Speech

If you want to be known as a content-rich speaker, you will want to follow my PARTS Formula.

(By Craig Valentine, 1999 World Champion of Public Speaking)

P = Phrase

Have you ever seen a story or speech that was all over the place? Have you ever given one? Chances are this is because the speaker did not start creating the speech in the right place. You should start creating each story (or other anchor) by writing out your Foundational Phrase. This is the phrase upon which that entire story is built.

For example, I tell a story about a boss who tried to keep me with the company by offering me more money. The Foundational Phrase to that story is “Your Dream is not for sale.” This is the point my audience walks away remembering. If you want your audience to remember your point, then leave them with powerful Foundational Phrases for each anchor you use. Make sure these phrases are fewer than 10 words.

A – Anchor

Every point you make should be anchored by an illustration of some kind. I use 4 kinds of anchors in almost every speech I give. I call these my “4 As for For Anchors.” They are

1. Anecdote (a story)

2. Activity

3. Analogy

4. Acronym

You probably already know that the essence of public speaking is to “tell a story and make a point (i.e. Bill Gove).” However, in longer speeches, you should mix up your anchors and use activities, analogies, and acronyms along with your anecdotes. Just make sure every single point you make is illustrated with an anchor. When your audience remembers the anchor, they will not forget the point, especially if the point is made using a strong Foundational Phrase.

R = Reflection

It’s not good enough for our audience to listen to us. Our job is to get them to listen to themselves. Through our speech, they should think and realize how they will use the tools (processes, formulas, recipes, steps, etc.) to improve their own lives. To do this, we must get them to reflect rather than just listen. You can do this by asking questions before, during, and after your anchor. For example:

Before getting into the story I mentioned above, I ask, “What do you think is the number one thing that stands between most people and their dreams.”

During the story, I talk about how we sometimes let the good get in the way of the best. I then turn to my audience and ask, “When it comes to your goals and dreams, are you too good to be great?”

After the story, I ask my initial question again by stating, “So let me ask you now, what is the number one thing that stands between most people and their dreams?” Hopefully they have changed their perspective a bit because of the anchor.

Another example I use is in regards to imagination as I explain how I stepped on the world championship stage at least 1000 times in my mind before I ever got there physically. To get them to reflect on their lives, I ask my audiences, “What stage are you stepping on mentally at least 1000 times?” The key is to allow enough silence for them to be able to answer (in their own minds of course).

How are you currently getting your audiences to go beyond listening and to start reflecting?

T = Technique

If you want to have a long-lasting impact on your audience, then it is not enough to just give them theory. You must give them a way to turn that theory into a practice. For example, when I extol the benefits of using your imagination, I cannot simply just stop there. I must give them a technique for doing so. So I say to my audiences, “Write down your perfect day. Use all your senses, etc.” This gives them a way to turn the theory of imagination into something they can actually do.

When I talk to managers about innovation, I give them a process for using a WIP (Weekly Improvement Plan). Whenever the managers use the WIP, or my other audience members write down their perfect day, guess what? I am still speaking to them! What techniques (processes, tangible things to do) are you giving to your audiences?

S =Sale

Finally, it’s important to understand that when you are in speaking, you are in sales. We must learn to sell our messages and a great way to do this is to use “If…then” statements. For example, you might use the following:

“If you write down your perfect day, then you will find yourself moving towards your goals, dreams, and aspirations, even while you are sleeping.” [Opportunity for gain]

“If you don’t embrace this change, you will put your entire team at risk.” [Fear of loss]

Show them what they can get when they take an action, and show what they might end up with when they don’t.

Final thoughts:

This is the tip of the iceberg to the PARTS Formula. There are many dos and don’ts that go under each of these 5 keys. However, if you start reflecting on them now, then you will see areas you can immediately improve with your very next speech.

Coming next...

What is the definition of globalization?

2009-02-02T23:31:00.001+08:00

Question: What is the truest definition of Globalization?

Answer: Princess Diana's death.

Question: How come?

Answer: An English princess

with an Egyptian boyfriend

crashes in a French tunnel,

driving a German car

with a Dutch engine,

driven by a Belgian who was drunk

on Scottish whisky, (check the bottle before you change the spelling)

followed closely by Italian Paparazzi,

on Japanese motorcycles;

treated by an American doctor,

using Brazilian medicines.

This is sent to you by an American,

using Bill Gate's technology,

and you're probably reading this on your computer,

that uses Taiwanese chips,

and a Korean monitor,

assembled by Bangladeshi workers

in a Singapore plant,

transported by Indian lorry-drivers,

hijacked by Indonesians,

unloaded by Sicilian longshoremen,

and trucked to you by Mexican illegals.....

That, my friends, is Globalization

If you think it's funny

2009-01-31T23:35:00.001+08:00

If you think it's funny click on the url below

Funny Pictures

NEWS & EVENTS IN BRIEF

2009-01-23T00:19:00.003+08:00

CLUB INTERNATIONAL SPEECH CONTEST:
IT was held on Tuesday, 13th January, 2009, the first meeting for the year, during which 11 participants took part witnessed by 30 plus members of the audience comprising of guests and club members. KL Loh once again emerged champion for three consecutive years and awarded the club's challenge trophy. First Runner up went to Hj. Hashim Adnan, the Club President and the second runner-up went to Marcus Chee. The winner KL Loh will represent the club at the area level contest soon. Congatulations to the winners.

Due to the overwhelming response to the contest there wasn't enough time to conduct the Table Topics Contest on the same night. So watch out members and take note that the Table Topics Contest will be held on 10th February, 2009. It is expected more than a dozen participants will take part.

Sat. 18th January, 2009, the TOC Toastmasters Club (The Otomotif College) was chartered.
TM Kok Sook Meng did her speech #6 at the orientation meeting and she did very well to impress the members of staff of the TOC. Appreciated by the Div W Club Extension Chair, DTM Francis Ng to the following who were present at the orientation meeting; Geoff Andrew, our club mentor, Dr Sharon Tong, Ivy Cherng, Hedzrin and Hazri from UEM TMC, Satchit, W1AG, Usha and Thilaga from MIA, Hj Naburi and Siva from Tamil KL TMC. Mdm Adelaine, the CEO and founder of the college was elected the pro-tem cum Charter President of the Club.

Tues; 20th January, 2009: Themed 'Happy and Prosperous New Year' meeting was attended by 23 people including 6 guests who were very impressed by the meeting and four of them have committed to join the club. Calista and Sook Meng delivered their #7 speeches and Hj Naburi conducted a well participative seminar on Effective Listening Skills very much appreciated by the audience. Everyone was in a festive mood. Most of the members complied with the wishes of the first timer TME, CC Cindy Foong who proved her mettal that she was indeed a fabulous MC for the evening. She was well commended by the General Evaluator, DTM Lim Kah Hong from Mihrm TMC and District 51 Treasurer. In the absence of the President, Hj Hashim, the VPE Liew Siew Ying played a gracious hostess at the meeting being the acting President for the evening. Gean Lau conducted a creative table topics which put some speakers in a spot as the topics ware quite mind boggling. Everyone was in a joyous mood and given golden oranges and fortune cookies to take home. CONG XI FA CAI EVERYONE!

Posted by Hj Naburi, VPPR

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CHANGING MEETING VENUES CREATIVE WAY TO RENEW ENTHUSIASM AT MEETINGS

2009-01-23T00:10:00.001+08:00

Different Venues

The venue for meetings is very important. If meetings are always held at the same place, there is a tendency to say the same thing and think the same way. One way to get off this situation is to hold meetings at different venues.

There are many possibilities :

- Changing meeting rooms within the company itself . It will also provide an opportunity for the people from various departments to get to know each others’ work better.

- Meeting in the suppliers or customers premises and inviting them to join in the meeting.

- Holding meetings in an outlying holiday resort where the attendees are casually dressed.

- Having outdoor meetings to tie in with some games

The possibilities are endless. It is up to you to create the right environment. You may even occasionally surprise them such as holding a meeting in the jungle, by the beach or on a cruise ship. You need not spend a lot of money. All you need is some creativity in selecting the venue.

The above are just a sampling of the ways in which innovative companies conduct their meetings to generate new ideas to fuel their phenomenal growth. Is your company ready to conduct its meetings differently? I hope this article will provide you with some food for thought.

Overall, meetings should be fun and enjoyable. Those attending the meeting should be imbued with infectious enthusiasm. Your company will then become known as a fun company and creative people will flock to work for you. These are the gold-collar workers who will propel your company to a path of sustainable prosperity.

*The author, Dr. Yew Kam Keong is an international speaker, trainer and consultant on creativity. His clients include multinational corporations in Malaysia and other countries in the region. He is the best-selling author of the book: YOU ARE CREATICE – LET YOUR CREATIVITY BLOOM.

WELL MEMBERS I GOT THIS IDEA FROM THE ARTICLE LET'S GET CREATIVE....INFUSE YOUR CLUB WITH VITAMIN C......CREATIVITY...

UNFORTUNATELY NO ONE RESPONDED TO MY PROPOSAL TO HAVE A PICNIC CUM MEETING AT THE KL LAKE GARDEN???!!!!

HJ NABURI

VPPR

Pernec Toastmasters Club - the second club for 2009 in Division W

2009-01-13T14:15:00.002+08:00

CONGRATULATIONS TO PERNEC TOASTMASTERS CLUB and welcome to the toastmasters fraternity.
This club was formed on 8th January, 2009 at the PERNEC factory in Ulu Klang. Led by the CEO En Zalman some forty members of staff of pernec form and charter the Club. Led by DTM Francis NG, Dr Sharon, Singam, Paul Tan, HJ Naburi KH song, Ernest, Victor, Chuan Seng, Tony and Edwin played their respective roles in conducting the orientation meeting for Pernec members.
Well Done, everyone.

A NEW CLUB IS BORN - Y.S.P. TOASTMASTERS CLUB-A NEW YEAR BABY

2009-01-04T13:44:00.006+08:00

3RD JANUARY 2009 - ON A Saturday morning drizzle, three days into the year 2009, a group of MMKL toastmasters trooped to the VADS building in Taman Tun (TTDI) to help "deliver " a new year baby - The Y.S.P. Toastmasters Club. Congratulations to the staff of YSP who became charter members of the club and welcome to the world of toastmastering under the auspices of Toastmasters International. Congratulations to Miss Ong Sze Ting, the protem President and her line up of protem excos.

Well done to IPP Tan Ben Hoe, PP Alwin Chua, PP Chong Huey Yee, PP MK Low, and Charter President Hj Naburi, PAGW6 Paul Tan, ADGWM N.J.Singam, AGW4 Fan Chen Keat, Metropolitan Bilingual TM Sam Leong and ex Maybank TM Ng Thian Watt who made up the team of role players led by Div. W Club Extension Chairman DTM Francis Ng to perform the Orientation Meeting for the new Club, Y.S.P. TMC. The orientation meeting was conducted very successfully and a compressed toastmasters meeting was demonstrated to more than 30 members of the management and staff of YSP Industries (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd.

The majority of the team members comprise of Past Presidents of MMKL TMC who played their role in the true ESPRIT DE CORP of our club. According to the Div. W Club Extension Chairman, Francis Ng the credit to sponsor the new club has been awarded to MMKL TMC. This is another feather in our cap. Congratulations and Kudos to the team. This augurs well for our club and a good start, good feng shui, a good first activity for the year 2009. Every member of our club should be very proud of our club for it's high leadership performance and standard set for the club.

Money Mastery-KL TMC has been well known for being one of the leading clubs if not THE LEADING CLUB in Div. W as well as District 51. We have managed to established as a Distinguished Club right from the first year of its formation in 2002 and thereafter achieving President Distinguished Club for the last six years running. I hope and pray that every member is conscious that they belong to a very Distinguished Club and should be proud of it. Everyone must realise that ONE PERSON alone could not make this happen. It is the contributions and the combined efforts of every member to contribute towards this achievement. Of course some members may contribute in a very passionate way and some a little less passionate but the main thing is everyone contributes. It is the team spirit and the Esprit de corp, tolerance and the healthy social environment and understanding amongst each and everyone of us that's responsible for our achievement. No one person can claim that credit to himself. The club does not belong to one person only. One person cannot make a club. We must remember that!

We have already built up the most beautiful and wonderful organisation with a crown jewel on our head. Are we going to destroy all that glory? Of course NOT! I am sure we all LOVE our club. Let's keep it that way. PLEASE do not allow trivial matters and personal egotism and pride and personal agendas to destroy the good name and image of our club. The club does not owe anything to any individual member but we members owes a lot to the club. I am proud to be the Charter President of this highly distinguished club. REMEMBER the words of CC Cindy Foong in her very inspiring 1oth speech urging us to CHANGE propitiously for the new year 2009, "Find in yourself to change...open up your mind to all possibilities......be grateful......appreciate life....enjoy life's journey.......live for the moment....life is short......" "Let us give our sincere and wholehearted commitment and conviction and be a teamplayer and keep up the teamwork.."

So fellow members of MMKL TMC let us enjoy our toastmastering journey with happiness, joy and fun while striving for greater achievements and success not only for ourseleves but for the club true to the motto of "Friends Helping Friends to succeed and make their dreams a reality"
Thus let us"Awaken our Inner Strength" and build up "The Courage To Conquer" ONWARDS!!

Posted by Hj Naburi, VPPR

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HONESTY IS THE BEST POLICY - CHANGE FOR THE BETTER

2009-01-04T00:20:00.004+08:00

MESSAGE FOR THE NEW YEAR…..CHEERS! !!!

This is truly a Great Inspiration. ....

A successful business man was growing old and knew it was time
to choose a successor to take over the business.

Instead of choosing one of his Directors or his children, he
decided to do something different. He called all the young executives
in his company together.

He said, 'It is time for me to step down and choose the next CEO.
I have decided to choose one of you. 'The young executives were
shocked, but the boss continued. 'I am going to give each one
of you a SEED today - one very special SEED. I want you to plant
the seed, water it, and come back here one year from today with
what you have grown from the seed I have given you. I will then
judge the plants that you bring, and the one I choose will be
the next CEO.'

One man, named Jim, was there that day and he, like the others,
received a seed. He went home and excitedly, told his wife the
story. She helped him get a pot, soil and compost and he planted
the seed. Everyday, he would water it and watch to see if it had
grown. After about three weeks, some of the other executives began
to talk about their seeds and the plants that were beginning to grow.

Jim kept checking his seed, but nothing ever grew.

Three weeks, four weeks, five weeks went by, still nothing.

By now, others were talking about their plants, but Jim didn't have
a plant and he felt like a failure.

Six months went by -- still nothing in Jim's pot. He just knew he
had killed his seed. Everyone else had trees and tall plants, but
he had nothing. Jim didn't say anything to his colleagues, however.
He just kept watering and fertilizing the soil - He so wanted the
seed to grow.

A year finally went by and all the young executives of the company
brought their plants to the CEO for inspection.

Jim told his wife that he wasn't going to take an empty pot.
But she asked him to be honest about what happened. Jim felt sick
to his stomach, it was going to be the most embarrassing moment
of his life, but he knew his wife was right. He took his empty pot
to the board room. When Jim arrived, he was amazed at the variety
of plants grown by the other executives. They were beautiful --
in all shapes and sizes. Jim put his empty pot on the floor and
many of his colleagues laughed, a few felt sorry for him!

When the CEO arrived, he surveyed the room and greeted his young
executives.

Jim just tried to hide in the back. 'My, what great plants, trees,
and flowers you have grown,' said the CEO. 'Today one of you will
be appointed the next CEO!'

All of a sudden, the CEO spotted Jim at the back of the room with
his empty pot. He ordered the Financial Director to bring him to
the front. Jim was terrified. He thought, 'The CEO knows I'm a
failure! Maybe he will have me fired!'

When Jim got to the front, the CEO asked him what had happened
to his seed - Jim told him the story.

The CEO asked everyone to sit down except Jim. He looked at Jim,
and then announced to the young executives, 'Behold your next
Chief Executive Officer!

His name is Jim!' Jim couldn't believe it. Jim couldn't even grow
his seed.

'How could he be the new CEO?' the others said.

Then the CEO said, 'One year ago today, I gave everyone in this
room a seed. I told you to take the seed, plant it, water it,
and bring it back to me today. But I gave you all boiled seeds;
they were dead - it was not possible for them to grow.

All of you, except Jim, have brought me trees and plants and
flowers. When you found that the seed would not grow, you
substituted another seed for the one I gave you. Jim was the
only one with the courage and honesty to bring me a pot with
my seed in it. Therefore, he is the one who will be the new
Chief Executive Officer!'

* If you plant honesty, you will reap trust

* If you plant goodness, you will reap friends

* If you plant humility, you will reap greatness

* If you plant perseverance, you will reap contentment

* If you plant consideration, you will reap perspective

* If you plant hard work, you will reap success

* If you plant forgiveness, you will reap reconciliation

* If you plant faith in GOD, you will reap a harvest

So, be careful what you plant now; it will determine what you will reap later.

'Whatever You Give To Life, Life Gives You Back'

Contributed by: SKL WALIA
Posted by: Hj Naburi, VPPR.

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Brain Teaser for 2009

2009-01-02T18:05:00.004+08:00

Irish Maths Test

An Irishman applied for a job on a construction site, but the foreman wouldn't hire him until he passed a simple maths test.
Here is your first question, the foreman said. "Without using numbers, represent the number 9."
"Without numbers?" The Irishman says, "Dat is easy," and proceeded to draw three trees.

"What's this?" the boss asked.
"Ave you got no brain? Tree and tree and tree make nine," said the Irishman.
"Fair enough," said the boss. "Here's your second question. Use the same rules, but this time the number is 99."
The Irishman stared into space for a while, then picked up the picture that he has just drawn and made a smudge on each tree. "Ere you go."

The boss scratched his head and said, "How on earth do you get that to represent 99?"
"Each of da trees is dirty now. So, it's dirty tree, and dirty tree, and dirty tree. Dat is 99."
The boss was getting worried that he's going to actually have to hire this Irishman, so he said, "All right, last question. Same rules again, but represent the number 100."
The Irishman stared into space some more, then he picked up the picture again and made a little mark at the base of each tree and says, "Ere you go. One hundred."

The boss looked at the attempt. "You must be nuts if you think that represents a hundred!"
The Irishman leaned forward and pointed to the marks at the base of each tree and said, "A little dog came along and crapped by each tree. So now you got dirty tree and a turd, dirty tree and a turd, and dirty tree and a turd, which makes one hundred."
"So, when do I start?"
Contributed by Julia Leong.
HAPPY NEW YEAR TO EVERYONE, MAY 2009 BRINGS YOU HAPPINESS, PROSPERITY, GOOD HEALTH AND PEACE. LET US PRAY TO THE ALMIGHTY TO SPARE ALL US FROM THE EVILS AND ECONOMIC SCOURGE THAT'S LOOMING AHEAD. BE POSITIVE AND HAVE PMA, POSITIVE MENTAL ATTITUDE AND TOGETHER WE WILL BRING OURSELVES AND OUR CLUB TO GREATER HEIGHTS. WHILE ENDEAVORING IN PURSUIT OF OUR INDIVIDUAL GOALS IN OUR TOASTMASTERS JOURNEY, LET US DO IT WITH HUMILITY, DIPLOMATICALLY, AND WITH MAGNANIMITY SO THAT WE DO NOT HURT OTHER PEOPLE'S FEELING AND WE AVOID BEING ACCUSED OF BEING A BRAGGARD, ARROGANT AND SELF CENTRED PERSON. THIS IS JUST AN ADVICE FROM AN OLD MAN WHO LOVES EVERYONE IN THE CLUB AND ALSO LOVE THE CLUB.
Posted by:
Hj naburi
VPPR
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X'mas Spirit At the last meeting of the year-23rd Dec.,2008

2008-12-25T02:55:00.006+08:00

ENTHUSIASM

Norman Vincent Peale once said “Think excitement, talk excitement, act out excitement, and you will become an excited person and be merry always. Life will take on a new zest, with deeper interests and greater meaning. You can talk, think, and act yourself into enthusiasm or dullness and into monotony or into unhappiness. By the same process you can build up inspiration, excitement and a surging depth of joy”.

You can succeed at almost anything for which you have limitless enthusiasm. The world belongs to the enthusiastic. A major difference between people is their level of enthusiasm. Your enthusiasm reflects your reserves, your unexploited resources and perhaps your future. You will never rise to great heights without joy and enthusiasm.

No one keeps up his enthusiasm automatically. Enthusiasm must be nourished with new actions, new aspirations, new efforts and new vision. It’s your own fault if your enthusiasm is gone. You have failed to feed it. What’s enthusiasm? Henry Chester answers, “Enthusiasm is nothing more or less than faith in action” Helen Keller said “Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement.” Nothing can be done without hope or confidence. It isn’t our position, but our disposition the makes us happy.

May I take this opportunity to wish the Christian “Merry Christmas” and to all of you a very Happy New Year.

Hashim Adnan

23 Dec 2008

HO..HO..HO.. EVERYONE were in the christmas spirit and we had a really enjoyable and fantastic christmas meeting. The turn up were good with almost everyone wore red attire as requested by the TME Huey Yee. The meeting started on time by the ASAA, Sanjay who led us in reciting the Toastmasters Promise and for a first timer, Sanjay did his job very well. Well done Sanjay.

The President took over from Sanjay wishing everyone merry christmas and he delivered the above invocation to the delights of everyone present. The President also expressed the gratitude and appreciation on behalf of the club, to KL Loh, ATM-G, and Mechmar Bhd., for their generous donation of RM2000 to the club fund as token of appreciation for us conducting the speech-craft workshop for the management staff of Mechmar.

The TME, Huey Yee, ACB, CL, being an experienced MC led the audience through the meeting with full of fun and laughter in the true meaning of X'mas spirit. Calista Chan and Sook Meng delivered their fifth project speeches, very much enjoyed by the audience. Gean Lau thrilled the audience with her hello, hello phone speech. and to top it all, much to the delights and appreciation of the audience, Cindy Foong did her 10th project speech with an inspiring speech urging everyone to look into the mirror and examine ourselves what have we really contributed anything to life. With the year 2008 coming to an end she urged everyone to change and become a postive minded person and to give commitment with full of conviction and to contribute to the club for us to maintain the standard excellence in the DCP goals of the club. With that speech Cindy Foong was declared the Competent Communicator, the first to achieve it for this term, and she was given a standing ovation. Kudos and congatulations to Cindy Foong, CC. We must give Cindy a special salute because she is a true example of a toastmaster with full of commitment, tenacity, and conviction and the courage to conquer the many hurdles in her life and because of her strong commitment she managed to complete the required CC assigments in FOUR years.

Ordinarily and in most cases, many would have given up and left the club. You are a fantastic and wonderful toastmaster, COMPETENT COMMUNICATOR CINDY FOONG. WELL DONE!

Many thanks goes to Tony Lim from Friendship TMC who was the General Evaluator of the evening. He was in full praise of the club and it's members with our high standard and quality meeting in all aspects of toastmastering. Congratulations to Money-Masteryans. Kudos and Keep it up.

The best awards for the evening goes to KL Loh, Best Evaluator, Sook Meng, Best Project Speaker, and President Hj Hashim, Best Table-Topic Speaker. Congratulations to the winners.

The meeting end up with everyone exchanging christmas gifts much to the joy and fun of everyone wishing each other Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year.

WISHING ONE AND ALL 1 YEAR OF HAPPINESS

12 MONTHS OF PROSPERITY,

52 WEEKS OF SUCCESS,

365 DAYS OF GOOD LUCK,

8760 HOURS OF GLADNESS,

525600 MINUTES OF GOODNESS

MAY YOU ENJOY EVERY SECOND OF THIS GREAT NEW YEAR 2009 WITH YOUR LOVED ONES!!!

MAY GOD BLESS YOU WITH A WORLD OF HAPPINESS, GOOD HEALTH,

PROSPERITY, PEACE & SUCCESS THROUGHOUT THE NEW YEAR..........

ALL THE BEST!!!!!!!!!!!!!:)

Few minds wear out; more rust out.

An idea's worth is directly proportional to the opposition created.

Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.

Posted by:

Hj Naburi Idin

VPPR

MINUTES OF EXCO MEETING HELD ON WED 17 DEC. 2008 AT A&W PJ

2008-12-24T00:11:00.004+08:00

On a pleasant Wednesday evening, the masterminds of Money Mastery KL Toastmaster Club gathered together at A&W in PJ for their exco meeting. The team of five was led none other than our inspiring president Tun Haji Hashim. Also present were the ingeniously humorous VPPR Haji Naburi, evermore dedicated VPM EK Yeo, brilliant and insightful Treasury KH Song and of course, the self-proclaimed diligent Secretary Gean Lau.

This Exco meeting was a follow-up on the few points highlighted during the TLI meeting on the previous Saturday. President Haji Hashim started off the meeting by addressing the immediate challenge of the club- sourcing for the right meeting venue. By 'right' I mean easily accessible and reasonably priced meeting venues. Ideas were immediately thrown into the air- using other club's meeting venue but on a different date or time; sourcing for other available meeting rooms in office blocks or association buildings such as WIM, MIA, or MIM; returning to the comfortable but pricey Shah Motel function rooms; or settling with the current venue but looking at other possible ways to increase the club's income. Treasury KH Song will proceed to explore those options together with our club adviser, Francis Ng.

Next on the menu was the need to increase bonding among club members, through organizing social activities and outings for the members. Our VPPR Haji Naburi agreed to the idea of setting up a committee to organize some social outings and also to the suggestion of our President- putting together a periodical newsletter to provide latest news updates of our club and members. The idea of having more joint meetings and club visiting trips was applauded by the team as a brilliant way to boost networking among our members also with other club's members.

In between burgers and fries, the point of membership retention plan was addressed. VPM EK Yeo promised to follow up with the sleeping members on encouraging them to join our fortnightly meeting again. As highlighted in the TLI meeting, the idea of having a name tag for our members and guests during the meeting would certainly make networking process easier. After all, having to keep repeating and spelling your name (if you happen to have a very special name) to everyone in the meeting is such a daunting task. VPM EK Yeo will follow up on getting ready the name tags.

With that consensus we moved on to the next item on the list- carrying out community services. After the highly enjoyable and educational speechcraft program conducted by our club with Mechmar Bhd. senior executives and management staffs, the excos are extremely motivated to do another speechcraft program, or perhaps a youth program next year. Hmm, if that realizes, it would be an interesting project for the club next year. Though it requires significant amount of effort in planning and organizing, the outcome is totally worth it! The opportunity of networking, the process of learning from and guiding others, sharing our passion about toastmaster-ing with non-toastmasters are truly satisfying!

After discussing all the above, the group revisited and reassessed the club educational goals of 2008-2009. Though we are proud and encouraged with current achievement of 5 DCP points and being the first in Area W1 to achieve distinguished status, we still need to put ourselves out for accomplishing the remaining goals. Some uncertainties are blotting out our chance in achieving the goal no. 2 (Earn an additional 2 CCs) and no. 5 (Earn one CL, ALB, ALS or DTM). At this point, the exco and members are advised to be as aggressive as ever and go the extra mile to bring home our long defended President Distinguished Status. Few suggestions were raised to help our club achieving the goals, such as showcasing our DCP progress chart at every meeting to boost up the engagement level of our members, conducting a speech marathon to provide our members with more speech opportunities, inviting special guest speakers to share some guidance and tips on public speaking, etiquette, humourous speaking, etc to improve members' communication and leadership skills.

As the exco meeting comes to an end, everyone in the team acknowledges the fact that this is indeed a challenging term for Money Mastery KL Toastmasters Club. Nevertheless, as what they always say: when there is a will, there is a way. With that in mind, the exco meeting adjourned at around 9pm, and everyone in the team brought home their own action plan.

Recorded by:

Gean Lau,

Secretary

Dated 17th Dec., 2008

Posted by Hj Naburi,

VPPR

BREAKING NEWS !!!!!

2008-12-21T23:07:00.003+08:00

Below is the update of the DCP goal:

			*Comments to date*
Goal 1	Earn two Competent Communicators (CCs)	- TM Cindy Foong - TM Gean Lau	Speech 9 Speech 5
Goal 2	Earn an additional two CCs	- TM Sharon Siow - TM Calista Chan - TM Erica - TM Kok Sook Meng	Speech 4 Speech 4 Speech 4 Speech 4
Goal 3	Earn one Advanced Communicator (AC Bronze, AC Silver or AC Gold)	- CTM ALS Paul Tan	Paul lost his manual, promised to re-do all the speeches in the missing manual within this term
Goal 4	Earn one additional AC Bronze, AC Silver or AC Gold	- CTM CL Haji Hashim	Work in progress
Goal 5	Earn one CL, AL Bronze, AL Silver, or DTM	- CTM, ALS Paul Tan	Achieved
Goal 6	Earn one additional CL, AL Bronze, AL Silver, or DTM	- CTM CL Haji Hashim	Achieved

I have full confidence in Cindy and Gean in achieving their CC this term based on their commitment and consistent past performance. :)

Main challenge is to get another 2 CCs. Working as a team, I would appreciate if you could help to encourage and urge Sharon, Calista, Erica and Sook Meng to achieve their CC before 30 June 2009.

I wish to highlight that Calista will not renew her membership as she is having difficulties in coming to our club from Sg. Long.

In addition, please help to put pressure to Paul in achieving his ACB whenever you see him :P

Thanks!

Siew Yin

That's the latest report from our VPE.

OUR CLUB IS THE FIRST TO ACHIEVE DISTINGUISHED STATUS IN AREA W1 AND WE RECEIVE RECOGNITION FROM THE AREA GOVERNOR SACHIT. THANK YOU AREA GOVERNOR.
WELL MEMBERS THAT MEANS WE HAVE ACHIEVED 5 DCP POINTS BUT ACCORDING TO FRANCIS WE HAVE ACHIEVED 7 DCP POINTS. CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL MEMBERS.

FOR THOSE WHO HAVE COMMITTED TO COMPLETE THEIR ASSIGNMENTS ON ANY OF THE MANUALS THAT WILL CONTRIBUTE TO DCP POINTS, PLEASE BE REMINDED TO COMPLETE THEM BEFORE JUNE 2009 TO ENSURE "PRESIDENT DISTINGUISHED STATUS" TO THE CLUB. IF YOU THINK THE NEXT 12 MEETINGS IS NOT ENOUGH TO ACCOMMODATE THE SPEAKING SLOTS NEEDED FOR YOUR SPEECH PROJECTS PLEASE CONTACT FRANCIS TO MAKE ARRANGEMENT FOR YOU TO DO YOUR PRESENTATIONS AT OTHER CLUB MEETINGS.

THE EXCOS HAD THEIR MEETING LAST WEDNESDAY 17TH DEC., 2008. A FEW THINGS HAVE BEEN PLANNED FOR THE NEXT HALF OF THIS TERM TO MAKE THE YEAR 2009 AN EXCITING AND ENJOYABLE AND HAPPY TO EVERY MEMBER.

IF ANY MEMBER HAVE ANY SUGGESTIONS PLEASE FEEL FREE TO VOICE IT OUT IN OUR BLOG OR YAHOO GROUPS EMAIL.

THE PRESIDENT REPORTED TO THE EXCOS THAT KL LOH, ATM-G REPRESENTING MECHMAR BHD. DONATED RM2000 TO OUR CLUB TREASURY AS TOKEN OF APPRECIATION FOR THE JOB WELL DONE BY OUR MEMBERS LED BY THE PRESIDENT TO CONDUCT THE SPEECHCRAFT WORKSHOP FOR THE MANAGEMENT STAFF OF MECHMAR BHD. A MILLION THANKS TO KL LOH AND MECHMAR BHD.

Why English is used in IT

2008-12-11T23:53:00.001+08:00

Why We Use English for IT

Why Malaysian Government insists on using English for math and science?

This is because the whole world uses the language as an information and/or
technology language. How dangerous it will be if we try to use Bahasa ,
especially in school. See example below:-

Hardware = barangkeras

Software = baranglembut

Joystick = batang gembira

Plug and Play = cucuk dan main

Port = lubang

Server = pelayan

Client = pelanggan

Try to translate this:

ENGLISH:
That server gives a plug and play service to the client using either
hardware or software joystick. The joystick goes into the port of the
client.

Now in BAHASA:
Pelayan itu memberi pelanggannya layanan cucuk dan main dengan menggunakan
batang gembira jenis keras atau lembut. Batang gembira itu akan dimasukkan
ke dalam lubang pelanggan.

Now you know...why?

contributed by KL Loh
Posted by Hj Naburi

BE KIND TO OTHERS AND SAY GOOD THINGS

2008-12-11T18:29:00.003+08:00

.THAT'S the theme of our meeting held last tuesday 9th Dec., 2008. This is the second last meeting of the year. The attendance was good and we had two guests, Mr and Mrs Chia brought in by Francis Ng, DTM. Based on the theme above, the President, Hj Hashim, CC, CL, gave his usual Presidential invocation in his opoening remarks. This is his inspirational invocation:

"THINK THANKS"

Please be reminded fellow members and readers, be aggressively thankful.
When it comes to living, do you take things for granted or take them with gratitude?
Thanksgiving is the attitude of a productive life.

No duty is more urgent than that of returning thanks in an expeditious manner.
How long has it been since you thanked those closest to you?
So, go to your beloved ones and say "THANK YOU"

Thanksgiving, you will find, creates power to your life because it expeditiously opens the generators of your heart to respond gratefully, to receive joyfully and to react creatively.
The person who forgets the language of gratitrude will never find themselves on speaking terms with happiness.

Dwight moody said, "be humble or you'll stumble" Henry Ward Beecher pointed out, "A proud man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves".
So think thanks and be kind to others and say good things.

The timing of the meeting was perfect and the events went according to schedules. The general evaluator, DTM Sivalingam from D'Utama TMC was very impressed and so was the 14 year old daughter of Marcus Chee, Merrilyn and gave high praise to the way we conduct our meeting. Kudos to all and keep it up.

The assigned ASAA, Khoshim CC, was absent and he was graciously replaced by Siew Yin, the ever efficient VPE, who did a very good job of making sure that everyone took their seats on time. Well done Siew Yin.

Paul Tan in his usual antics, was the TME and he coducted the meeting very well with his encouraging comments on the speakers. They were six of them. All spoke very well. Derrick Teh and Julia Leong delivered their ice-breakers speech. The audience was so impressed with Julia who spoke like a seasoned toastmaster was voted the best project speaker. Congratulations to Julia and Kudos, you are a champion speaker in the making. The new toastmasters who were graduates of the speechcraft from Mechmar really made their presence felt as they dominate the project speech agenda. Kok Sook Meng gave the audience an early advice of how to prepare for retirement with her "My Golden Home: My Dream" speech. Teh Yi Ling, dubbed as the number two chilli padi of the club after Huey Yee, telling us to stick to our life's path with her "Love Your Path". Sanjay another member from Mechmar also performed his duty as a time-keeper for the evening very well. I am sure KL Loh their big boss, was proud of his staff. Congratulations and kudos to all of you from Mechmar. Sook Meng is so enthusiastic to finish her ten speeches that I noticed she had booked her speaking slots at every meeting until April next year. Well done Sook Meng. I hope your enthusiasm will catch on with the rest of the members and the President can be rest assured that the DCP award is already in the bag.

We were warned by Cindy Foong that mother earth is in great danger in the wake of global warming, for it takes only six degrees celcius in increase temperature to put the whole world under water. Everyone was happy to see the eagerness of Cindy to complete her CC manual and by the next meeting she will deliver her tenth speech and be declared a Competent Communicator, CC. Kudos to Cindy and we look forward to your final speech.

Marcus Chee, ACB delivered his Advance Communication Story Telling project module #3 titled "the Colour of rights" in his dramatic manner and was well evaluated by KL Loh, ATM-G who shared the same passion and admiration of Civil Right hero of the late Rev Dr. Martin Luther King who inspired Barrack Obama, the President Elect of the USA. KL Loh was voted the best evaluator of the meeting. Well done to both of you.

The General Evaluator, DTM Sivalingam was a polished and very seasoned toastmaster and his detailed evaluation report was well appreciated by the members and we should take note of his advice to make our meeting a perfect and faultless meeting. However I promised Sivalingam for a good nasi lemak, unfortunately our "caterer" Paul Tan failed to supply it on the excuse that the "cook" went on strike and absconded to Kota Baru, Kelantan. So we forgave him for Francis took quick action to provide us with an assortment of "buffet" dishes and a few of us gobble up to their hearts content to overcome their " refugee-like " hunger. Luckily Huey Yee's birthday cake was spared till the end of the meeting and our "MIA" long lost member MK Low helped to cut the cake and sing Happy Birthday to the birthday chilli padi.

The next meeting which will be two days before Christmas, on 23rd December, the TME Huey Yee reminded everyone to bring a RM10 gift for exchange in the Christmas spirit and to celebrate X'mas everyone is advised to come in either green or red attire. Happy Christmas and Prosperous New Year to everyone.

Posted by:
Hj Naburi
VPPR

Photo, Photo and more PHOTO....

2008-11-28T13:45:00.009+08:00

First day of speechcraft

More photos for first day, please click here

Second day of speechcraft

For more photo on day 2, please click here

Posted by : Calista Chan

SPEECHCRAFT PROGRAM AT MECHMAR CORP BHD

2008-11-28T00:48:00.002+08:00

"Dear Members of MMKL,TM,
The Speechcraft Programme was a great success and it made all of us very happy.
1) I had benefited in making new friends and increased my bondage with fellow members.
2) Discovery of new skills, like How to Motivate Someone Reluctant to prepare and give his 1st speech.
3)Felt so happy when they did the speeches successfully. The best moment was when they end up a much better person and speaker, upon completion of the course and join us.
4) Calista's Ice Breaker speech, done on stage , did it very well, made me feel proud of her success and her courage and confidence.CONGRATULATIONS! Calista.
5) The help of Siew Yin and Huey Yee to help Calista and Erica with the proper use of English, grammar and Rhetorical Devices in their 4th Speech - How to say it - made Calista the BEST SPEAKER in our meeting on 25th Nov,2008. ERICA also did very well.Erica,Keep up the good work. Thank You - Siew Yin and Huey Yee, you also did a great job in the Speech Craft Programme.I appreciate both of you,thanks very much.
6) I was very impress with President Hj Hashim's speeches, delivered in a very professional way with dignity, excellent use of words,very expressive, spoken with feelings of joy.
CONGRATULATION! President Haji Hashim.Many members and participants said the same.
7) If I go on expressing my gratitude and appreciations, It will take me many hours, I will cut short my email.For the rest of you A Big THANK YOU!

Special Thanks to ACG KL Loh for the GRAND OPPORTUNITY and DTM Francis Ng for coming up with the very detail programme.To others,Thank you very much for being my friend.
Bye! SMILE and see you soon,"
Paul Tan

Paul Tan has said it in his email dated 27th Nov. 2008, to show his appreciation and to let everyone knows how successful was the speechcraft that we had conducted for the management staff and senior executives of Mechmar Corporation Bhd on the 22nd and 23rd of November 2008. For the record and references of the club I posted Paul Tan's message into the blog. Paul Tan summed it very well indeed. Thank you Paul Tan.

Just to add a few more points, according to Francis Ng who had experienced many speechcrafts before, this speechcraft was the best so far that he has attended and helped organise. Our profound appreciation and gratitude off course goes to Francis Ng who spent sleepless nights and more than 40 hours (according to him)to come up with the two-day speechcraft program for Mechmar Corporation. This program can be adapted as a template for future programs and can be customised to suit the needs of any organisation that wishes to organise such program for their staff and members.

Our profound appreciation and gratitude also goes to our ATM-G KL Loh who is the CEO of Mechmar Corporation who gave us the golden opportunity and who also gave us the the confidence and trust to our team to conduct the program for his company. Our team led by Francis and President Hj Hashim, as the Chief Coordinator, comprised of Hj Naburi, Paul Tan, Tan Ben Hoe, Liew Siew Yin, Chong Huey Yee, E. K. Yeo, Gean Lau, Janice Ooi, Calista, Erica, James, Cindy Foong, Jeff Saw and Khoshim and of course KL Loh who took up the roles of facilitators and time-keepers. Everyone performed to their level best and gave unselfish probono service to make the program a great success. Kudos, thank you and congratulations to all of you.

On the first day of the program, there were 23 paticipants including two lady managers from Jakarta and Medan and one manager from Pasir Gudang Johor. The program was so well coordinated like professionals and we proved to those involved, speechcrafters and facilitators alike, of the importance of time management as the events were conducted right on the dot according to the stipulated time. Within two days the speechcrafters were assigned to prepare and present five speeches and to a many of them it was a mind boggling exercises and they come up a better speakers at the end of the two days. As has been proven seven of them comprising of Julia, Sanjay, Sook Meng, Shirley, Teh Yi Ling, Bay Tan and Soon attended our meeting on the 25th Nov., 2008, two days after the progam. I observed that Sook Meng and Yi Ling had booked their slots to do their project speech no four in our next meeting to be held on 9th Dec., 2008. Kudos to both of you. This is indeed the best pay off to all of us who helped conduct the speechcraft program with great success.

SPEECH BLOOPERS MADE BY PRESIDENT BUSH

2008-11-27T01:38:00.001+08:00

GWB - We will miss him.......sort of

"The vast majority of our imports come from outside the country."
- George W. Bush

"If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure."
- George W. Bush

"One word sums up probably the responsibility of any Governor, and that one
word is 'to be prepared'."
- George W. Bush

"I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the
future."
- George W.Bush

"The future will be better tomorrow."
- George W. Bush

"We're going to have the best educated American people in the world."
- George W. Bush

"I stand by all the misstatements that I've made."
- George W. Bush

"We have a firm commitment to NATO, we are a part of NATO. We have a firm
commitment to Europe. We are a part of Europe."
- George W. Bush

"Public speaking is very easy."
- George W. Bush

"A low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people going to the polls."
- George W. Bush

"We are ready for any unforeseen event that may or may not occur."
- George W. Bush

"For NASA, space is still a high priority."
- George W. Bush

"Quite frankly, teachers are the only profession that teach our children."
- George W. Bush

"It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in
our air and water that are doing it."
- George W. Bush

"It's time for the human race to enter the solar system."
- George W. Bush

Contributed by: Hj Hashim Adnan, CC., CL
(President)
Posted By: Hj Naburi Idin, CTM.,CL
(VPPR)

AWESOME MEETING OF 162ND -25TH NOV. 2008

2008-11-26T14:57:00.002+08:00

It was really an awesome and fantastic meeting that we had last night. There were 21 members turned up for the meeting plus 7 new members from Mechmar Bhd who made up of the speechcraft graduates that we had conducted over the weekend. So WELCOME to Julia, Sanjay, Sook Meng, Shiley, Soon, Yi Ling and Bay Tan to the Club. We also have as our guests Joseph and Shireen, Uncle Kasi (an old timer toastmaster from Penang), Jaleen and KM. Our AGW1, CC, CL Satchit Anantha was gracious in playing the role of General Evaluator. Altogether there were 34 attendants at the meeting last night. I believe this is the biggest turn out so far at our club meeting. Congratulations to all who made the meeting awesome and successful. All our guests were very happy and very impressed with the proceedings of the meeting.

We also welcome the presence of our newest member, Duncan to the club who took part in the Table Topic sessions conducted by Victor Wan. 5 speakers took the challenges to think and speak on their feet on topics that was quite tough given by Victor. But the speakers did their best especially Sook Meng and Duncan who are new to this session. Kudos to both of them.

The ASAA's role was taken by Aziz who perform his duty in his usual jovial manner and he always brings laughter to the audience whenever he had the chance to stand in front and speak, especially during the Table Topic session of which he was one of the participant. However congratulations to Paul Tan who won the Best Table Topic Speaker award.

The President, last night in his usual manner, gave us an inspiring opening message of "Lift People UP & Respect Them." which I had posted in the Blog. The President also played the role of Toastmaster of the Evening and it goes without saying that his manner of conducting the meeting was superb. The meeting went through with full of laughter and fun right to the end with the added humor of Hj Naburi and the GE Satchit who made everyone laugh right through the evaluation sessions.

The seasoned evaluators of Tan Ben Hoe, KL Loh and Francis did their speakers justice in giving fair and useful feedback to Calista, Erica and Cindy Foong. The three speakers gave inspiring speeches of their experiences either through Cyberspace, or the reality of selling experience or the trip to South Africa with its inclement weather. Calista's speech really touched everyone's heart and she was voted the best project speaker of the evening.

All in all it was a night full of fun and laughter whilst we help each other to improve our communication skills and true to the motto of Friends Helping Friends Succeed. CONGRATULATIONS TO EVERYONE WHO MADE THE MEETING WORTH ATTENDING. KUDOS TO ALL OF YOU.

Posted by:
Hj Naburi
VPPR

LIFT PEOPLE UP & RESPECT THEM

2008-11-26T00:03:00.003+08:00

In line with the theme of the Day: "Respecting Each Other", the President, CC, CL Hj Hashim at our 162nd meeting last night the 25th. Nov., 2008 began his speech by giving the audience this inspiring message: "..one of the most exciting decisions you can make is to be on the lookout for opportunities to invest in others. This has been one of the most powerful principles of momentum in life.

Zig Ziglar said, "You will always have everything you want in life if you will help enough other people get what they want". One of the marks of true greatness is to develop greatness in others. "There are three keys to more abundant living: caring about othersw, daring for others, and sharing with others' says William Ward.

"We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give, says Norman MacEwan. Assign yourself the purpose of making others happy and successful. People have a way of becoming what you encourage them to be. Ralph Waldo Emerson observed "Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great. Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and help them to become what they are capable of being."

There is no investment you can make that will pay you so well as investing in the improvement of others throughout your life. There are two types of people in the world: those who come into a room and say "Here I am" and those who come in and say,
"Ah, there you are". How do you know a good person? A good person makes others feel good. Find happiness by helping others find it. Respect others and you will be respected.

Posted by
Hj Naburi
VPPR

TIPS FOR SUCCESSFUL MEETINGS

2008-11-20T21:36:00.002+08:00

For the Toastmaster of the Meeting: Tips for a Successful Meeting

Note: These tips are written for members of Village Toastmasters and apply to our particular traditions. Our meetings are held Thursday mornings, and the timeframes here reflect this. However, the basic principles contained herein can be applied to any club's meetings.

Have you noticed that all of our meetings are good, but some are just better? Sometimes it seems like a second waker-upper is needed, while other meetings are full of energy. What's the difference?

The difference is preparation. The job of the Toastmaster of the meeting is not particularly difficult. The Toastmaster need not make speeches or evaluations. The Toastmaster is the person who ties the meeting together - the common face seen from beginning to end. However, for a meeting to go from ordinary to extraordinary, the Toastmaster should make his or her presence felt not only during the meeting, but from the time the previous meeting has ended!

1) Confirm your speakers and general evaluator before the previous meeting ends. Your speakers are responsible for finding their own replacements if they can't make it, but some do not, so finding those replacements at the meeting is much easier.

2) Call your speakers, general evaluator, and functionaries twice! The first time should be Thursday morning, just after everyone is back to work, when you can catch them by the phone.

Don't wait until the weekend - that's the time your speakers need to practice. Better yet - call them the day before the meeting which precedes yours, you will know who can't make it, and can try to find replacement functionaries at that meeting. Even though it is the functionary's responsibility to find a replacement, the Toastmaster often gets stuck with this task!

Don't delay placing your first calls because you have not come up with a meeting theme. Instead, solicit suggestions during those first calls. Your functionaries will be glad to be able to contribute to the selection of theme.

The second calls should be placed Sunday evening. This should be a follow-up call to remind people of their duty, and find out if there are any problems in time to correct them.

3) Don't call evaluators. Delegate this job to the General Evaluator. But check up on your General Evaluator, and be prepared to scrounge up Evaluators at the last minute.

4) Do not trust voicemail. I find that about 75% of our members do not respond to voicemail (!). Do not considered someone notified until you speak to them in person. Do not give anyone more than a day to respond to voicemail; in fact, try calling back an hour or so after you leave your message. Leave messages at home and work. Stress the importance of calling back either with a confirmation, or the name of their replacement.

The best way to avoid voicemail is call people when they are likely to be there! During the week, this is between 8:30 AM and 10 AM in the morning, when people are at their desks, or at home around 7:00 PM in the evenings. Calls on weekends should be made early Saturday morning, before people go out, or early Sunday evening.

5) On Wednesday, call everyone else on the roster. I like to say, "I'm not sure I'm going to need a Waker-Upper tomorrow, and it would be great if you could help me start the meeting." If you're uncomfortable with this, just say that you're not sure all your functionaries will show up, and you may need help with perhaps timer or waker-upper or ah-counter. This not only gives members a reason to come, but you can make this statement truthfully because functionary switching is a fact of life. A third call to your functionaries would be a good idea.

6) Prepare introductions. Before you call your functionaries with the meeting theme, see if you can think of an introduction for them on your own, first. Then, run it by them. They will often suggest something else, so you have two choices to make. Don't get bent out of shape about being entirely accurate about an introduction. It should be lively, colorful, and complimentary, and the Toastmaster is entitled to use a little artistic license here and there to make this happen.

7) Make an agenda so that members and guests can follow the flow of the meeting. List your functionaries names, speech titles, times, and which manual speech is being presented.

8) On Thursday morning, show up early. Greet your functionaries. Loosen up and say 'hi' to your friends, and even guests. The key here is to loosen up. Ensure that the meeting starts on time even if not all of your functionaries are present.

Don't worry if you can't find a replacement for a missing functionary before the meeting starts. It is an always an easy matter to get a volunteer at the time the functionary is to be introduced. For example, when it is time to introduce the timer, say "It would appear that my Timer is not here yet. Would someone mind volunteering as Timer? ... Mary, would you mind doubling up as Timer and Grammarian? Thank you!" You don't need to berate the person who does not show up. First of all, it is possible that an emergency prevented them from showing. Second, it will be obvious to everyone that they did not show up, especially if their name was listed on your agenda. You need not be embarrassed, because you have done your job - in fact, more than your job, because you have found their replacement for them! This problem is a fact of life in any meeting, so if you are able to handle it deftly without getting bent out of shape or being apologetic, you have truly become a Toastmaster.

Good Toastmasters know that meetings are fluid and cannot be completely planned out. They are flexible so that they can not only overcome small problems with ease, but can take the meeting in new directions if these opportunities present themselves!

9) Afterwards, thank all those who came for showing up to the meeting. It does not hurt to call. It will make them feel good, and be willing to help again next time you are Toastmaster.

The short list of all this follows. As you can see, there is not a particular large amount of work involved, but a time commitment is required. I would suggest writing these in your planner as action items.

* Thursday AM:

Confirm functionaries Thursday morning after the preceding meeting. Solicit ideas for a meeting theme if necessary.

* Saturday AM:

Find replacements for functionaries who have not responded to repeated voicemail messages. (This is not your job, but having to do it from time to time is a fact of Toastmasters.)

* Thursday through Sunday:

Think about your theme, and write down some ideas for introductions for your functionaries.

* Sunday evening:

Reconfirm functionaries. Finalize ideas for introductions. Practice anecdotes you plan to tell as part of your introduction, between speeches, and at the end of the meeting.

* Monday, Tuesday:

Handle any last minute functionary changes.

* Wednesday morning:

Call the rest of the members on the roster for "possible functionary replacements." (If the roster is particularly large, ask your President and other board members for help.)

* Wednesday afternoon:

Prepare your agenda and print 20-30 copies. Prepare your meeting notes. I suggest one small sheet of notes for each time you will be at the podium. See if you can eliminate your notes.

* Wednesday evening:

Get a good nights sleep.

* The Meeting:

Arrive early. Give every functionary a warm welcome and a thank-you before the meeting starts! Find any replacements if you can, but don't let it consume you or prevent you greeting your functionaries. Tell your waker-upper to start the meeting on time, even if everyone has not yet shown up. Remember that you are talking to your friends, and volunteers are easy to find even mid-meeting!

* After the meeting:

Follow up with a thank you to your functionaries.

The reason that these tips lead to a successful meeting is that your attendees are no longer bystanders, they are participants. You don't need to work hard to build up energy during the meeting, because they have arrived already full of it. They feel good because they know they are playing a key part in making your meeting successful. Being Toastmaster is one of my favorite jobs, because after building up this energy, I get to be "king of the hill" for a day, and have an opportunity to flatter everyone with fun introductions. Approach the job of Toastmaster with preparation, enthusiasm, and an open attitude for the unexpected, and you and your audience will have a great time and a rewarding experience.

Sean Sheedy

IMPROMPTU SPEECH

2008-11-20T21:26:00.000+08:00

Giving Impromptu Speeches

Have you ever had work commitments keep you from practicing a speech? Have you ever been asked to speak for someone at the last minute? When I started my consulting practice and became a father of twins in the same year, I often found myself lacking time to prepare and practice my speeches.

One of my evaluators wisely pointed out that it is not how long you prepare for a speech, but how efficiently you prepare. If you learn how to refine your preparation and delivery skills, you can deliver a great impromptu speech from your own foundation of knowledge and personal style.

I would like to share with you some of the tricks I have learned about this important skill from my own recent "trials by fire":

1. Don't quit your day job. Your day job in Toastmasters is preparing, practicing, and delivering manual speeches. You should attempt impromptu speaking only after you have completed a number of manual speeches and are already comfortable as a speaker. By this time you should know your natural style and the skills needed for successful impromptu speaking. Speeches in the beginner's manual should never be performed impromptu the first time. Each manual speech is focused on the development of a particular skill. Giving these speeches impromptu is like trying to learn calculus without knowing how to add. If you find that your speeches are becoming increasingly impromptu, you may need to reexamine your business and personal priorities.
2. Know your natural style. Impromptu speaking is much easier if you know your own natural speaking style. I discovered my natural style on my fourth or fifth manual speech. I discovered that I can easily tell short, humorous stories of things that have happened to me. As a result, my best speeches are those that consist of stories which come from my heart. What is your natural style?
3. Use positive self-talk. My early impromptu speeches were hobbled by negative self-talk. My inner voice kept telling me that I was inadequately prepared and was destined to falter. When I hit the stage, I focused on my self-consciousness instead of the audience, and guess what - I faltered. I turned around this self-talk by realizing through evaluations that I was speaking to friends who enjoyed my personal stories, and who often did not notice when I forgot a point I wanted to make. Suddenly, I found myself connecting with my audience, as if I was talking with each one of them personally.
4. Make a point. Even when you give an impromptu speech, you need structure. The classic "opening, body, and conclusion" falls in place if everything you say relates to a point which you reveal at the end. For example, I recently gave a speech about a family vacation to visit relatives. I opened by saying how much we needed the vacation to escape from work and stress at home. Then I created a body by telling stories like how we stayed in a converted garage which seemed more like a cave, and tried to sleep on a leaky air mattress. Finally, I told how relieved we were to return home, where I drove home my point: a vacation is not so much an escape as it is an opportunity to appreciate what you already have. By making a point, I turned what could have been a boring recitation of a family vacation into a funny story with a memorable lesson.
5. Avoid using notes. An impromptu speech is like a flash flood - it goes where it wants to. If you only have ten minutes to create your notes, you are bound to come up with better ways to express your ideas while you are speaking. Trying to force your speech back to your notes is at best awkward and at worst will throw you completely off track. Abandon your notes, and let the rest of your speech flow from your heart. If you must use notes, they should contain only the point you wish to make, plus a couple of words to trigger any stories you wish to tell.
6. Deliver it as if you've practiced it many times. Don't reveal beforehand that your speech is impromptu. This will undermine your audience's reception of your speech before you even begin. Approach the audience with confidence, as if you've practiced many times before. Deliver it with vigor and confidence, letting your ideas flow as if you are talking to friends. Present your conclusion as if you're revealing something very important. Prepare yourself for the praise you receive when your evaluator reveals that this speech was impromptu!

About apologies: When you're in the spotlight, do not apologize for nervousness, lack of preparation, missing functionaries, or poorly run meetings. The spotlight will turn immediately toward the very flaw you are trying to overcome. I've seen too many cases where a perfectly good speech or meeting was ruined because a problem which otherwise would have gone unnoticed, became the foremost thought of the audience. Let the evaluator or general evaluator judge the severity of any errors you make and point them out at the appropriate time.
7. Be willing to cut it short. Sometimes you'll have covered only half your thoughts, and you'll find a great way to end your story, right there. If you think you're close to the green light, cut to the conclusion! Even though I have to force myself to drop things I wanted to say, my speeches are much better when I dump unnecessary content in favor of a clean conclusion.
8. Tell your evaluator that your speech is impromptu. Ask him to focus their evaluation on what you did to make your impromptu speech successful, and on suggestions that you can use to improve your impromptu speaking technique. It's OK for the evaluator to point out that impromptu speeches should be an exception in a Toastmasters club. It's not OK for the evaluator to chastise you for not spending more time preparing (unless you are making this a habit.) You may want to ask the General Evaluator to assign you an experienced evaluator who has been in your shoes.
9. Practice at table topics. Be bold, and ask the Table Topics Master to choose you during table topics. If you can master table topics, then you will be able to string together an impromptu speech from a series of anecdotes.
10. Volunteer to be an evaluator. This is a great opportunity to learn how to organize thoughts quickly and effectively, and deliver them seamlessly. Force yourself to leave your notes behind when you give your evaluation, so that you learn to think on your feet.

About evaluating without notes: The idea of giving an evaluation without notes used to give me the willies. Then I realized that the worst thing that would happen would be that I might not remember all I wanted to say. I realized that this would mean that my evaluation would merely be too short to qualify for "Best Evaluator." What a small price to pay for learning how to impress my audience with my hands free of notes!
11. Relive the high points. Immediately after your speech, think about the places where you were on a roll. It's likely this is where your self-confidence peaked and you connected with your audience. This is your natural style! Think about your state of mind, and how you got there. Then, do more of it in future speeches.

Conclusion

In real life, many speeches and calls to action are impromptu, and being able to deliver one expertly is a valuable skill. It requires you to organize your thoughts quickly before you reach the stage. This skill can be learned by doing evaluations. It requires you to approach the podium with confidence, as if you've done this many times before. Then you must deliver your speech in your own style, with vigor and energy. When you are done, you can enjoy remembering what you did that made your speech successful.

The ability to perform an impromptu speech well is a skill shared by the best speakers and leaders of the world. When such a speech is prepared and delivered so well that the audience does not even know it, your self-confidence will reach new levels that will carry over into other aspects of your business and personal life. In Toastmasters, these speeches are the exception rather than the rule, but being able to give them is a skill that should be in every Toastmaster's repertoire.
Sean Sheedy V

THE RIGHT WAY TO SPEAK

2008-11-18T03:08:00.001+08:00

The RIGHT Way to Speak"

In an effort to maximize our ability to communicate publicly, we often search for the "right" way to speak.
Finding the "right" way, however, is like grabbing a handful of water.

Why? It is because the right way is slightly different for each person.
It's a combination of who, what, and where we are at the moment.

Of course, we can all apply certain fundamentals and techniques to elevate our skill, but each of use will use them with varying results.
Have you ever heard the same joke from two different people and one time it was funny and the other time it was not?
Chances are high that the first was simply a funnier person than the second.

Here's the secret to speaking the right way...

1. Know your speaking ability at the moment and use a majority of techniques that fit within that level.
Go with what works for you right now.

2. Continue to learn and apply new skills as you master your present set.
For most, public speaking does not come naturally; it is an acquired and admired skill that comes through education and application.

3. Use one new speaking technique each speech or presentation.
Try out a new story, or a new prop, or a new close.
I say one because if it doesn't work out the way you expected, you have your sure bet techniques already doing a great job for you.

The right way is simply YOUR way at the moment.
Do your best. Share the greatest value with the audience.
Don't beat yourself up if you are just starting.
Don't give yourself too much slack if you've been speaking for years, but refuse to learn and apply new things.

(Paul Evans - Instant Speaking Success)

STAGE FRIGHT STRATEGIES

2008-11-16T23:57:00.002+08:00

Stage fright Is Good and Makes You Better Looking Too!

Before you learn how to deliver your lines, it is important to be ready to deliver your lines. Stage fright is a phenomenon that you must learn to control. Actually, stage fright isn't the most accurate term for the nervousness that occurs when considering a speaking engagement. In fact, most of the fear occurs before you step on-stage. Once you're up there, it usually goes away. Try to think of stage fright in a positive way. Fear is your friend. It makes your reflexes sharper. It heightens your energy, adds a sparkle to your eye, and color to your cheeks. When you are nervous about speaking you are more conscious of your posture and breathing. With all those good side effects you will actually look healthier and more physically attractive.

Many of the top performers in the world get stage fright so you are in good company. Stage fright may come and go or diminish, but it usually does not vanish permanently. You must concentrate on getting the feeling out in the open, into perspective and under control.

Remember Nobody ever died from stage fright. But, according to surveys, many people would rather die than give a speech. If that applies to you, try out some of the strategies in this section to help get yourself under control. Realize that you may never overcome stage fright, but you can learn to control it, and use it to your advantage.

Symptoms of Stage fright

Dry mouth.
Tight throat.
Sweaty hands.
Cold hands.
Shaky hands.
Nausea.
Fast pulse.
Shaky knees.
Trembling lips.

Any out-of-the-ordinary outward or inward feeling or manifestation of a feeling occurring before, or during, the beginning of a presentation.
(Wow! What a dry mouthful!).

Here are some easy to implement strategies for reducing your stage fright. Not everyone reacts the same and there is no universal fix. Don't try to use all these fixes at once. Pick out items from this list and try them out until you find the right combination for you.

Visualization strategies that can be used anytime

Concentrate on how good you are.

Pretend you are just chatting with a group of friends.

Close your eyes and imagine the audience listening, laughing, and applauding.

Remember happy moments from your past.

Think about your love for and desire to help the audience.

Picture the audience in their underwear.

Strategies in advance of program

Be extremely well prepared.

Join or start a Toastmasters club for extra practice

Get individual or group presentation skills coaching.

Listen to music.

Read a poem.

Anticipate hard and easy questions.

Organize.

Absolutely memorize your opening statement so you can recite it on autopilot if you have to.

Practice, practice, practice. Especially practice bits so you can spit out a few minutes of your program no matter how nervous you are.

Get in shape. I don't know why it helps stage fright, but it does.

Strategies just before the program

Remember Stage fright usually goes away after you start. The tricky time is before you start.

Be in the room at least an hour early if possible to triple check everything. You can also schmooze with participants arriving early.

Notice and think about things around you.

Concentrate on searching for current and immediate things that are happening at the event that you can mention during your talk (especially in the opening).

Get into conversation with people near you. Be very intent on what they are saying.

Yawn to relax your throat.

Doodle.

Draw sketches of a new car you would like to have.

Look at your notes.

Put pictures of your kids/grandkids, dog, etc., in your notes.

Build a cushion of time in the day so you are not rushed but not too much time. You don't want to have extra time to worry.

If your legs are trembling, lean on a table, sit down, or shift your legs.

Take a quick walk.

Take quick drinks of tepid water.

Double check your A/V equipment.

Don't drink alcohol or coffee or tea with caffeine.

Concentrate on your ideas.

Hide notes around the stage area so you know you have a backup if you happen to draw a blank.

Concentrate on your audience.

Listen to music.

Read a poem.

Do isometrics that tighten and release muscles.

Shake hands and smile with attendees before the program.

Say something to someone to make sure your voice is ready to go.

Go somewhere private and warm up your voice, muscles, etc.

Use eye contact.

Go to a mirror and check out how you look.

Breathe deeply, evenly, and slowly for several minutes.

Don't eat if you don't want to and never take tranquilizers or other such drugs. You may think you will do better, but you will probably do worse and not know it.

Strategies when the program begins

If legs are trembling, lean on lectern /table or shift legs or move.

Try not to hold the microphone by hand in the first minute.

Don't hold notes. The audience can see them shake. Use three-by-five cards instead.

Take quick drinks of tepid water.

Use eye contact. It will make you feel less isolated.

Look at the friendliest faces in the audience.

Joke about your nervousness. "What's the right wine to go with fingernails? "

Remember nervousness doesn't show one-tenth as much as it feels.

Before each presentation make a short list of the items you think will make you feel better. Don't be afraid to experiment with different combinations. You never know which ones will work best until you try. Rewrite them on a separate sheet and keep the sheet with you at all times so you can refer to it quickly when the need arises.

Use these steps to control stage fright so it doesn't control you.

- by Tom Antion

end of artcle...

HOW TO RECOGNISE A STROKE

2008-11-14T12:09:00.000+08:00

HOW TO RECOGNISE A STROKE

2008-11-14T11:56:00.001+08:00

From: Alan Subject: BLOOD CLOT----STROKE

How to Recognise a StrokE !!!!!!!! ?????
Some don't die, they end up in a helpless, hopeless condition instead.
It only takes a minute to read this .. .

A neurologist says that if he can get to a stroke victim
within 3 hours he can totally reverse the effects of a
stroke .. . to tally . He said the trick was getting a stroke
recognized, diagnosed, and then getting the patient
medically cared for within 3 hours, which is tough.

STROKE: Remember The 1st Three Letters .. .. S.T.R.

If everyone can remember something this simple, we could save some folks.
Thank God for the sense to remember the '3' STEPS: STR . Read and Learn!

Sometimes symptoms of a stroke are difficult to identify.
Now doctors say a bystander can recognize a stroke by asking three simple
questions:

S * Ask the individual to SMILE.
T * Ask the person to TALK and SPEAK A SIMP LE SENTENCE
(Coherently) i.e. It is sunny out today)
R * Ask him or her to RAISE BOTH ARMS.

If he or she has trouble with ANY O NE of these tasks,
call 999/911 immediately and describe the symptoms to the dispatcher.

New Sign of a Stroke ------- Stick out Your Tongue

NOTE: Another 'sign' of a stroke is this: Ask the person
to 'stick' out his tongue .. If the tongue is 'cr ooked',
if it goes to one side or the other , that is also an
indication of a stroke.

160th meeting 11th Nov., 2008; A Success

2008-11-14T01:33:00.000+08:00

This report should have been written by Huey Yee. But last minute she "threw the pen" at me.Like it or not I have to do it. I'll try my best to write down what happened at the meeting.

The meeting was attended by: The President, Hj Hashim, who played the role of an invocator. As usual Hj Hashim gave a very inspiring invocation entitled "GET UP WHEN YOU FALL". The gist of it, is that every success must experience failures and mistakes in life. Everyone should learn from their failures and when you fall down, you will get up and rebounce upward far greater than your drop-down. Anyway I will post the actual text in our BLOG so you can read it there.
The President was suppose to be the evaluator for Derrick Teh, but he did not turn up. Hopefully Derrick will attend the next meeting on 25th Nov. to do his Ice-breaker speech.
The VPE Siew Yin, also took up a dual role as Ah Counter as well as Table- Topic Master. She gave a very interesting topic to the five speakers led by Hj Naburi, then KL Loh, followed by our guests, Duncan and Kumaran and lastly Raymond Sii, the member who was MIA (missing in action) for some time. He was lost for words due to his long absence. But he made a courages comeback by delivering his first advance speech from the Professional Speaker Series. "Welcome back Raymond", and from now on, we will see more of you at our future meetings.
Congratulations to our guest Kumaran who won the Best Table Topic Speaker award. Both Duncan and Kumaran have decided to join our club. Congratulations to both of them for making the right decision in choosing our club. WELCOME Duncan and Kumaran.
As Ah Counter, Siew Yin had a field day ("night") in making money for the Club. Abu Bakar, the TME who did a very good job in conducting the meeting also had to pay the most fines of RM4.20 for having 42 speech crutches. So much so he had no small change for car park. As usual Hj Naburi, the next champion contributed RM2.30. I presume it's a record collection for the club and Song,the club treasurer, will be laughing his way to the bank. Unfortunately he was absent.
The evening was made hilarious by KL Loh's jokes with interjection from the members especially Hj Naburi with his letter from Osama to Bush with the message :
370H-SSV-O773H. To understand it you have to read the code upside down then you get the message.
The project speeches were all from the Advance series with Victor Wan's "Roasting" of Hj Naburi, who got carried away when he was doing the evaluation. Instead of evaluating Victor he went through the history of the club and definitely overshot his time allocations. Not only was Hj going overboard with time, but the other two speakers, Raymond Sii, and Wan Chee Wing and their evaluators, Huey Yee and Janice Ooi respectively, also overshot their time allocation. For the first time there was no Best Speaker and no Best Evaluator award given tonight.
The absence of our advisor, Francis Ng was greatly felt by the meeting especially to Victor Wan who was supposed to Roast him. This is one of the rare occassion that Francis did not come to the meeting as he is attending the District 51 Convention in Bali. Without Francis we still manage to run a successful meeting. Touche to the President, who was the earliest to arrive to arrange table and chairs and placing the banners and helping Paul to prepare the nasi lemak. He was the last to leave the meeting room to rearrange the table and chairs with the help of Paul, Duncan, E.K. Yeo and Hj Naburi. Normally, all these were done by Francis.
The birthday cake was also prepared by the President. Hj Naburi and Janice and Wan Chee Wing except for Alwin who left early, had their birthday song and blowing candles ceremony and Huey Yee helped to cut the cake for everyone.
Well done to all the role players. Abu Bakar, the TME,- a well run meeting. Cindy Foong, the Timer, even though with an injured hand after being attacked by snatch thieves a couple of nights before, Cindy still turn up to take up role. Thank you and kudos to Cindy. We pray that you will overcome the trauma soon and our sympathy to you Cindy.
Paul Tan was Grammarian and as usual gave his lengthy report and advice.
The General Evaluator was Chen Voon Hann who is no stranger to our club, our friend from MIA TMC, did a very good job in his duty and tried to bring us to the next level by suggesting that we ought to think seriously about practising open evaluation which is a good idea. We should try it sometime.
Not to forget Tan Ben Hoe our cool IPP in his usual style was the Table Topic evaluator, appreciated by everyone.
All in all, it was a successful meeting and everyone had a good time. Our guest, Kumaran who came for the first time was very impressed with our performances decided to join as a member of our club together with Duncan.
Well done guys and gals. Keep it up.

Report by:
Hj Naburi
VPPR

Presidential Invocation at the 160th meeting on 11th Nov., 2008

2008-11-14T00:26:00.000+08:00

The President, Hj Hashim had to do the invocation since Khoshim Malim who was assigned to do it did not turn up. The attendance at this meeting was not up to expectation as only 13 members were present. We had 2 guests, Duncan and Kumaran who later signed up to be members and Chen Voon Hann from MIATMC was the General Evaluator and a guest speaker, Wan Chee Wing from Maxis who did advance speech.

Hj Hashim's invocation: "GET UP WHEN YOU FALL"

Have you ever failed or made a mistake? If your answer is "YES" then it's good for you. The fact that you've failed is proof that you're not finished. Failures and mistakes can be a bridge, not a barricade, to success. Successful people believe that mistakes are just feedback. It's not how far you fall but how high you bounce that makes all the difference.
One of the riskiest things you can do in life is to take too many precautions and never have any failures or mistakes. Failure is the opportunity to start over more intelligently.
No one has ever achieved genuine success who did not, at one time or another, teeter on the edge of disaster. If you have tried to do something and failed, you are vastly better off than if you had tried to do nothing and succeeded. The person who never makes a mistake must get awfully tired of doing nothing. If you are not making mistakes, you're not risking enough.
Vernon Sanders says, "Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards." Experience is what you get when you are looking for something else.
Success consists of getting up just one time more than you fall down. So get up and go on. Proverbs says, "A man who refuses to admit his mistakes can never be successful, but if he confesses and forsakes them, he gets another chance."

Remember the old poem that says:

Success is a fiure turned inside out,
the silver tint of the clouds of doubt.

And you never can tell how close you are:
it may be near when seems so far.

So stick to the fight when you"re hardest hit;
it's when things seem worse that you must not quit.

(Unknown)

THE POWER OF ...ENCOURAGEMENT, INSPIRATION, ESPRIT DE CORP ..........

2008-10-30T02:39:00.000+08:00

Huey Yee..you are indeed an angel, the jewel of the club. You sure "Go The Extra Mile" to write such an enlightening report on the proceedings of our club meeting held the night before on 28th Oct., 2008. I was about to request you to do the write up and yet when I open the blog it's already there, a well written report...kudos to you dear Huey Yee. I would like to appoint you as the official reporter representing the Public Relations Committee which is in the process of being set up. I do hope you accept the appointment and we will discuss further about the proposed PR Committee.
I agree with you 110% that the meeting was really fired up and full of excitement with all the speakers in one way or another making beautiful and impressive speeches invoking inspirations, motivations, encouragements, enthusiasm, and all the positive superlatives and adjectives that you can think off.
Beginning with Paul Tan's Table Topics of mind boggling quotations which really makes your mind start to think hard that drove almost all the speakers to speak out of topics. Perhaps Paul can post all the 11 topics he had prepared into the blog so that we can share all those quotations for future table topic session.
Calista's speech about her superhero grandfather almost put everyone to tears. She told it poignantly with emotions and aptly quoted Napoleon Hill's "Whatever the mind can conceive you can achieve" to describe how the 81 year old grandfather overcame a serious stroke and survive until today. Congratulation calista. Keep it up.
From Sharon who idolise her father we learned how to overcome difficulties and problems in life.:
1. Stop what's not working
2. Start what is working
3. Continue what is working
This is a practical strategy to adopt when one is in the situation of "insanity" not knowing what to do. Many of us is in this life's situation of insanity that is doing the same thing day in day out (over and over and over again ) and expecting different results. Sharon gave us the answer to this. Kudos and Big Thank you Sharon.
The night was full of fun and laughter with the antics of Aziz's unique style of humour and Khoshim's inimitable way of conducting the meeting. Khoshim has proven that with enthusiasm, courage and wanting to be the best of oneself surprised the GE Rohijas that he can conduct the meeting with confidence and in fluent English. Congratulations to Khoshim and Aziz.
Haji Naburi's quotation was "Engage your Brain before you put your mouth into Gear." was well interpreted by Huey Yee.
The performance of our VPE Siew Yin as Acting President while our President Hj Hashim was playing golf in Pekan Baru, Indonesia, was sterling. She is rightfully a President in the making. Touche' Siew Yin. You briefly spoke about John R Wooden's article in the October issue of the Toastmaster's Magazine which I would like to highlight and share some of the important points which are practical and applicable to all of us especially in Toastmasters.
Who is he? John R Wooden is 97 year old who is the greatest basketball coach of the UCLA Basketball Team that won the U.S. National Championship 10 times unprecedentedly. He is Head Basketball Coach, Emeritus, University of California, Los Angeles.
His famous Quotations, "Mentors are available at all stages of your leadership life..early, middle and late. Seek them out and listen; absorb their knowledge and use it."
His definition of SUCCESS, " SUCCESS is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable."
To him success is NOT the accumulation of material possessions or the achievement of a position of power or prestige.
He made use of what his father said to him."Never Try to be better than someone else. Learn from others."
Based on this definition he invented the PYRAMID OF SUCCESS (Refer pg 18 of Toastmasters Magazine Oct. issue)
WOODEN'S 12 LESSONS IN LEADERSHIP:
1. Good values attract good people
2. Love is the most powerful Four-letter word
3. Call Yourself a Teacher
4. Emotion is your enemy
5. It takes 10 Hands To Make a Basket
6. Little Things Make Big Things Happen
7. Make Each Day Your Masterpiece
8. The Carrot is Mightier Than A Stick
9. Make Greatness Attainable By All
10. Seek Significant Change
11. Don't Look At The Scoreboard
12. Adversity is Your Asset

According to Wooden, one of the greatest motivating tools is a pat on the back. It doesn't have to be a physical pat - it could be a smile, a nod. Everyone likes to be complimented in one way or another.
So fellow Moneymasterians please take note of this. Whenever we take up roles as evaluators or Grammarian be generous with our compliments where deserved and don't forget to mention names to whom the compliments are directed to. Make the members who deserve them "FEEL GOOD" and make their day.
Another technique is LISTENING. A leader must listen to those under their supervision. Get ideas from them. Lead, don't drive. And give credit. Don't blame.
CRITICISM must always be given in a gentle way, never harshly.
THREE RULES which he practised for his teams:
1. Never be late. Always be on time. It's very important. Whether to practice,
to the table, to the bus, to your classes.

2. You must never criticize a teammate. That's the leader's job. It's never
your job.

3. I would not tolerate profanity from anyone, anytime. I'd blow the whistle
pull you from the court, put you on the bench and talk to you before I
would put you back in.

To him it is far more difficult to get to the TOP.
EFFECTIVE LEADERS are first and foremost, good teachers. We're in the education business."
How leaders should resolve conflict which is inevitable in any organisation.
Get both parties together and air everything out without trying to hold back anything - not be critical of either one, just try to listen to both sides and find out what might be the trouble. Sometimes the trouble is trivial nothing at all.
Make sure those you lead receive very little criticism, but when there has to be criticism, it must be done in a gentle way that will not be embarrassing, and definitely not in front of others. You may need to take them aside and talk it over, but never do so while you're mad. No yelling; it has to be done in a gentle fashion, and with a pat on the back is the best.
CLUB PRESIDENTS: Listen and Lead with Love.
Leaders must show that they really cared about their members as a person. He cared about their family. Each day: How's your mother? Did the job work out for your dad? Did your brother or sister get that position?
Every leader should do this. You should really care. If you are fooling them, they will catch on.
Leaders must have patience and faith in the people that they lead. They must believe in what they are doing, the proper thing, the right thing.
"We are all guilty at times of wanting things to happen a certain way but not doing everything we are capable of to help that become a reality. We just want it to. And that's not life. That shgouldn't be life"

"Excerpt from THE WOODEN WAY by Craig Harrison, DTM" Toastmasters Magazine Oct. 2008

Meeting #160 (28/10/08)

2008-10-28T23:54:00.000+08:00

I felt a fire of excitement this evening when our precious members walked in one-by-one, as the meeting commenced. Reasons are…
1. the crowd is back after the puasa month,
2. we had a guest, a gwailo from the UK, Duncan (oh-la-la) and
3. we are so famous for our time keeping that as our GE, Rohijas put it, we stuck to the time and everyone enjoyed themselves.

It’s indeed also precious time as our VPE, Siew Yin got to play acting president as our precious President was in Indonesia on a golf tour. Wherever you are, Hj Hashim, I’m sure you’ve telepathy over your blessings for an awesome meeting.

I thoroughly enjoyed Khoshim playing our genial host tonight. Our TME can indeed speak English, just teasing. Thank you for being organized and effective in your role.

Hj Naburi’s message in his invocation…Engage your minds before putting words into your mouth.

Paul Tan’s table topics definitely offered us precious food for thought…
1. the oil of courtesy takes the friction out of our life.
2. wisdom is in knowing when to speak your mind and when to mind your speech.
3. we loose the joy of living in the present if we worry too much of the future.
4. gentle words falls lightly but carries great weight.
5. we commit two wrongs when we fail to right a wrong.

Kudos to Marcus Chee, Ben Hoe, Duncan, Gean Lau and Hj Naburi for speaking on the topic, around the topic and even out of topic. Actually, simply put, that’s the whole idea of table topics. So, fear not, young/new members, the only way to improve is to get up there and speak.

These days, we get to enjoy more meaty project speeches…speakers being able to share personal stories and audience being able to enjoy… some even make my eye teary.

I’m so honored to have heard Calista Chan speak with passion about her real life Superhero, her grandfather. The crafting of words (eg sunken and lifeless eyes), the edge in her voice, the flow of her story… it’s definitely speech material for International Speech Contest ya?

Sharon Siow spoke in praise of her father. I sat in awe as she spoke with respect and enthusiasm about her dad. Her speech’s precious value tonight for me…
1. stop what’s not working,
2. start what is working and
3. continue what is working
(good to reflect this in reference to becoming better communicators)

Bakar attempted his 5th project speech, the persuasive leader, The Power to Change. Point blank, thank you for sharing. It help me reflect on what’s happening around us and we have a choice not to play victim. Though we can’t change the world, we can change the world around us. So, point blank, your speech has lots of potential to be an even more powerful speech. Do consider doing it again.

It’s good to hear more advance speeches nowadays…our club has definitely matured compared to those days when only KL Loh was pursuing his advance goals. Kudos, Victor Wan, move along, move along to finish your special occasion speeches.

It’s an honor to have Rohijas to be our GE and thank you for your observations and points of how we can improve.

Some dates to take note of…
3rd Nov 2008…AFC TMc’s Speech Marathon meeting. our newly sponsored club, AFC TMC need our help and guidance to grow. Pls volunteer for roles. Actually, the members are very independent, we probably only need to sit next to them mentoring them on how to be more effective in the roles in the meeting.

22nd – 24th Nov 2008….SpeechCraft Program for a corporation in Shah Alam. Pls contact Francis to volunteer your precious time. It’s time to give back, members. (ps. Pls pick up the phone before he calls you himself).

13th Jan 2009… Our very own MMKL TMc’s International Speech and Table Topics Contests 2009. The Money Mastery-KL Challenge trophy is up for grabs and the chance to represent our esteemed club in the Area W1 contests and all the way to the States for the World Championship
(as Calista rightly put it…whatever the mind can conceive, it can achieve). Pls contact Siew Yin to register as contestant and/or play roles.

That’s it, guys…till we meet again on 11th Nov 2008, have an awesome rest of the week.

Cheers,
Huey yee

BREAKING NEWS: SPEECHCRAFT IS IN THE MAKING C OME NOV 22ND, 23RD, AND 24TH

2008-10-26T04:36:00.000+08:00

HARD WORKING members comprising the President, Hj Hashim, DTM Francis, VPE Siew Ying, VPPM E K Yeo, IPP Tan Ben Hoe, VPPR Hj Naburi, Janice Ooi and Marcus Chee had an urgent meeting at WIM's immediately after the Div W Contest yesterday, 25th Oct., 2008 to discuss with Ms Theresa representing K L Loh from Mechmar Bhd. about the all exciting SPEECHCRAFT project for some 25 top managers and executives of Mechmar Bhd and it's subsidiaries.
We need volunteers from Club members to play roles at the two and half day speechcraft workshop which will be held on Nov., 22nd., 23rd., and 24th tentatively at Mechmar's headquarters in Shah Alam.
It's going to be a great learning experience for both the role players and the participants. The chief coordinator or organising chair will be our President himself, Tuan Hj Hashim.
This is the first speechcraft project to be organised by our club, so come forward and be a volunteer role player and make it a big success.
For the information of members, if you want to qualify for your ACG (Advance Communicator Gold)award you have to play the role of Chief Coordinator or Organising Chair for such like project from the Leadership Series.
Let's keep up with the Esprit de Corp of the club and work together for the speechcraft project.

SEE YOU AT THE TOP!
HJ NABURI
VPPR

MARCUS CHEE, SECOND RUNNER UP IN DIVISON W EVALUATION CONTEST

2008-10-26T03:25:00.000+08:00

CONGRATULATION TO MARCUS CHEE. He made our club proud when he was placed second runner up at the Division W "Humorous speech and evaluation contest" held yesterday, 25th October 2008 at WIM's TMC venue in TTDI. Marcus represented Area W1.
It was a successful and well organised contest with 122 toastmasters and guests in attendance. From our club, the President, Hj Hashim, VPE Siew Yin, VPPR Hj Naburi and DTM Francis (one of the SAAs) and Janice Ooi were there. We enjoyed the contest very much where we were kept laughing by the six humorous contestants.
The winners of the humorous speech contest were Roger McGowan (Speecom), Nishan (KPMG KL) and Suresh from Sai Masters Club.
The Test Speaker, Shirley Ng gave a very impressive speech on "The POwer of Encouragement". She implore on all of us to offer Encouragement to anyone who needs it. The recipient must learn to ACCEPT Encouragement and appreciate the encouragement given. This should be the practice in our club meetings and for that matter in our daily life. When a person is feeling down and depressed and dejected and before he thinks that the world is coming to an end and decides to move to the next world by comitting suicide that's the time when he needs all the ENCOURAGEMENT in the world for him/her to move forward and carry on with life.
In a toastmasters environment it is the duty of every member especially when he is playing the role of evaluator he must practice and apply the Power of Encouragement and the recipient must learn to accept the encouragement. When we practise this principle, we are actually invoking this year's TI President's slogan, "The Courage To Conquer"
Quite propitiously our President Tuan Hj Hashim aptly applied the "Power of Encouragement" with his invocation of "IN TRYING TIMES, DON'T QUIT" at the last meeting held on Oct, 13th, 2008.
Read on and you will be inspired.....

IN TRYING TIMES, DON'T QUIT

"The world will always give you the opportunity to quit, but only the world would call quitting an opportunity" (Clint Brown) One of the most powerful principles ever preached is: NEVER GIVE UP.

Nobody and nothing can keep you down unless you decide not to rise again. H.E. Jansen said, "The man who wins may have been counted out several times, but he didn't hear the referee". Find a way to, not a way NOT to.

A lazy man is always judged by what he doesn't do. The choice of giving up or going on is a defining moment in your life. You cannot turn back the clock. But you can wind it up again.

Too many people stop faster than they start. Instead of stopping, follow this English proverb: "Don't fall before you are pushed" The choice is simple. You can either stand up and be counted, or lie down and be counted out. Defeat never comes to people until they admit it. Your success will be measured by your willingness to keep trying. (GO FOR THE EXTRA MILE). Have the courage to live. Anyone can quit, but not you I hope, not me either.

"QUITTERS DON'T WIN, WINNERS DO NOT QUIT"

AFC TMC MEETING 20TH OCT., 2008

2008-10-21T07:39:00.000+08:00

Last night I attended the AFC TMC meeting at their HQ in Bukit Jalil. This my third time attending their meeting there. Who were there? DTM Francis (Club Mentor), DVG Dr Sharon Tong, DTM Tang Sam Chee, and Ernest Wong from TTDI. There were 3 other guests from a Private school in Cheras, brought in by Francis. They were very impressed with the meeting and in the process of forming a Gavel Club under the guidance of Francis. It was a well attended meeting by the enthusiastic members of AFC.
AFC (Asian Football Confederation) TMC is an in-house Club sponsored by our Club under the mentorship of DTM Francis. It is a brand new club in Div W. The members comprise of the staff of AFC who came from all over the world and it is truly an international club. Last night the TME was Sean Tohidi from California USA. The Acting President was Hasan Al Sabah from the Middle East. The Asst. SAA was T. Ali from the Middle East. TM Mohamed Ameez who did his ice-breaker speech is from The Maldives. The rest were Malaysians and a Singaporean.
I had a chance to chit-chat with Mohamed Ameez from Maldives who informed me that there is no Toastmasters Club there. So he is keen to form a Club in his country, Maldives to help his friends. He needs help as how to go about it. Any ideas?
To our members I would like to impress upon you that it is our moral obligation to assist AFC TMC as they are our protege club. As Francis has been pleading to our members to encourage them to help out and attend their meeting; so I do support the plea and recommend members to attend their meeting which is held every Monday at 6.30pm. They meet four times a month. Dinner is served at 6.00pm in their First World Class cafeteria. You won't regret it as the food served is excellent, the meeting place is superb and the cosmopolitan members are full of warmth. So if you want to experience speaking to an international audience the AFC club meeting is the best venue. There is no door fee imposed.
Special note:* The ambience of the place and the environment at the AFC HQ is similar to a university campus. I felt like a post-grad student attending a tutorial when I attend their meetings. There is a good number of Phd members there sharing their ideas and thoughts. Though a new club, their standard is high. It is a fantastic learning experience attending the AFC meetings. So why not join them at their next meeting come Monday next week, 3rd Nov.

Think Like wise men but comminicate in the language of the people.

"New CL Jt. Meeting" of 13 clubs (13/10/08)

2008-10-18T21:30:00.000+08:00

Our "mammoth" joint meeting at AFC on Monday was indeed a great success...

It was "mammoth" because, to my knowledge, it was the first time that 13 clubs had got together for a joint meeting -- not a workshop, not a seminar, not a convention... just a Toastmasters meeting !

It was hugely successful because it was touted for "a minimum of 5 from each participating club" -- meaning therefore that there should have been at least 65 attendees. But the head count was more than 100. That makes it a 150% success !!

The idea had initially sprouted as an imploratory request from AG Walia, who felt it imperative to educate and enlighten her Area W6 members on the new CL Manual. She was willing to organize a joint meeting of her clubs if a knowledgeable TM would facilitate.

When sounded at the Division Council meeting, the idea appealed to our receptive and perceptive ADVGET Soh, who felt that it could (and should) be expanded to encompass all Division W clubs.

Our servant-leader, DVG Dr Sharon, ever-adroit in accepting good suggestions, sounded the idea of securing a suitable venue to our Club Extension Chair, DTM Francis Ng.

The efficacious doyen of TMs that he is, Francis broached the concept to the power-packed newest club in District 51 -- the AFC TMC... and they spontaneously offered their clean and classy meeting hall for this purpose.

The extent of their hospitality was extended to the ultimate... the food was ooh la la on the one hand, and wow-o-wow on the other !! The number of items in the super savoury spread easily exceeded 40, not including the variety of beverages provided !! The catering was done by a premier hotel in Kuala Lumpur... and their service was faultless and flawless. Omigosh ! It was really worth much much more than the time, effort, and money to go all the way to Bukit Jalil.

Too bad for those of you who missed it. Next time, when Francis says something is going to be good, we need to believe it without question.

But do not be mistaken that the fun was only through fabulous food and fancy facilities !!

This fledgling Club produced its own core of brand new Toastmasters who equalled, and even excelled, the experienced ones in several ways. Their standard in both the Table Topics as well as the prepared speeches was well above average. TM Carlo Nohra (their VPPR) received such a resounding ovation for his Icebreaker... that even a spectators' roar from a football cup final would be no match to it. And the overwhelmingly-voted Best Table Topics Speaker at this 13-clubs joint meeting was from Tiger Toastmasters Club -- TM Ramsee !!

This AFC TMC is all gung-ho about Toastmastering ( if there is such a word ). They meet at 6:00 pm every week... on Mondays. Wow !! Talk about super charge and turbo speed ! Other clubs who are now preening over their present pole position need to be on the lookout... or be overtaken.

The one and only tinge of regret for all of us was the absence of their President, TM Mohamed Hammam, who had valiantly cut short his overseas trip to be back for this occasion -- only to be thwarted by circumstances beyond his control.

In conclusion, it was more than a good meeting... it was a jolly good meeting !

Our thanks are extended to the prime movers n shakers -- Organizing Chair AG Walia, and "Operations Manager" Francis. The chemistry between them actually added impetus to the organization of the event.

Our thanks also go to AG Dr Devi (in whose Area 3 AFC is in) and DVG Dr Sharon. And of course to our judicious and discerning ADVGET Soh, whose steadfast counsel has been invaluable to our Council time and again. (Poor Soh is now down with chicken pox.)

Many thanks to all who helped in one way or another.

And syabas, SYABAS, SYABAS to the super great guys and gals in AFC.

Sincerely,

Singam.

Meeting #156 (23/09/08)

2008-09-23T23:44:00.000+08:00

Where is everybody…?!!! Our 157th meeting was only attended by 13 members and 2 guests, Danny and Derrick.

Anyhow, it was still a laudable meeting because everyone present was courageous to take on more than one role, just like the good old days. And Danny and Derrick became our 2 newest member by the end of the meeting, kudos.

KH Song said it aptly in his invocation… why are we here? Remember always:
to develop courage to speak
to conquer fear of public speaking.

Table topics session was interesting as Huey Yee attempted to get the speakers to ‘story us’ (ala tall tale contest style). Fortunately or unfortunately, most of our speakers are very honest people and the truth was more often the focus rather than stretching/expanding the topic out of proportion. Sigh. Nevertheless, kudos to Francis, Cindy, Paul, Hj Hashim and Nini Yeoh for being courageous to volunteer. (And no ill intent was intended, apologies if I wasn’t sensitive).

Poh Yew kept me in rapture with her 4th speech, “What happiness means to me”.
To her, happiness is ability to get what you want in life, and not at the expense of others. I Love the mottos which she lives by:
Let your mind be free from worries.
Let your heart be free from hate.
Live simply, expect little and give much.

So, practical stuff that you can start putting into practice is start a ”worry bank”. Deposit ie write down all your worries, as soon as they appear in your mind. Surprise, surprise! Almost all your worries won’t materialize.

Paul finally finished his Humorously Speaking Manual, speech no.5, “What do you do”. I have to salute him…if everytime I attempt a humorous speech and I fall flat on my face, I’d rather abandon ship and try another manual. So, bravo, Paul, for following through with your goal of finishing this manual.

Kudos to our roleplayers…our GE, Cindy Foong; Grammarian, Nini; ah counter, Sharon Siow; and time keeper (role jointly responsible for by Alwin, Cindy and Gean).

Dates to note:
Joint meeting of many clubs (heard, it’s more than 10), hosted by AFC TMc at AFC House, Bukit Jalil, on 13th Oct 2008.
Our own meeting on 14th Oct 2008.

Have an awesome week ahead,
Cheers,
Huey Yee

AFC TMc Meeting #4 (22 Sept 2008)

2008-09-22T22:01:00.002+08:00

I attended the 4th meeting of AFC Toastmasters Club earlier this evening. Francis was there too.

AFC Toastmasters Club, chartered on 18 August 2008 has something that some clubs strive hard for… the camaraderie of its members and the commitment to excellence. And they meet every Monday evening too! Whoa!

They were at least 10 to 20 mins early (some even earlier) for fellowship, bonding and getting to know their roles better, bravo.

Their President is a stickler for time… so, almost everyone speaks within time, very commendable.

All the members are forthcoming and already started volunteering for their maiden speech, the ice breaker. And because the members are from all nationalities, not just Malaysians, audience get a ‘taste’ of their culture through their speeches.

It is indeed a young club to be reckoned with…may the force be with you.

Note: We’re the sponsoring club for AFC Toastmasters Club.

Cheers,
Huey Yee

Meeting #156 (9 September 2008)

2008-09-22T22:01:00.001+08:00

What a turn out at our 156th meeting… only fifteen or so people, and our only guest for the evening, ‘ran away’ from the meeting after the break. Whoa! Speak about scaring people away…guys, you’ve got to be more approachable- less male bonding, more mixing with the guests.

So, for the first time in a very long, long time, our members had to play more than one role. It’s déjà vu for me…the last time we experienced this was in 2002 or 2003, when our club was at its infancy.

Anyhow, our members who attended made this meeting memorable. Marcus Chee was entertaining as the TME. Paul Tan was our Table Topics master.

We had a good number of volunteers for table topics.

After the break, we were entertained by 3 speakers…
James Chow with his ice breaker, “A Happy-Go-Lucky Guy”,
Sharon Siow, did his 3rd speech, “Change your mindset”,
Cindy Foong, did her 6th speech, “Saved by a Smile”.

The speeches were thoroughly entertaining and I learned a lesson or two from James, Sharon and Cindy.

We definitely got to know James better…though the youngest in the family, he’s a goal getter and determined to graduate with first class honors from UTAR. Bravo, James…as a man thinketh, so he becomes.

Sharon’s definitely improved from her previous speech…she’s speaking slower, so we, the listeners have time to ingest what has been said. The only constant in life is change. And we can only change ourselves, not others. Thank you for sharing your personal story with us.

I thoroughly enjoyed Cindy’s story about her mother’s (MK, it’s mother, not grandmother) saving grace, her smile. I really like her style of telling story…the eloquence of her words, the appropriate pauses, the weaving of a personal story…the ingredients of a good story. Kudos.

Our General Evaluator, was Alex Kwok, from Great Eastern TMc, a club we sponsored barely 2 years ago. He’s blossoming into a confident speaker and it was indeed refreshing and a privilege to have him give us constructive feedback, thank you.

We have missed many of you at this meeting. Yes, we know the jam’s horrendous this Puasa month. And no, that’s not a good excuse for missing the meeting. Leave the office earlier, take the LRT or car pool with other members…and we’ll See you at our next meeting this coming 23rd Sept 2008.

Cheers,
Huey yee

Ara W1 HS&E Contests (13 September 2008)

2008-09-22T21:59:00.000+08:00

Dear Fellow Money Mastery Toastmasters,
I was asked to blog about the Area W1 humorous & evaluation speech contest last Saturday at WIM by our DTM Francis. A word of caution, written in the eyes of a contestant. Here goes.
Sep 13th 2008 proved to be kind to Money Mastery – KL Toastmasters. We took 1st runners up and 1st in the the Area W1 humorous & evaluation speech contests represented by Paul & Marcus respectively. Congratulation.
Contest Chair for Humorous is MK Low.
Contest Chair for Evaluation is our President Hj. Hashim Adnan.

Noticeably missing are our president distinguish club members. Seriously, there are at least 5 cars we can car pool in to the venue. The Division W contest is schedule for the 25th October at the same venue.
In Toastmasters we got two tracks; public speaking and leadership. In a TM Speech contest, there are the same two tracks. For public speaking skills, there is the speech contest and as a test speaker. All the other role players are for the leadership track of the program. An educational experience best experience not read. Hence make plan to attend Division W contest where the "best" clubs champions in Div W will do battle.
Regards.
Marcus.

Clubbing in Shanghai

2008-08-17T11:06:00.000+08:00

Dear Friends,

I would like to share my recent experience in Toastmasters clubbing in Shanghai.

First I recommend your inform the club you plan to visiting as soon as possible if you are requesting for a speaking slot. A very important rule is to know your audience. As I was redoing my ice breaker speech, I wanted to make it interesting for my audience. I have a primary massage and a sub massage. The primary massage was what is it like to be a Chinese born and live outside China and the sub massage was what I was doing in Shanghai.

I visited two clubs, the first one spoke Mandarin before and after the meeting and the other spoke English during the entire session. I also did a humorous speech with some success and even learn from their funny man. (Sorry it always the guy lah) They meet every week and
signing up new members at every meeting. Membership size is about 50.
They have two additional VPE assistants.

Most of the members are from other part of Shanghai and even a Malaysian (past President). I know you guys are asking what about the women. A few six footers with even higher heels but most of them are like you and me. This may sound funny but they don’t look like the Chinese nationals here in KL. They look like you and me.

After this trip I am motivated to speak more Mandarin but of course it may comes out like (pause) Orange. Haha. Hence if you get a chance to travel overseas, I strongly recommend you include visiting a Toastmasters club, it is very educational and rewarding.

Marcus CheeRS

Meeting #154 (12/08/08)

2008-08-13T00:27:00.000+08:00

I was thrilled to bits… we are finally having our first meeting at our new own venue! Whoppee! And phew, lots of savings and no more paying a bomb for Shah Village motel. *winks*

What a profound venue it was. We had to take the service lift right at the back of the building to Level 1, Menara PJ. It’s a whole lot bigger than our previous venue.

In line with the Olympics theme, Francis was the only one dressed in sports clothing. Kudos. I guess the instruction was not clear… to wear or not to wear sports clothing, hmm.

We had 6 wonderful guests…Khairy (guest of Jasfarina), Paul Guy (a French Canadian, friend of Paul Tan), Fennie (found us from the world wide web), Cindy (our newest member, James’ sister), Shi Ting and Yee Ming (guests of Erica).

Our profound President, Hj Hashim let us chew on the following phrase, “Only hungry minds can grow” to start off the meeting.

Siew Yin inspired us too with her invocation. One World, One Dream. Like the Olympics, TM is all about friendship, progress and realizing of our communication dreams together.

Table topics were centered around the Olympics theme. Kudos to our guests, Khairy and Paul Guy for taking up the challenge to speak impromptu-ly. Paul Tan, Marcus Chee and Ben Hoe participated enthusiastically too.

Something profound happened tonight… 2 speakers spoke on the same subject matter from different perspectives. I’m sure with the vivid sharing from them, our members who were not able to join us for Chilling Waterfalls trip, definitely felt compensated.

Erica Soon showed profound improvement from her previous speech in her 3rd speech, “No Pain, No Gain”. Chilling Waterfalls is a creation of God in the middle of the jungle. So, sometimes in life, struggle and pain do bring about awesome reward…the beautiful sight of the waterfall.

Gean Lau definitely played her part… arriving just in the nick of time for her 3rd speech, “Procrastinate Your Way to Success”. I learned that procrastination may not necessarily be a bad thing, if we know how to be a smart procrastinator. Being one herself, Tips for successful procrastination are:
Know your limits. Don’t keep piling up the list of “To-Do” things.
Find a way around the task/challenge. Sometimes, you’d be amazed…more creative ways to solve the problem.
Knowing the difference between Urgent and/ important will produce profound results in your life.
After hibernating for 2 years, Cindy Foong attempted her 5th speech, “Trip to Nature’s Gym”. I loved her very descriptive words in sharing with us her Chilling Waterfalls experience. For some it was a leisurely walk; for others it was an intense workout in the gym. Yes, indeed, why pay through your nose for the gym when you can go trekking in natural surroundings and get to breath in fresh air, free massage and tone our body through the walking up and downhill. Kudos.

Refreshment was yummy nasi lemak, orange and banana with coffee. And also the delicious birthday cake of the month.

We are privileged to have our supporter (helped us from our charter days), Lackmichand (who is not Chinese) to be our general evaluator. Very tactful feedback, thank you.

To our dear charter president, Hj Naburi, you’ve improved tremendously with time management, please don’t go astray.

See you at our next meeting… our club’s Humorous Speech & Evaluation Contests. 8 contestants for each contest, awesome. Come and support them and invite your friends/relatives/spouses/colleagues.

Cheers,
Huey Yee
PP

DWSEP Awards Night (2/8/08)

2008-08-11T15:43:00.000+08:00

WE ARE NO. 1

On the 2nd August, 2008, the Division W Soaring Eagles Awards presentation was held at the Level 1, Menara PJ (our new meeting place) where about 70 Toastmasters and guests attended. Our club, MM-KL TMc was represented by IPP Tan Ben Hoe, President Hj Hashim, VPPR Hj Naburi and wife, VPPM E.K. Yeo, Treasurer K. H. Song, SAA Eugene, Hon. Adviser Francis Ng, James Chow, Sharon Siow, Erica Soon, Janice Ooi, Marcus Chee, Abu Bakar, Matthew Alexander, Nini Yeoh, Gene Lau, Paul Tan and Albert Seah and wife.

The supremacy of Money Mastery-KL Toastmasters Club came to the fore in the program where we are declared as the NO. 1 or TOP Club in Division W for the 2007/2008 term and we received the Gold Eagle Award for achieving President Distinguished Club status by 31st March 2008 and accumulates the most number of points under the scoring system of 1 point for every new member and 1 point for every education award (CC, AC, CL, ALB, ALS & DTM) by 30th June 2008. CONGRATULATIONS! to MM-KL Toastmasters. Here are the People responsible that contribute to the Gold Eagle Award. Touché, Kudos, Well done and BIG CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL OF THEM:

President Tan Ben Hoe received the Exemplary President Award for leading us to achieve the President Distinguished Status by 31st March 2008;

Hj Hashim Adnan received the Exclusive Walnut Miniature Lectern Award for VPE who achieves all 6 education DCP goals. and Hj Hashim was declared The Outstanding VPE in Division W who meets the 6 Education DCP Goals by 31st March, 2008; Club achieves minimum Distinguished status by 31st March, 2008 and records the most number of education awards (CC, AC, CL, AL & DTM) by 30th June 2008.
Liew Siew Yin received the Exclusive Walnut Miniature Lectern Award for being a committed VPM who achieved all 2 membership DCP goals.

K.H. Song also received The Exclusive Walnut Miniature Lectern Award for Treasurer who submits the April Semi Annual dues by 31st March 2008 with 20 members or net growth of at least 5 members.

The following who achieved their Competent Communicator (CC) by 31st March, 2008:

Alexander Matthew

Nini Yeoh Liew Hwa

Yeo Eng Keng

Liew Siew Yin

Khoshim Malim

They have received their individual 18k Gold Plated CC pins from the Immediate Past Division W Governor DTM Azmi Shahrin.

For the Advance Communicator Silver Award:
Francis Ng.

For the Advanced Communicator Gold Award:
Francis Ng

For the Advanced Leader Bronze Award:
Francis Ng

For the Distinguished Toastmaster Award:
Francis Ng.

For the Old Competent Leader Award:
1. Song Kueng Hor
2. Marcus Chee
3. Alwin Chuah
4. Hj. Hashim Adnan
5. Liew Siew Yin
6. Low Meng Koon
7. Hj.Naburi Bin Idin
8. Wan Nazmi
9. Francis Ng
10. Abu Bakar Ngah
11. Nini, Yeoh Liew Hwa
12. Raymond Sii
13. Tan Ben Hoe
14. Tan Peng Leong
15. Victor Wan
16. Chong Huey Yee
17. Alexander Matthew
18. Yeo EK

Special mention to our Paul Tan who achieved the Outstanding Area Governor W6 fo Membership Extension Award whose area achieves minimum Select Distinguished status by 31st March 2008 and records the most number of new members by 30th June 2008.

Our members who contributed their services outside the club and achieved Baby Eagle Award for the outstanding New Club Team in Division W. that sponsored or mentored the new club to achieve DCP award by 31st March 2008.
Francis Ng - sponsor of Sai Masters TMc (President Distinguished Club)
Francis Ng - sponsor of KPMG KL TMc (Distinguished Club)

Golden Phoenix Award:Francis Ng - Coach of MIA TMc (Distinguished Club)

Once again CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL THOSE WHO CONTRIBUTED TO THE SUCCESS OF OUR CLUB TO BE THE NO 1 CLUB IN DIVISION W FOR 2007/2008. KEEP THE GOOD WORK.

FOR THIS TERM LET US AWAKEN OUR INNER STRENGTH AND PICK UP OUR COURAGE TO CONQUER AND HELP FRIENDS TO SUCCEED AND TURN OUR DREAMS TO REALITY TAKE UP THE CHALLENGES FOR THE TERM AND ENSURE OUR CLUB TO REMAIN AT THE TOP OF THE PEDESTAL. BRAVO MM-KL TOASTMASTERS!

REPORT BY:
HJ. NABURI IDiN, CTM, CL
VPPR

Trip (9/6/08)

2008-08-03T22:39:00.000+08:00

Dear members,

Those who saw the photos of our Chilling Waterfalls trip (end of Jun08) projected at our meeting on 22nd July must be wondering why so many of our men strutting their muscles , everyone smiling happily for the camera etc. haha. Let me explain... Money Mastery-KL TMc had our inagrual eco-trip to Chilling Waterfalls in Kuala Kubu Baru 29th June 2008. It was fun (MK will upload the pictures onto our blog soon. those who brought cameras and had interesting pictures different from MK pls also upload).

Siew Yin was our able and industrious organiser making sure everyone were taken care of, kudos.

Slight drizzle didn't dampen our spirits. The trail was laden with many things natural...monkey cups (this small plant species grew from ground up), butterflies, mushrooms, parasit plants, beautiful unidentified plants and insects etc. We even saw a green stick insect on a leaf.

Lots of oxygen and 5 river crossings and a short walk later, we were greeted by a huge waterfall. A sight to behold. We put down our things and jumped into the pool for a good dip. Some of us swam and still others got a good massage from the strong flow of water.

Then, we makan our packed lunch and we even got to enjoy a cup of hot coffee/tea etc.The beautiful environment sure worked up my appetite.

We were blessed, really. Not only did it not rain/pour cats and dogs (it was a really cloudy day), we all got to the waterfall (all of us) and we made it out and not a drop of rain. Just awesome. Then, we proceeded to hot springs nearby to freshen up. The water was bloody hot, scalding hot.

Dinner was delicious at Ulu Yam, famous for coconut prawns and 'loh mee'.

The day ended too early (at 8ish pm!). Thank you, members and some imported people from MIA for making our trip memorable.

So, game for our next trip? Where to, guys? Let's vote on the following (you can email in suggestions):

1. Rainbow Waterfalls in Sg Lembing, Pahang

2. White water rafting and eco activities in Gopeng, Perak

cheers,

Huey Yee, ACB, CL

Past President

Meeting #153 & 6th. Anniversary (22 July 2008)

2008-08-03T22:10:00.000+08:00

Happy 6th Birthday, Money Mastery-KL Toastmasters Club!

And to all our industrious members, happy 6th birthday! Looking forward, may we celebrate many more birthdays together as we learn and grow, in our positive learning lab?
It was indeed a grand and energetic meeting. We are definitely a class above… I mean in all my 6 years with the club, I’ve never had a buffet dinner before the meeting! Wow.
Our esteemed President, Hj. Hashim said the most dangerous place to be is in the middle of the road. Likewise, to become better speakers/communicators, Decide. Decide to firmly follow the path…do the right things to pursue your communication/leadership goals this term. Very apt. Practice not only makes perfect. Practice makes permanent.
Nini Yeoh was energetic in her role as TME, kudos.
Gean Lau inspired us with Emily Dickinson’s, “I dwell in possibilities.” So, like the U-mobile advertisement on TV presently, start to ask ourselves, “Why not…?”
Why not finish my 10 speeches by Dec? Why not participate in the upcoming Humorous Speech and Evaluation Contests? Why not commit to coming to club meetings regularly? Yes, why not indeed?
Bravo to our industrious Table Topic Master, Hj Hashim, whose topics let our volunteers, have a field day. Kudos, Aziz Youp, Janice, Cindy, James, Bakar.
MK Low…he’s definitely one person who asked why not? Why not learn to be humorous? His brand of humor has evolved and it’s so original. Thank you for making us laugh.
Calista attempted her 2nd project speech, titled “My Best Friend”. Congrats, my dear! The twist to your story was absolutely amazing. I expected to hear juicy story about boyfriend and unexpectedly, you led us to think about our relationship with our dad. So, how many of us went home and told daddy, “I appreciate all you have done, thank you?”
Eu Gene brought us down memory lane with “Children of the 50s, 60s and 70s”. The value that I got from his sharing is…
Yesterday is Past, Tomorrow may never come. Today is a gift from God, that’s why it’s Present. So, why not live life to the fullest? Experience/learn one new thing everyday.
Marcus is on his 2nd round of CCship. Saving his icebreaker for a TM club in Shanghai, he attempted his 2nd project speech, titled “The Law of Attraction”. A universal law of success, the law of attraction was highlighted in The Secret. The VCD/DVD is worth watching.
Kudos to all the evaluators for their industrious evaluations, Ben Hoe, KH Song, KL Loh, Francis. Kudos too to our roleplayers who listened attentively, the grammarian, ah counter and timekeeper.

Some dates to note:
2nd Aug… Division W 2007-2008 DWSEP Awards night.
12th Aug…our next meeting.
26th Aug…Club Humorous Speech & Evaluation Contests. Volunteers for role players and contestants, pls respond to Siew Yin’s email on this.
Have an industrious and meaningful weekend.
See you at next meeting,
Cheers,
Huey Yee, ACB, CL
Past President

Francis Ng, DTM made Honorary Adviser

2008-07-18T21:29:00.000+08:00

DTM Francis Ng

8th July, 2008

At our first meeting (#152) for this term held at the Shah's Village Hotel in PJ, our "TOP CAT" none other than DTM Francis Ng was honoured by the President Hj Hashim Adnan, CC, CL by appointing him as our Honorary Adviser to the Club. This is a much deserved appointment. Francis, right from the first year of formation of the Club on 22nd July, 2002, almost single handedly, built the Club to what it is today. The Club achieved Distinguished Club award in the first year of its charter and from second year until the present it has been a President's Distinguished Club, the highest award given by Toastmasters International. I can safely declare that the major part for this is due to the passion, devotion, dedication and selfless service given by Francis to the club and its members. A million thanks, congratulations, and kudos to you Francis. Please keep up the good work.

So members please don't be surprise to see a new post of Honorary Adviser, Francis Ng appearing in the left column of our agenda for the Club's meeting #153.
To the President Hj Hashim Adnan, we thank you for that wise decision and you can be rest assured of our whole hearted support and confidence.

Hj Naburi Idin, CTM, CL
VPPR