1 Malaysia

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-KL we have that breed of members who are 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)

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

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