Meeting #260, 23rd October 2012

23rd October 2012 is a very special day for Money Mastery-KL Toastmasters Club. It is very special for a number of reasons. Firstly it is a day after Toastmasters Day. Oh! Yes, Toastmasters International completed 88 years. As for Money Mastery-KL Toastmasters Club we are going to witness two special speeches, the Ice Breaker speech by our newest member Mahadevan Arumugam, TM and also Ron Yeap, TM is giving his final speech from the Competent Communication manual.

On this day the weather was fine and the coolness of the day was a good setting for this special day. What can one say of the excitement that filled the faces of all who walked in?  It was not only the members who were trailing in to the special meeting room in 3^rd floor MCA PJ Selatan building; it was our four guests who were coming for the first time.

Oh! Yes, we begun our meeting with lots of food and fellowship. Greetings were exchanged and there was much laughter and fun as members and guests were talking to each other creating much life to the environment. So who were our guests? They were Meyyappa Manickam, DTM from Exact ADC Toastmasters Club, Delliotte Malaysia Toastmasters Club and also the Division B Governor; and our first time guests, Mr. Anwar Ahmad, Ms. Agnes Wong and Ms. Tracy Li.

The Assistant Sergeant-At-Arms Serena Kong, CC calls the meeting to order. She reminded all present on the house rules, and led the members to recite “A Toastmaster’s Promise”.  She then handed the meeting over to President Ken Chan, ACS, ALB announced the theme of the day as “Voice is Breaking”. Later at the President requested the Grammarian CP Lau, CC to introduce the “Word of the Day” as “Melodious”. It is an adjective pronounced muh-loh-dee-uhs.  He said the meaning: 1) having a pleasant sound or pleasing tune having a melody. 2) Agreeable to hear. Examples: 1) Their melodious singing and impressive dancing makes them great candidates for the leads in the upcoming musical. 2) He relaxed under the tree, listening to the melodious sounds of nature.

The President then invited members and guests to introduce themselves, many of them used both the word of the day and the theme of the day as they introduced themselves and their respective roles for the evening. He next invited the Toastmaster of the Evening (TME) Mathew Philippose, TM to take over the meeting. The Toastmaster reemphasized on the theme of the day and called the Table Topics Master Serena Kong, CC to lead the session in table topics. 

There were five volunteers gave an impromptu speech that was interesting as they were all given topics based on the word of the day. Truly one can say the voice is breaking as the speeches rolled off. Two of them were our first time guests, Mr. Anwar and Ms. Agnes.

As the TME took control again He introduced the first speaker Toastmaster Mahadevan Arumugam, as soon as the Evaluator and General Evaluator spelled out the objectives and roles respectively. First timer, Mahadevan took the floor with much eloquence and confidence with the title ‘The Melodious Life of Mahadevan’. Truly we came to know more of him and his achievements.  One thing we know he is a happy man and although he has passed 60, believes he can live to the age of 120 years. In his gesture of love was willing to share his secret to anyone keen to know about longevity.

Next speaker was Toastmaster Ron Yeap with the title “My Fruitful Journey as a Toastmaster’. Ron Yeap was giving his 10^th speech from the Competent Communication manual. It was a speech full of emotion, bringing forth his aspirations in the journey of Toastmasters; he did share some disappointments and his hopes that keep him going to this final speech. He was so expressive and entertaining with his humor and witty remarks. Some of his remarkable phrases were: “the soul is placed in the body like diamond, and must be polished, or the luster of it will never appear”, “I know that I will achieve a very small milestone in the long Toastmaster’s journey”. As he concluded one can say it is not the Ron Yeap we saw few months back his voice has broken to a loud confident speaker.

The final speaker for the day was from Ken Chan, ACS, ALB and he was speaking from the Advance Communication Manual, Specialty Speeches. He made the audience the Human Resource of a company and he was selling the idea of setting up of a Toastmasters club in the company. The unique title of his speech was, “Now Everybody Can Sell”. Towards the end he called upon the audience for questions, he took on the questions like an expert. It was an inspiring moment to see him lift the meeting to a climax in the project speeches and in a voice that is breaking to greater height.

           It was by this time due for the most wanted break and once again guest and members adjourned to refreshment corner as the TME announced the break time. It was a good break of almost 15 minutes and all were gathered back for Evaluation Session.

 The Evaluation session was led by the General Evaluator Meyyappa Manickam, DTM. At his invitation EK Yeo, CC, CL praised the participants who bravely came to speak. He noted well some points such as repeating the title was good for an evaluator to understand the topic, he congratulated for eye contacts and body languages. He said it was remarkable to hear good speeches by both the new guests Mr. Anwar and Ms. Agnes.

He was followed by Francis Ng, DTM evaluator for our Ice Breaker speech by TM Mahadevan. He congratulated Mahadevan for his first speech and said it was well organized in a chronological order of events. He said “This has helped us to know you better.” 

We had EK Yeo coming up again with a broad smile and congratulating Ron Yeap who will now move to Competent Communicator (CC). He said Ron Yeap’s final CC speech was captivating the audience added with body gesture, facial expression and it was topped up with lots of humor and vocal variety. 
Tan Ben Hoe, CTM, CL evaluated Ken's speech and highlighted the 6 steps of selling.
During the open evaluation, there were many feed-backs from the floor on the speeches delivered.

Than came the reports from the Grammarian on misused words and words and phrases that was commendable. The Ah counter said there were not much of ahs or umps or repeats and mentioned the few. The Time Keeper gave the timing report from the beginning and it was noted that all went on time.

And finally we had the General Evaluator who summed up the evaluation with praises, admiration and areas where improvement can be made. He handed the meeting back to the TME. The TME than called on the President Ken Chan to give away the awards. The ‘Best Table Topic Speech’ award went to Mathew Philippose, the ‘Best Project Speech’ went to none other than Ron Yeap and the ‘Best Sppech Evaluator’ went to Francis Ng, DTM. The 
President called the guests to give their opinion of the meeting. The guests showed much enthusiasm has they gave their remarks. 

It is the tradition of Toastmasters for recognition of the significant achievements by the members. Tonight, we gave away 2 standing ovations to our two members of the club that had achieved different milestones in Toastmasters.  
 
Our first standing ovation went to TM Mahadevan, who made his debut speech tonight; and the second standing ovation went to TM Ron Yeap, who had completed the 10 speeches in the Competent Communication manual. Congratulations to both of them.

The President then with concluding remarks and said the day met the theme objective and our voice is breaking and there is melody in our speeches. Before he ended, he invited the General Evaluator, Meyyappa Manickam, DTM to receive a token of appreciation for making time to play an important role in our meeting tonight. He adjourned the meeting at 9.35pm.

Signing off,
Mathew Philippose

Meeting #259, 9th October 2012

It was 6:00pm and it was raining heavily out there. The traffic condition was so bad, that I would think the attendance would be poor in this meeting.

As the VPE was in the Taylor's College attending their Toastmasters meeting, sincere appreciation goes to Mathew, Ron and Serena whom had come early to help setting up the meeting room despite the rain and poor traffic condition. This is what we called TEAM WORK! Thank you team.

The team was here at the Bangunan MCA, in PJ Selatan quite early for our 259th meeting on 9th October 2012. Food was ready, and Ron has started to arrange tables and chairs with Serena's help.

I must take this opportunity to thank all members, despite the heavy rain, many of you have turned up and made this meeting a successful one. And, this has given a very good impression to our guests, Mahadevan, Teresa, Angel and Ms Lee. Thank you for your valuable time and effort to pay us a visit. And, we would like to welcome our new member, Toastmaster Mahadevan!

Our meeting started a little late. Our President, Ken Chan, ACS, ALB and our club advisor, DTM Francis Ng were late due to heavy traffic. Nevertheless, we proceed with the meeting and VPE, CP Lau, CC had temporary taken over as the Acting President.

The theme of the meeting was "One Step At A Time", proposed by the Toastmaster of the Evening, CP Lau. He highlighted that we have moved into the last quarter of 2012 and urge all members to continue to strive for goal achievement. Late is always better than never, as long as we proceed, one step at a time, we are heading towards the fruitful destination.

The word of the day was "Contemplate". This was proposed by Tn. Hj. Hashim Adnan, CC, CL. He was our Grammarian of the day.

CP Lau started off the meeting by explaining to our guests about the history of Toastmasters International as well as our club, Money Mastery-KL Toastmasters Club. He also mentioned some of the benefits as Toastmasters.

Table Topics session has always been the most interesting session of the meeting. Our Table Topics Master was TM Ron Yeap. He was creative and did it a little different from the normal Table Topics sessions. He used different type of teas for different types of questions. In addition, he put the questions into the tea cups. The participants chose the topics from the cups. Well done Ron!

Mr. Mahadevan during Table Topic session

Our participants for the table topics were:-

1.    TM Mathew Philippose

2.    Tn. Hj. Hashim Adnan, CC, CL

3.    Tan Ben Hoe, CTM, CL

4.    Mahadevan

Bravo to all of them for accepting the challenge and giving their impromptu speeches.

The meeting moved on to the very interesting session, the project speech session. We have 3 speeches lined up for the members.

TM Mathew Philippose has begun the session by delivering his 8th speech. His speech objective was to get comfortable with visual aids. Mathew has showed very interesting power point slides. He talked about building confidence in public speaking, which was very relevant to all members, especially to our guests. He demonstrated how well the late Steve Jobs spoke on the stage.

Serena Kong, CC was the second speaker of the day. She told us a humorous story, which with some of her experiences in it. She told us that her life is full of test. During her story telling, she demonstrated to us, how she overtook cars in front and she overtook 4 cars consecutively instead of being instructed to just overtake "1" car at a time. What a brave girl..

  
Our 3rd speaker was none other than our president, ken Chan, ACS, ALB. He presented his 1st speech of the High Performance Leadership manual. He shared with us his vision as the G1 Area Governor. His inspiring speech has captivated all of us and we followed him to shout "I" to believe that we can achieve our vision in the Toastmasters journey.

After the break, the meeting proceed to the Speech Evaluation session. DTM Francis Ng was the evaluator for all participants of the Table Topics session. The commented on the strengths of every speakers. Not only that, he also provided constructive suggestions to them on how to improve and bring their speaking skills to the next level. Thank you Francis.

Ken Chan, ACS, ALB evaluated on Mathew's speech. Besides his very attractive presentation, Mathew was advised not to show the video of Steve Job's speech. The reason being, Steve was so good which he had stolen the limelight from Mathew. The star should be Mathew. It was suggested to just use his picture and describe how well he spoke. I find that it was a very good input for all of us.

And, once again, Francis Ng, DTM evaluated on Serena's speech. he commented on the vast improvement of Serena's speaking skills. She spoke loud enough for the audience to hear her. Perhaps she will have to inject more humor into her speech in order to keep the audience laughing. I thought this could be a difficult task to do, but well done Serena!

Francis also evaluated the last speaker, Ken Chan. He was inspired by Ken's speech. He highlighted that, Ken was using the "template" of power point slides provided by Toastmasters International and recommended the members to use the same in future.

Our Mr. General Evaluator, Teoh Chun Ming, CC, ALB, also provided his comments and constructive comments to speakers for their improvements. He liked the way we implement the time disqualification checking after each session. He would also recommend his club to practice the way we encourage our members to make use of the word of the day during the self-introduction session at the beginning of the meeting.

Tn. Hj. Hashim Adnan, CC, CL was awarded The Best Table Topics Speech award, Ken Chan, ACS, ALB was awarded The Best Project Speech award and Francis Ng, DTM was award The Best Project Speech Evaluation award.

Appreciation to our role players of the meeting:-

·         ASAA - Mathew Philippose, TM

·         TME - CP Lau, CC

·         Grammarian - Hj. Hashim Adnan, CC, CL

·         Ah Counter - Serena Kong, CC

·         Time Keeper - Tan Ben Hoe, CTM, CL

Best Table Topic Speaker, Hj. Hashim Adnan, CC, CL (left)

Best Project Speaker, Ken Chan, ACS, ALB (right)

Best Speech Evaluator, Francis Ng, DTM (right)

Ken presenting token of appreciation to General Evaluator,
Teoh Chun Ming, CC, ALB

Immediate Past President, Victor Wan, ACB, ALB took the opportunity to present appreciation pin from District 51 for the club's achievement in Passion Drive (membership recruitment drive).

Meeting adjourned at 9:30pm. Our next meeting will be held on 23th of October, same time, same place.

"Make sure you have finished speaking before your audience has finished listening" - Dorothy Sarnoff Forthcoming events: ~~Division G - Humorous Speech and Evaluation Contests on Sunday, 21 October 2012, 12:30pm. @ Taylor's College, Lecture Theater 1, First Floor, No. 1, Jalan 15/8, 47500 Subang Jaya. ~~

~20^th Semi-Annual Convention 2012, 16 & 17 Nov, 2012 (Fri & Sat @ Holiday Villa Hotel & Suites, Subang Jaya) ~

Signing off,
CP Lau

Meeting #258, 25th September 2012

Stepping to our 258^th meeting venue, it was found that our lovely TM Ron Yeap & TM Kyle Kuah went the extra mile and filled the room with beautiful lanterns. They kicked off the celebration of Mooncake Festival in advance. Thumbs up for their initiatives! Well done!

“Tot! Tot! Tot!...” The club started the meeting sharp at 7 p.m. with remarkable attendance of the members, especially the role players. Our attentive listeners, Ah Counter, TM Sunny Low and Grammarian, TM Mathew hanged on to every word we spoke for the whole night.


TM Sunny, kept track of all our pause fillers like ah.. um… while TM Mathew Philippose introduced the word of the day, “ASPIRATION” to the members and encouraged us to use it during the meeting. He also recorded and commented on either inappropriate or exemplary uses of the English language. Our smart Time Keeper, TM Kyle Kuah had shown up his leadership skills throughout the meeting. He found and learned his way to notify the speakers of the timing at the same time enjoy listening to speech.

The Toastmaster of the Evening, CC Serena Kong introduced the Theme of the Day “The Sky is The Moon.”, in conjunction with this festival. “Shoot for the moon” may sound acting impossibly to many. However, those were aspired to make things happen would always find ways to make things happen, the sky is the limit. She urged the members to set the goal as high as the moon. The famous quote, “Reach for the moon, because if you don't make it you'll land among the stars.” If the members set the goal as high as the moon and the moon is your limit, then, “the sky is the moon”.

The meeting kept the excitement and rolled it to the table topics session. CC Kelvin Chong displayed his humor and made our guests Wai Yan and Steven Wong felt comfortable, took the challenge and participated in the session. The topics he chose were related to words of "Wisdom", "Persistence", "Attitude" and "Success".

Our guest Wai Yan, former member of the club, enjoyed the long lost fun and the experience of impromptu speaking. Guest Steven Wong, on the other hand, showed his speaking confidence and left us the message, “Success is about reward!”


The project speech session was a hunted session. Our speakers filled the audience with different topics. Their utmost objectives were not only sharing and persuading us with their ideas, but also, they wanted to grow and learn different skills in their presentations.

Our first speaker, TM Ron Yeap persuaded us to donate blood to save others' life. He made us realized that how precious was the blood transfusion to the cancer patients, accident patients, mothers who are suffering from bleeding in the operation room…Also, he attracted us by informing the benefits of donation, for example, lower risk of heart disease, 450cc of your blood donated can help to lose 600 kcal. He ended the speech by persuading the members to fill up the donation form and powerful question, “What is STOPPING you to donate your BLOOD?”

CC, CP Lau started his speech with BABY LAUGUAGE… “Gu..Gu.., Cii..Cii” - the language that was hardly could be understood by others. Can you find a job that does not require communication? Even a programmer like him need to communicate and present his work to the clients. His speaking skill had been hindering him from shining and winning the deals. It was getting worse when he was crowned to become Mr. Okay when he spoke 26 times “Okay” in 2 minutes. Where on earth that he could improve his communication skill? He found his platform to improve his skill and become a more confident speaker… in Money Mastery-KL Toastmasters Club!

Both 3^rd and 4^th speaker guided us on the money matters. CTM, CL Alwin Chuah flooded us with his future stock knowledge. He patiently explained the market condition and the timing to enter the market. His philosophy was earning the money weekly, with the minimum of work and proper researching with greater rewards.

ACS, ALB Ken Chan on the other hand, generously sharing his 10 years of finance experiences to the members. A successful businessman must be knowledgeable to read the yearly financial statement when he wants to invest. It was a very detailing method to read the financial statement. And then, we adjourned for 10 minutes of fellowship break after the prepared project speech session ended

Our General Evaluator, ACS, ALB Samuel Selvaraju brought the evaluation session to the peak of the night. The evaluation session was indeed, the most splendid session. Our evaluators were very skillful and evaluated the speeches according to the objectives. They were sharp in listening, excellent in bringing the points with the aspiration to see the speakers growing.

General Evaluator, ACS, ALB Samuel Selvaraju was assisted by his team of role players:

A) Table Topics Master:  CC, CL EK Yeo

 He highlighted the strength of the impromptu participants on their body language, organizing thoughts and their eye contacts to the audience.

B) Project Speech Evaluator: 

- CC, CL Hj. Hashim Adnan

CC, CL Hj. Hashim Adnan demonstrated to TM Ron Yeap to persuade with strong closing of his speech by distributing the donation form and asking the audience to fill it up immediately.

- TM Mathew Philippose

TM Mathew Philippose on the other hand, highlighted to CC CP Lau that his speech objective was to make the audience keep laughing. He could start laughing to break the audience from smiling to laughing. 

- DTM Francis Ng

DTM Francis suggested CTM, CL Alwin Chuah to present the topic in more general matter such as the reasons to buy future compares to other commodities. 

Before we ended the meeting, our dedicated Grammarian, TM Mathew Philippose added the value to the members by highlighting the good phrases used by the speakers.

Good phrases used in the night:

The meeting adjourned at 9:30p.m. We will meet on the 9th October at 6.30pm again.

As soon as the meeting adjourned, we pose together for group photo that will later on submit to Toastmasters International for the "Clubs: Show Off Your Brand" contest.

"Clubs: Show off your brand" contest for September 2012

  

Signing off,

Serena Kong