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