Meeting #261, 30th October 2012

The clock was ticking. It was close to 7.00pm and the Klang Valley area was in a retarding traffic flow due to earlier downpour. It was the fifth Tuesday of the month, where Money Mastery-KL Toastmasters Club would have their meeting.

The meeting was forced to start 14 minutes late, but to everyone’s surprise, members and guests were not deterred by the traffic condition ahead of them in attending a Toastmasters meeting. A number of members and guests had shown up for the meeting.



Ken Chan delivering his opening speech

After Assistant Sergeant-At-Arms Mathew Philippose, TM called the meeting to order, he led us through the recital of 'A Toastmaster's Promise'. The chair was handed to President Ken Chan, ACS, ALB for his opening address. Ken invited the Grammarian to read out the Theme of the Day and Word of the Day, which was ‘Year End Vacation’ and ‘concerted’. Every Toastmaster and guest who stood up to make self-introduction had not short of using the Theme of the day as well as the Word of the Day. Ken thought that ‘Year End Vacation’ is still early.



Ron Yeap as Toastmaster of the Evening

President Ken Chan passed the control of the meeting to the Toastmaster Of the Evening, Ron Yeap, CC. Ron greeted everyone who made it to the meeting. Ron explained that Year End Vacation fever is approaching as the school holiday will start soon. It is also the right timing to plan ahead if anyone will go for a Year End Vacation. He also introduced to our guests the history of Toastmasters as well as Money Mastery-KL Toastmasters Club.



Francis Ng as Table Topics Master

After the formal opening of the meeting, we proceeded to the first exciting program of the meeting, the Table Topics Session. Ron handled the control to the Table Topics Master, Francis Ng, DTM. Francis used a different approach in conducting the session. He framed a scenario to the audience, with “The year end vacation has started, my wife and our two daughters and son went for an enjoyable vacation…” Participants will have to continue the story and keep it evolving. We had Mathew, Kelvin, Wendy, Anwar and Ken took part and gave their plots and views of the topic.



Our guests were actively taking part in Table Topics session



Moving on, we had our new and committed member, Mahadevan, TM to deliver his 2^nd speech from Competent Communicator manual. His speech title was “The Power of Our Sub-conscious Mind”. He gave an interesting example using sub-conscious mind when he was searching for a parking lot. Whenever he reaches a destination, someone will pull out from the parking lot.

We have Kyle Kuah, TM as our 2nd speaker in delivering speech no. 6, Vocal Variety. Kyle presented a fairy tale story “The Princess and the Pea”. The story went alive from Kyle. He did not end his story in a normal manner, he commented the fairy tales contained many out-of-logical plots, like why a king has to open the castle door by his own, where are the servants!? How come the mighty fiery dragon can get killed easily by the hero of the story?



The final speech saw Mathew Philippose, TM delivering his 9^th speech, Persuade with Power. His speech title was “Love Your Neighbour”. Mathew pointed out some people lack of caring towards others. Finally, he also offered the telephone number of Bukit Aman so that we can seek immediate aid should needed.

A special talk given by Sarah Abedi

In this meeting, we were fortunate to have invited Sarah Abedi, DTM, the Assistant Division C Governor for Education and Training to share with us on ‘How to Perform Your Role as a Good Grammarian’. Sarah offered tips on how we can be rich in choice of words by practising having words of different degree (positive, neutral and negative) in mind, so that we can be more expressive in our communications. It was a very educational and beneficial session to our members as well as guest.

The meeting went to 15 mins break at 8.50pm. Members and visitors took the opportunity to enjoy the refreshments.

Coming back fresh after the break, the meeting proceeded with Evaluation session. CP Lau, CC was our General Evaluator that led us through the Evaluation session. We have EK Yeo, CC, CL as our Table Topics Evaluator. He managed to pinpoint the strength and room of improvement to all the Table Topics Speakers. He also complimented Wendy, who was our guest, on her willingness to take part.

First Project Speech Evaluation started by Victor Wan, ACB, ALB on his evaluation to Mahadevan. Victor enjoyed in Mahadevan’s topic, but also stressed that the organization of the speech is important to help audience be focus on the topic that he presented.

The next Evaluation on Kyle Kuah was conducted by Francis Ng. Francis liked the way Kyle presented a well-known fairy tale in a lively way. He also complemented Kyle that he could leave the audience with some points to ponder.

The last Evaluation was from Ken Chan to Mathew Philippose. Ken agreed with Mathew’s topic that is to ‘Love Your suggested Mathew should give more emphasis on why we should take action and start ‘Love Your Neighbour’.

Many hands were raised and given more feedbacks by the audience to the speakers during the Open Evaluation session.

The Grammarian, Sarah shown us a good example of performing this role. She highlighted on the excellent use of phrases, corrected the misuse of words and grammer. Time Keeper’s report was delivered by Victor Wan; while Ah-Counters report was delivered by Kelvin Chong, CC. General Evaluator CP Lau then summing up his report about the meeting.

When the TME took over the chair, he was accompanied by the president to present the awards to the best performers of the meeting. The results are as below;

Best Table Topics Speech award: Ken Chan, ACS, ALB

Best Project Speech award: Mahadevan Arumugam, TM

Best Project Speech Evaluation award: Francis Ng, DTM

Finally, the President took over the control to deliver his closing speech and made announcement of some up-coming activities. The president had also presented the token of appreciation to the 1^st-time General Evaluator, CP Lau for his effort. Not forgetting the token of appreciation to Sarah Abedi for accepting our invitation. We also welcome 2 new members joining the MMKLTMC family, En. Anwar and Ms. Angel.

The meeting ended fruitfully at 10.00pm. We took this opportunity to take a group photo for submission to Brands contest of Toastmasters International.

Toastmasters International!! We want to be heard!!

Signing off,

Ron Yeap