Toastmasters Meeting #272 - 09 April 2013

09^th April was a special night. We had our Toastmasters meeting at MM-KL TMC Disneyland waiting for chimera moment to arrive. The meeting began sharp at 7pm, chimerically without the presence of Mickey Mouse, Snow White, Peter Pan, Twinkle-Bell, but was warmly welcomed by Assistant Sergeant-at-Arms, Jennifer Mah, TM. Even tough she is a new member, she demonstrated her leadership by taking up the role. Thumbs up to her! She had reminded my first time, guided by Francis Ng, DTM with the script 

The theme of the day was “Disneyland” and the word of the day was “Chimera”. Chimera means dream or fantasy. The Toastmasters of the evening, Serena Kong, CC, explained that Toastmasters International started like Walt Disney with a modest but noble goal, i.e. to help people improve their speaking skills in a supportive, informal atmosphere. Most people come to the club to overcome their fear of public speaking. In the meeting,

besides, food, speeches and evaluation, what you’ll see is the demonstration of courage.

Our members acquire the habit of courage through encouragement and support. If Disneyland could offer us Adventureland, Frontierland, Fantasyland and Tomorrowland, so did we. We prepared the members, develop their public speaking, listening, planning, time management skills and etc, open up a new horizon in their career and human relationship. We are just like the godmother fairy Cinderella putting her mantra “Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo” putting all elements to grow a person to become who they want to be. 

Our meeting had divided into 3 main sessions: Table Topics, Assigned Speeches and Evaluations. Our experienced Table Topics Master, Francis Ng, DTM led the session by giving interesting  and chimerical topics to all the volunteers. Some of the members were challenged to speak with imagination. The table topics volunteer speakers were: 

A)   Mathew Philippose, CC

B)   Jennifer Mah, TM

C)   Ben Hoe, CTM, CL

D)   Angel Lau, TM

E)   Ng Ser Kwang (Guest)

F)   Serena Kong, CC

All of the speakers put themselves forward and faced their internal demon –FEAR, spoken on their feet. Recalled on some of their speeches, Mathew told that one of his fantasies was when he had the ability to fly. Jennifer chimerically loved 7 dwarfs and experienced Ben Hoe highlighted that his home was his Disneyland.

At 8:00p.m., we had our assigned speech session.  CP Lau, CC, the speaker of the night shared with us on Cloud Computing. He told us a story about why the word "cloud" was used cloud computing. He told us, the symbol of "cloud" was used because it represents something complex but not important. Well, is this true? You may Google it out. Non technical like most of us, got to learn the types of cloud computing, the 3 important characteristics of cloud; Software as a service, Platform as a service and Infrastructure as a service. Of course, CP also shared with us the benefits of cloud computing. One very important phrase he used, "Green Computing".

Ken Chan, ACG, ALB persuaded and inspired the members to bring guests and share the benefits to others with a short story tale. It was a boy that used to pick up a star fish and threw it back to the sea. His action might seem insensible but his action was an inspiration. The key message was: “He had just made the difference to that particular star fish.”  It was a short and simple story, however, the story was perfectly delivered to meet his speech objectives. Well done! 

Mathew Philippose is the both champions for Area G1 International Speech and Table Topics  

Contests. It was a gift to our club to have such a distinguished member, to represent Area G1, to contest in Division G with other Toastmasters. He would be contesting on 20/04/2013 (Saturday), 8:45 a.m. at Monash University, Sunway.

He practiced his speech and all the members gave their support and gave their opinions in terms of his speech delivery, stage marking and his vocal variety.

Then, we were given a short break of 10 minutes

“Bibbidi bobbidi boo” General Evaluator, Sam Leong, ACB, CL carried out the evaluation session by calling the evaluators to give their reports. His team of evaluators were:

A)   Table Topics Evaluater- EK Yeo, CC, CL

B)   Speech Evaluator for CP Lau, CC- Francis Ng, DTM

C)   Speech Evaluator for Ken Chan, ACG, ALB- Tan Ben Hoe, CTM, CL

D)   Grammarian- Mathew Philippose, CC

E)   Ah- Counter- Angel Lau, TM

F)   Timer- EK Yeo, CC, CL

In general, for the Table Topics evaluation, Ek Yeo CC, CL touched on the body language, vocal variety, and methods of how to present a 1 to 2-minute speech. 

Francis Ng, DTM, on the other hand, encouraged CP Lau, CC to make his speech to be less technical and improved the power point slide presentation.

Ben Hoe, CTM, CL congratulated Ken Chan, ACG, ALB that he had achieved his speech objectives.

After all the speech evaluations, the control was handed over to the Club President, Ken Chan, ACG, ALB to do the closing. He encouraged the members to attend or play a role in the Division G International Speech and Table Topics Contests. 

He also highlighted that there could be a venue change for the coming meeting due to the national election. Members would be noted by circulated by email. Guests were also encouraged to call us for the meeting location.

The meeting adjourned at 9:40p.m. and the club fellowship began.