Toastmasters Meeting #340

ASAA: Ooi Yee

Our meeting #340 displayed patriotic spirit of toastmasters who braved bad weather and traffic congestion. The heavy rain led to floods leading to all major roads. Indeed it was exciting to see the meeting starting with a slight delay in the setting up of the meeting room due to logistic problems.       
     

The ASAA for the meeting was our newest member, Yap Ooi Yee, who was ASAA for the meeting. This was her first time playing the role. She showed great ability in performing her role for the evening’s meeting, I know she was rather anxious and nervous and had trepidation about the role initially but showed great mettle and courage and performed her role well. I like to congratulate Toastmaster Ooi Yee.   

Humour Master: Serena Kong

Serena Kong was humour master, she may not be humorous person as she may put it however she has learnt in toastmasters how to make people laugh and add smiles with her humorous stories. She made the evening lively.   

Table Topics Master: Mathew Philippose, CC, CL

The table topics master for this meeting was none other than our club president Mathew Philippose. He had topics related to theme of the meeting “Safety Awareness”.  In the array of interesting topic in this aspect we had a good volunteer of people, Our General evaluator himself was the first to jump to take the advantage to speak. It was fun listening to each of them.

General Evaluator: MelVin Tan, CC, ALB

This was one of the meetings we see members playing double roles. Our club shows a great spirit of cooperation and eagerness to pitch in when in time of need. As well as that I have noticed members setting up the meeting hall before the meeting and clearing up after. It struck me that being a member does not mean walking into and out of a meeting, getting your membership titles and making speeches. 

True participation is amply shown with the dedication exemplified by members who come early and leave late, setting up the meeting and clearing up, see the attendance register is signed, making sure there is food and drink. Being a member of a club means you are completely involved in the operations of the club.

 

Happy Birthday, Dr. Thila! We love you!

Reported by,
Vijayakumar, CC

Toastmasters Meeting #339

Our meeting #339 was a fortnight ago.We had our theme "Over The Rainbow" and with the word of the night "gingerly". Surprisingly, all the members use it throughout the meeting! Well done!

Speaker: Ken Chan, DTM

In the meeting, we saw three eloquent speakers giving their speeches.  Tuan Haji Hashim Adnan, Ken Chan and Dr. Thilla who gave awesome speeches. Ken Chan did an excellent and eye opening speech on Getting Comfortable with Visual Aids from the C.C. manual. Ken Chan showed how this speech should be done. I too did this speech when I was completing my C.C. manual but mine was about visual aids in themselves and it went well. But I wish I had seen Ken Chan giving this speech before I gave mine. Ken Chan’s speech hits the nail well. His speech ‘I am a Liar’ became food for the WhatsApp messages for days after the meeting in the club’s WhatsApp group. 
 

Speaker: Hj. Hashim Adnan, ACB, ALS

Tuan Haji Hashim Adnan and Dr. Thilla both gave equally astounding speeches from their respective manuals. Tuan Haji Hashim’s speech title “Finding New Members for Your Club” from the ‘The Successful Club Series’ should have been recorded. It was informative.  Tuan Haji Hashim Adnan’s speech highlighted to me the importance of how to recruit new members and I look forward to hearing more speeches from that manual.  If the speeches are compiled, they can be used in our Club Officers Training program (COT). I would like to hear a speech from him on how to retain members. Tuan Hj.Hashim is a long time member of our club with a vast reservoir of experience as a toastmaster and his views will go a long way in providing useful advice on membership retention. You see recruitment of members and retention of members go hand in hand. This speech also awarded Tuan Haji Hashim with Advanced Communicator Silver (ACS) title. To this speech we did give him a standing ovation later.  Congratulations Tuan Haji Hashim Adnan.

Standing Ovation to Hj. Hashim on his journey achieving ACS title.

Speaker: Dr. Thila, ACS, ALB

Dr Thila’s speech from the Advanced Communication Manual titled ‘Impromptu Speaking’ was an excellent display on impromptu speaking.  In order to excel in this speech, Dr.Thila must have considerable experience in this kind of speech. Impromptu speaking is what the table topics Session is all about but when carried into an Advanced Communications Manual it is no more a 2to 3 minute speech however she need to speak for 5 to 7 minutes, she took up the challenge well. Congratulations too to Dr Thilla for she got to be the winner in the prepared Speech Contest category for the day. It was very interesting to see three top speakers in one night.

Speaker: Manish Kumar

Manish Kumar too gave a nice speech and he spoke from his heart. His speech titled ‘Live truly Your present’ talked about living for the present, not thinking of the past as it is history and has he well quoted in his speech future is a mystery. Well done Manish Kumar.

Excellence in speech making is an art developed over time with practice. I may say a good speech have two parts one is developing quality as a speaker and second is how one delivers a speech. What I mean by this is, the speaker must know how to deliver the speech, which encompasses, body language, pitch of voice, the mood he or she sets according to the nature of the speech and the use of visual aids etc., and the other part is the speech itself. The content must be well researched and must be of interest to the audience.  Let me tell you something, do you think that the speeches made by many famous or infamous politicians or leaders were written by them. No! Often the speeches were written by top flight speech writers who have well and truly mastered their craft. 

Great leaders such as John Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Mahatma Gandhi, and even infamous dictators like Mao Sze Tung and Adolf Hitler often had many of their speeches written by someone else. It goes to show what a fine art speech making is.

Photo Gallery for meeting #339:

 

Genereal Evaluator: Steven Khaw, ACS, ALS