Lessons Learned the Hard Way

On this day, I was assigned as an ASAA (Assistant Sergeant at Arms). However, I could not make on time. Hence, the Toastmaster of the Eveing, Kevin Khoo, CC, took over the control and ran the meeting without delay. This is how we learned to support each other sincerely when the situation called upon to do so.

Our Club President Ron Yeap, CC open the floor from his presidential opening address. We had our theme of the day “Lessons Learned the Hard Way” and word of the day “Kaput”. Each one of us shared our best life lessons learned the hard way to illuminate each other’s life. It says, experience is a master teacher, even when it’s not our own.  Most importantly, everyone was happy to speak in the meeting as we always provide very friendly and comfortable atmosphere.

The Toastmaster of the Evening, Kevin Khoo, CC, took over the floor from the president. He quickly announced the changes found in the agenda so that everyone could follow the flow of the meeting. Also, he made sure all the role players like Ah’ counter, Time keeper, Grammarian including General Evaluator were in place. Not only that, he provided an informative session to our lovely guests about the history of Toastmasters International and the benefits of Toastmasters offer. 

After that, he introduced Table Topics™ Master, EK Yeo, CC,CL to handle the Table Topics™ session. I am so happy that we had four courageous self-driven speakers and they are:

 1. Kevin Khoo 2. Vijay Kumar 3. Ravi from IND, 4. David Tan from PJ TMC. All the topics were related to theme of the day and what they spoke very well. They shared their life best story that left us touched.

Now our Toastmaster of the evening, took us to another segment of the meeting and he introduced all the prepared speech speakers one after another.

First speaker- Carim, his speech title “My Origin”.

Our first speaker brought up his very first prepared speech with his speech title “My Origin”. He set a new milestone as he had broken his ice in front us. He was brave, audacious, and he made a valiant attempt to his ice-breaker speech. Well done, Carim! In fact, we had been given the opportunity to know you well.

According to him, his name “Carim” means kindness and generous. He comes from Philippines, and now he is working in Malaysia. He mentioned about his childhood, about his big family, his siblings. He was born in a big family and he was the fourth kid in the family. Maybe because of this, he learned how to tolerant and be patient. He loved playing chess and his father was his teacher. He taught him how to be a quick learner, become a more mature person and be a critical thinker. I listened attentively as I don’t want to miss any single thing about his speech. 

He deserved a standing ovation from all. Well done, Carim!

2^nd Speaker- Mathew P. CC ALB, his speech title “Magic Words”. He was doing his second round CC, speech no. #3 Get to the point. He is a proficient speaker. He is a corporate trainer by profession. He shared how three magical words changed his life whenever he encountered the toughest situations. Words like “Sorry”, “Thank you”, “Please Forgive Me”were very powerful. It was a very entertaining speech and we broke to laughter when he acted how he was lifted up by someone. I love his facial expression and how he switched off someone’s anger.No wonder, he won first place in our club international speech contest. Mathew, keep it up!

3rd Speaker: Joel, Speech Title “Development of Money”- Joel was doing his fourth speech from the competent communication manual- How to say it.  He touched about the topic of the inflation and deflation and how they affected the development of the money. It was very informative and learned something from his speech.

After Inspirational and educational talk, our VPE brought next speaker to have some entertaining talk.

4^th Speaker- Ron Yeap, CC. Speech Title- Presents for Your Love Ones. He was doing this speech from his advanced manual –Entertaining speaker (Resources for Entertainment). In his speech he put a lots of humor and surprises to educate the married and unmarried men example, how to surprise our loved one even with small surprises. I believe, he came up with his personal story which kept the audience giggling and captivated for 7 minutes. Ron was so comfortably in delivering his speech, maybe in the near future, he should try to talking on standup comedy. hahahaha..

 Give your wife pleasant surprises, she will love you more -Ron.

It was time for a break as our stomachs were growling. Therefore, our generous Toastmaster of the evening, Kevin, CC announced the break for 15mins.

The meeting resumed by having the General Evaluator, Edwin Wong CC to take the lead. He is from Air products Toastmasters Club. He called all the speech evaluators, in sequence to give their feedback to the speakers. This was one of the session that gave value to all of us. We were not only given the chance to learn the way to speak, but also to learn how to give constructive feedback rather than criticism. It was an art!

After that, role players gave their reports. Our General Evaluator also gave his general evaluation reports where he clearly highlighted the club strengths and pointed out some points of improvements. We appreciated the points as we should not stay complacent in where we are. 

The night was at the peak when Toastmaster of the evening announced the best performers in the meeting. The results were as below: 

Indeed, we had a quality meeting and everyone was happy.  Join us if you are around in Petaling Jaya. 

Sincerely, 

Thanks to the Team,

Manish Jha, CC

Money Mastery –KL Toastmasters Club

Vice President Public Relations 2016/2017

P/S: 

Thank you so much to the whole team including writer, editor, reviewer and critics to provide your timely sincere support and feedback to keep up the good work.