I’m a woman.
What’s your superpower?
Women were born to inspire and to commemorate that today at our club, we celebrated a belated International Women’s Day with a phenomenally themed meeting, “Phenomenal Women”.
The meeting proper began at sharp 7.15pm when our Sergeant-At-Arms, Shain Anand, called us in minutes ahead. He introduced the house rules and we were set to recite our Toastmasters Promise which we take to our heart, under his leadership. He then invited the President over to give her opening address.
Wendy Sim,CC , the proud matriarch of the club gave her Presidential Address with a twist this time by reciting the ever classic poem by Maya Angelou, Phenomenal Women. She then went on to lead the session with ease as everyone introduced themselves by speaking of the theme and using the word of the day “Omniscient”.
The time came for the Invocator of the day, Vijaykumar, CC to then excite us all with his invocation speech. Indeed his in depth research on the first female in Toastmasters and his flowery command of English, set many hearts especially those of the women in the club a sail. Empowering he was on this very empowering day for women.
Following, we had our senior and ever committed member E K Yeo, CC, CL step forward as the Toastmaster of the Evening to bring us through the history of Toastmasters and introduce the role players of the night. Today we had with us Olivia Chen as the attentive Ah-Counter, Dato Dr. Mary de Silva, PM1 as the articulate Grammarian and Yap Ooi Yee, CC as the alert Timer.
In order to inaugurate the meeting for Women’s Day, I couldn’t have found a more apt General Evaluator than the sweet, stylish and smart Anita Wong, CTM, CL of IEM Toastmasters Club. She’s always been an epitome and idol for the female race in her ways and manners.
We then moved on to the fun and exciting Table Topics ™ session with our first time Table Topics ™ Master, Daniel Tham. Indeed he was willing to learn and steadfast in his role. He had with him an array of topics revolving around the life and times of women and many attempted boldly at the challenging topics.
Women indeed are capable of persuading with power and so to begin the first project speech for the night we had yet another caring female come forth and present her CC#9: Persuade with Power. Mandy Chan spoke on the topic “Money Isn’t Everything” and gave us a reality check that at the end of the day as material as it sounds, there are some things in life that money can never buy.
The next speech was by Xavier Gomez for his 2nd Project in his Leadership Development Pathway entitled Plague of Political Correctness. See no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil.
Following was Crystal Chen, ACB, ALB on her 2nd Project as well under the Effective Coaching Pathway with her title “Hakka Chinese New Year Cuisine”. Oh, the mouth-watering cuisines she displayed left our mouths oozing but the magnificent stories behind each dish left us in awe!
Finally we had with us Dr. Srikant, PM1 who had successfully set foot for his 1st Project under Level 2 of the Presentation Mastery Pathway. His topic was on understanding his own communication style and his title was “The Analytical Method of Presentation”. He described how most of the time he uses an analytical approach in his presentations coming from a strong academic and research background. However, he also managed to derive the others styles of presenting that he may someday adopt.
Various topics and various background of speakers set today’s meeting with much diversity. We shot off to a quick break and returned once more for the evaluations session.
Anita Wong, CTM, CL, led the session with her cheery smile. First up we had Manish Jha, CC come forth as the Table Topics ™ Evaluator to give his detailed wrap up of each Table Topic ™ speaker. Then each project speech evaluator came on to give their opinions to their respective speakers. Aside from our usual senior members who came forth today, we had with us a first timer in evaluation, K T Chok. He was prim yet precise in his evaluation and did an excellent job despite it being his first time. Congrats to you for stepping up to the challenge. Evaluations are no easy task. One is faced with the challenge of having to dissect a person’s speech and deliver their opinion in the most respectable yet effective manner. Thus, a salute should be given to those who evaluate and one should understand and respect that evaluations are merely opinions of the respective individuals.
Since today, giving an evaluation was actually part of K T Chok’s assignment in his Pathways programme, he had for himself and extra special evaluation on his evaluation by Ron Yeap, ACB, CL. Ron gave his best feedback on what he thought was good and could be improved on KT’s evaluation itself.
After the open evaluations and respective role player reports, Anita Wong gave her brief commentary on our club and its ways. She was indeed positive and kind in her general evaluation.
It was drawing close to the end and the stage was passed back to our Phenomenal President, Wendy Sim, CC to go on with the awards for the night as follows.
Best Table Topics ™: K T Chok
Best Project Speech: Mandy Chan
Best Evaluator: Hj. Hashim, DTM
Wendy wrapped up the meeting with some announcements and feedbacks from the guest but most importantly she made a strong point in her closing address that despite having had this wonderful day dedicated specifically to celebrate women, there are still many women out there yet to be empowered and that it is still a real struggle out there for many of us. It is but with the help of both sexes, the educated and the ethical that we can strive to achieve true equality for both genders across the globe.
Until next time, keep rocking on ladies… and gentlemen too… *Winks*.
Blog writer: Phenomenal Chitirra
