Club meeting #424 : A Christmas Carol

Money Mastery-KL Toastmasters club (MM-KL) had come to the final meeting of the year 2018. The meeting No: 424 had a flavor or the year end Christmas season.

The meeting commenced with Toastmaster Wendy Sim as the Sergeant At Arms (SAA) calling the meeting to order. With smiles on her face and a little spotting Santa hat she stood in the front of the lectern & spelled out the house rules so that the meeting can proceed without any interruption.  She then led the members to recite the Toastmaster’s promise.

It was a cheerful atmosphere with all the members lifting their right hands as their upheld the promises of the club. It was a Christmas spirit with balloons & decorations around the meeting room. it could be seen members wearing Santa caps and party spectacles.

The acting President Manish Jha came to the scene after the SAA called upon the Acting president. He welcomed the guest and members and gave a wonderful introduction to the theme, “A Christmas Carol”. He ignited the Christmas spirit and called upon the Grammarian EK Yeo to introduce the Word of the Day, “Bliss”.  The Word “Bliss” which carries the meaning , perfect joy , great happiness & euphoria added a special light brightening up the place, especially when acting President asked the members and guests to introduce themselves and the word of the day was used along with the theme of the day in each introduction.

Manish Jha,  was also the Toastmaster of the Evening (TME), continued the meeting by giving a brief history of Toastmasters & our club MM-KL for the benefit of new guest. He then introduced the role-players Ah Counter Mike Chin, on speech crutches, Grammarian EK Yeo, on proper use of language, Timer Chew Yee, to ensure that the meeting runs according to schedule and finally the General Evaluator to monitor the atmosphere and activities of the meeting.

The invocation speaker Mathew Philippose spoke on the theme “A Christmas Carol” as he was called upon. He demonstrated a few Christmas carols to create the joy of Christmas and charge the atmosphere.

The next on the agenda was Table Topics where members and guests were challenges to give impromptu speech. The Table Topics Master was also Manish Jha, Some sometimes may  wonder why is Manish playing another role again. Well in Christmas season normally many members are on vacation so we have a Manish Jha who has special gift of wearing different hats in a meeting with triple roles so that the meeting goes on smoothly.

As Table Topics Master took to the stage the first person to run to the stage was our toastmaster guest from Brazil by the name of Tiago. He was giving a topic should everyone celebrate Christmas, He shared his trips to many nations and he said Malaysia is so unique, so he said here everyone can celebrate and therefore no reason why all cannot to join in the festivity.  The next participant surprisingly was a first timer guest to toastmaster Balkev. His topic on Christmas shopping due to cheap sale. He said he will only buy if necessary and moved by special prices.  Yes, interestingly our next speaker was also a guest by the name of Sharadha from Indrahana Toastmasters Club. She was asked a unique question what will she ask if she got a call from Jesus Christ. She rolled the floor with laughter as she said her name is translated as Holy mother and she said it will not be surprising to get a call from Lord Jesus. She said she will ask for world peace. Our final speaker was Wendy, on a question what are 5 things you will do during Christmas. She answered it in a simple way sharing the normal things anyone could do during a festive season with holidays.

As we moved to Prepared speeches, our first speaker was Abdul Rahman who joined toastmasters recently and this is his second speech.  He spoke on the topic “The Art of Patience”, as he began he got the audience engaged by asking how many of you have patience and then he asked for those who did not take up their hands to raise their hands because they do believe they have patience. In his speech he shared of various experience of being tested for patience example in driving and in exams.  He highlighted two statements in his speech, patience is a virtue and also patience is an art.  He concluded by saying we all have some patience and we need to develop.  

The second speaker, KT Chok, has been speaking much during our club meetings and now he is going in pathway Presentation Mastery series in level 4.  A very inspiring speaker, this time in his topic he is to manage difficult audience. With a speech title “Why the Rich gets richer”.  His principle he said is taking from the book by Robert T Kiyosaki “ Rich Dad and Poor Dad”.  His speech was interrupted by a number of vocabulary questions, He very craftly try to answer by drawing on the board the quadrant on the principles of the theory.

Our final speaker was Julia Leong, she was speaking from the advance communication manual, her topic this time was on Interpretive reading. The title of her speech “ Why Men don’t Listen & Women Can’t.  Julia spoke with lots of expression and had much humor that got the floor into laughter. She helped everyone to understand somethings that we seem to perceive in everyday life that men don’t listen, is something that men are wired different from woman.A good humorous speech before we all broke for some refreshments.

The refreshments recharged everyone to come back for the next session. The SAA Wendy called the meeting to order and handed over to the TME to take charge. The TME invited our General Evaluator (GE) Dr Jaya Rudralingam IP4, PM4.  Our GE started off the session by saying evaluation is the breakfast for champions. She invited first of all the Table topic evaluator KL Loh who evaluated the four speakers, In his analysis he was very encouraging pointing out the strength in each speaker. Some of the points of improvements were try not to cross the speakers line and walk towards the audience. He said it was a good point to repeat the speech title, He said it was good to be natural in your sharing. He said one of the ways to improve nervousness was to take more occasion to participate in table topic speeches.

As Haji Hashim came forward to evaluate Abdul Rahman, he encouraged him of his talent to create simple laughter, He said the speakers confident level was much better than his first ice-breaker speech. He encouraged him to improve on his vocabulary and improve on his expression. The 2nd evaluator Mathew said KT Chok had much confidence in his challenging speeches. He managed to illustrate and clarify each of the question by pointing to the quadrant diagram.However, he need to take care to get the audience attention to draw and show rather than explaining as he draws the diagram. The final evaluator Sharada Rudralingam congratulated to Julia for the excellent interpretive reading and said she can dramatize the story further to create more interest.

The General Evaluator summed up the meeting. She than called up the role-players to give their respective reports. The Ah counter Mike spotted a number of speech crutches, The Grammarian EK Yeo commented almost all used the word of the day, he pointed out some misused words and commented on excellent phrases, like my glass is half full by Saradha and patience is an art by Abdul Rahman, The rich gets richer by K T chok, It is stupidity doing the something again and again by 

KT Chok , An amazing acquired analysis by Haji Hashim. Finally the GE summed up the meeting and passed the floor back to TME. TME thanked GE, Called all the best performers and apprecite them , can see in the pics above. Also TME as acting president did his closing. Asked feedback from the Guests to share on how he/She felt about the whole conduct of the meeting, made necessary announcements about our upcoming COT2 and our club ISTT contests on 22nd Jan 2019. Finally adjourned the meeting with a colourful Christmas photo with unique decorations with party glasses. See you all on 8th Jan. 2019 in our next Toastmasters meeting. 

Thanks to blog writer Mathew Philippose, CC ALB, contributors, and reviewers

Sincerely

Dato Dr Mary de Silva, PM3

Money Mastery –KL Toastmasters Club

VPPR (Vice President of Public Relation 2018/2019)

#Meeting 423: Let it Go - Relinquish

The meeting on the 4^th of December 2018 saw some terrific speeches given by DTMs. The General Evaluator too was a DTM. This means that the meeting was, in itself, a confluence of DTMs. Truly, it was inspirational to be in a meeting with top speakers in it. The meeting saw CP Lau being congratulated for obtaining the office of Distinguished Toastmaster.

Our SAA, Abdul Rahman did a very good job in order to start the meeting. He made sure we are all set. He took us through recital of Toastmasters promises and passed the floor to club president Chitirra LD1.

Chitirra was brilliant in her opening address and asked the Grammarian Vijayakumar to tell us about the word of the day and some examples so that other members could later use it correctly throughout the meeting. She asked all members to introduce themselves, use the theme of the day “Let It Go” and WOD “Relinquish”. Later I observed the WOD “Relinquish” was very well used by everyone in the meeting and at least once. Everybody spoke about the theme “Let It Go”.

The Toastmaster of the Evening, the charismatic CP Lau, DTM kicked off the meeting with the history of Toastmasters with detailed statistics of the worldwide membership of the organization as of the 2^nd of December 2018, but on that day’s meeting he added something I have never heard before. He told us about how Toastmasters first came to this country’s shores. He told us who the first club president was and that gentlemen’s efforts in progressing Toastmasters in this country. This illumination was interesting to note. I know one person who was one of Malaysia’s first Toastmasters. She was an administrator at a local private hospital in KL.  CP Lau went on to mention how our club was first setup.

As the Table Topics session arrived duly and CP Lau played the role of the Table Topics master he had written excellent speech titles to choose from the list. There were five speakers who participated in this Table Topics session and all of them did very good job. Our speakers were Chitirra, Srinivas K M, Julia, Rahman and Mike Chin. All the topics were very well based on theme of the day “Let It Go”.

The assigned speech session arrived. Chittra and DTM Srinivas, gave outstanding speeches. Chittra mentioned before giving her speech that she had never tried Table Topics much before and decided to do so on that day as a warm-up for the assigned speech she was to give at the meeting. Chittra’s speech was humorous. She spoke about her own tendency to procrastinate; it was indeed a funny speech. 

DTM Srinivas’s speech encapsulated a joke with a serious message. It was a wonderfully woven speech as it started with a joke about a headmaster who was told by his mother that he would be late for school and projected that story, into what at first seemed like going off on a tangent, and delivered a poignant tale about a teacher who taught her young students not to say ‘I can’t.’  The point in the message was never say “I can’t.’  Inspirational.  

Ron Yeap was the third speaker in the session. He spoke about a(fictional) account of how he had to decide to attend an ex-girlfriend’s wedding. It was done with much dramatic effort and vocal variety. KL Loh was the last speaker in the session and gave an account about making choices.

After the break, General Evaluator G. Sivalingam from D’Utama Toastmasters Club gave us his evaluation. He said to the evaluators that the evaluation of speakers should be about specific aspects of a speech, such as, body language, vocal variety, use of the floor space, engaging the audience. He said that evaluation of a speech is always to tell a speaker that they spoke well or if their speech was interesting or even if the speech needed specific improvements.

General Evaluator G. Sivalingam commented that he liked the President’s keynote address which had a very good a tone in it. He added about the President’s concern for time allocation. The General Evaluator remarked on how the Toastmaster of the Evening gave the history of the club. He executed the whole evaluation session very smartly. Gave specific recommendations for the club to improve and also highlighted the strength of the club meeting.

Thereafter it was time to appreciate our top performers:

Best Table Topics speech was by Srinivas K M.

Best Assigned Speech was by Ron Yeap.

A token of appreciation was given to our General Evaluator. Distinguished Toastmaster G. Sivalingam for his presence and constructive evaluation. Few announcements were made our club ISTT contests on 22.01.2019 and Dist.102 EXPO one day Workshop on 15.12.2018.

That’s all ladies and gentlemen. See you all again at the next meeting on 18.12.2018.

Thanks to blog writer Vijaykumar CC, contributors, and reviewers

Sincerely

Dato Dr Mary de Silva, PM3

Money Mastery –KL Toastmasters Club

VPPR (Vice President of Public Relation 2018/2019)

#422 – Creativity: The Mother of Invention

Toastmasters club meetings are always fun, engaging, educational and fun. The club meeting on the 27^th of November 2018 was no exception. With the theme Creativity: The Mother of Invention, the Invocation speaker was Mathew Philippose CC, ALB who gave a lively invocation speech. It was a stirring speech on the use of creativity by club which has led to many new members becoming club presidents.  Mathew made note that many new members like Chittra LDI, and Wendy Sim CC became club presidents shortly after becoming members. He also pointed out that Abdul Rahman, who is one of the newest members, is making good effort by playing the role of assistant SAA that evening. Indeed, by playing roles one climbs up the ladder of hierarchy.

Ron Yeap ACB, CL played the role of Toastmaster of the Evening. He talked about his own endeavours in public speaking and use of creativity at work and as a Toastmaster. This goes to show how much creative thinking can be used. He also shared how he uses creativity in assisting his wife Serena for being creative in her career. He introduced the General Evaluator, Khalid Idris ACS, ALS, IP4, who is a Division Director.

The table topics session saw some very interesting and creative questions. This session has been described by a friend of the author of this blog article as ‘having monkeys playing in your head’. Table topics can make you marshal your thoughts to arrange them as coherently as one can. Creativity was a plenty when speakers came up to speak in this session.

For the assigned speech session three members gave their well-prepared speeches.  The first was Ken Chan DTM who presented Level 1 Project 4 – Researching & Presenting. His title was Laughter and therefore spoke about laughter and its curative powers. It was enlightening. His use of the floor space, having an engaging speech and extraordinary use of body language was very stimulating.

Next was Dato Dr Mary De Silva PM3 from Presentation Mastery Level 4: Project 2 who gave us an excellent Question & Answer speech titled Dine Divine. She made good use of PowerPoint slides in elucidating the proper use of cutlery, crockery and glassware for dinner in an elegant fashion. As an interesting illustration of using visual aids, she demonstrated with real cutlery how they should be used.  Her evaluator Ken Chan DTM gave her a favourable and constructive evaluation.

The third speaker was Shain Anand from the CC Manual, Project 5: Your Body Speaks.  His title was G.O.A.T and he magnificently had the subject woven and intricately linked the organisation of the human body with Toastmasters. He explained how the human body was the most advanced and sophisticated technology ever created. His evaluator was Hj. Hashim DTM who pointed out favourable speech observations and areas for consideration.

After the break, the evaluation session began. Mathew Philippose CC, ALB as the evaluator for the Table Topics session who gave useful insights and a thorough evaluation of the Table Topics speakers. He explained that doing the Table Topics session. He explained that it is by thinking about the topic first that one jumps in and speaks. Table Topics is very good training for any speaker as it gets you to think on your feet, marshal your thoughts and speak with courage and confidence.

The individual speech evaluation was first given by EK Yeo CC, CL. He evaluated Ken Chan.  Then Ken Chan DTM evaluated Dato Dr Mary De Silva PM3, and then Tuan Haji Hashim Adnan DTM evaluated Shain Anand. All the three evaluators made note of the presentation methods, speaking styles and use of visual aids and PowerPoint slides by the three commendable speakers. The individual evaluation saw all three speakers get useful advice and critique about their respective speeches.

The GE, Khalid Idris ACS, ALS, IP4 gave advice about the ideal length of speeches which as a direct correlation with the number of words in a speech. Khalid Idris gave praise to the club as one with considerable charisma. He advised the club to improve on the usage of name tags, the timing of speeches an recommended the use of Pathways evaluation forms. Grammarian Chittra gave us her report which she did with charm and eloquence. Time Keeper Manish Jha IP1 gave a meticulously recorded report.

The best part of the meeting was the rewarding of certificates to those deserving and for this meeting the Best Table Topic speaker was Dato Dr Mary De Silva PM3.  The best evaluator was swept by Ken Chan DTM

General Evaluator Khalid Idris ACS, ALS, IP4, received a token of appreciation from Money Mastery KL.

The meeting ended with a photo session to capture the club’s eureka moment in Meeting #422!

Thanks to blog writer Vijaykumar CC, contributors, and reviewers

Sincerely

Dato Dr Mary de Silva, PM3

Money Mastery –KL Toastmasters Club

VPPR (Vice President of Public Relation 2018/2019)