This was 1st meeting of the year 2019. We all were very excited about the 1st meeting, at the same time contemplating about how to start well as if we just woke up. I was thinking why to look back when I have so much to look forward. I was contemplating and thinking back on the progress that we have made in last 6 months also what all can be improved in next 6 months of our term 2018/2019.
I sensed SAA called meeting to order while hitting lectern with the gavel. I understood, let’s look forward and follow SAA and guess who was SAA? Haha, myself. As per my role SAA of the meeting I made sure that everything is in order to proceed with our meeting. To set the atmosphere I took all the members of Toastmasters through the recital of Toastmasters promises.
Eventually, It was time call our loveliest beautiful club president Miss. Chitirra, LD1. No worries LD1 or something like this with others name is the track of our education in Toastmasters. You will know in details when you will join the world’s biggest organisation to improve your communication and leadership skills.
Finally, our club president was on stage right at 07: 19 pm. She is good in English Language which always caught attention of the audience. She in her presidential opening address briefed the theme of the evening, introduced Word of the Day “Contemplation” with the help of Grammarian. She thanked the whole crowed, appreciated our special guest the General Evaluator Geoff Andrew, DTM and let the audience introduce themselves; she encouraged audience to use theme and word of the day as much as possible, so we could end up learning a new word. It was well done introduction round where some talked about their resolution and some even mentioned very honestly that they couldn’t do certain things in the last year how they are going to achieve those things in the New Year.
I turned my eyes and found Mathew Philippose, CC, ALB smiling and contemplating about his Invocation speech. I have no doubt that he is a professional and passionate speaker because I realized after his awesome mind blowing speech that he spend just 1-2 hours to prepare a 3-4 minutes speech. Around 7:42 pm our Toastmaster of the Evening Shain Anand was getting to run the show. He is very sincere and always give his 100 to make things happen for a perfect reason. He started the show with Table Topics session in which 5 speakers managed to speak on their own feet. Various set of Topics were prepared by our Table Topics master Chitirra, LD1. There was someone sitting and listening theses speeches very meticulously Lucky, DTM, he later shared very good evaluation where these speakers can really improve and be better than what they are today.
It was time for our main course prepared speech session – This evening we got 4 speakers, two of them were doing speeches from their pathways education program and the rest two speakers were ready to do speeches from advanced manual.
It was very interesting to hear 1st speaker of the evening: Mike Chin who was doing speech from Dynamic Leadership, Level 1, and project: Evaluation & Feedback, assignment no 1. His speech title was ‘Change Your Mind, Change Your life’. What to say about him. He has recently joined Toastmasters. He is very determined to make progress in his communication and leadership. He came up very inspiring speech, he mentioned in his speech about his setback and challenges and finally there was a time in his life unlike many successful people that his life can be changed when he can just bring a change in mindset. We learnt and got inspired from his life story.
Well our 2nd speaker Abdul Rahman was getting anxious to come up with his speech based on Presentation Mastery, Level -1 project Evaluation & Feedback 2nd speech, Speech title “What If 2018 came back”. Well, I can remember the way he started, knocking door –hey are you there I’m 2018. I’m back then he started explaining what he achieved in 2018 and what if he can seize the moment.
Our 3rd speaker Julia leong, ACB, ALB moving towards DTM by June 2020. She took the stage to tell us a poetry with full of animated facial expression and body gesture. She was doing this project based on Advanced communication Interpretative Reading, project Interpretative Poetry. Her speech title was “The Daffodils”. She actually prepared pictures with moving effect so when she read out poetry according to poetry the flowers would move around with the words. She was excellent in poetry.
Our 4th Speaker KL Loh was contemplating how to entertain the audience. He was ready with his speech from the advanced communication manual “The Entertaining Speaker”, project “The entertaining speech”. His speech title was ‘Living Your Passion’. He actually entertained with one of very inspiring uplifting speeches. He was talking about his daughter. In the early days, he, as a father had expectation that her daughter will study in English and he somehow forced her to be good in English and later he realized that when he was forcing her to study English, her mind was not able to read each letter clearly all jumbled up. Imagine in that situation how someone can be good in the subject. Finally her daughter was able to figure out the words and letter and he is very happy with the impressive progress. We must live with passion. Never force any one to study what you want them to. Ask and let them follow their own passion then only that person can live with the passion.
There was a short 10 mins break, I can still remember that some people had two and some even three Nasi Lemak because Nasi lemak is our club's famous attraction along with banana and curry puffs.
Finally evaluation session was handled by our Distinguished Toastmaster, our General Evaluator from MIMKL TMC, Geoff Andrew. He is a very experienced Toastmaster. First he explained the basics and purpose of evaluation, then called each evaluator one by one. He first called Table Topics evaluator Lucky, DTM. Lucky was focused on two areas for each speaker what the speaker did well and where exactly he/she can improve. In general, there are many areas to evaluate but to evaluate just few areas for the 5 speakers is a big challenge. He did impressive evaluation, highlighted where the speakers could have used good stage and body movement to greater extent effectively.
Followed by that each individual project speech evaluator was called and I saw DTM, Hashim Hj. in his best evaluation. He actually evaluated Mike’s speech, from the speech title to the closing of the speech. First time evaluator Wendy Sim evaluated Abdul Rahman. Interestingly she was able to identify speaker’s strength and weakness. She gave good evaluation to Abdul Rahman. Well done Wendy Sim. Congrats.
Another seasoned evaluator CP Lau evaluated Julia Leong’s speech “The Daffodils”. It was very hard to find the points of improvement, but he spotted those points where she could still improve the power of good listening skills. Last evaluator Ron Yeap, ACB, CL he was evaluating KL Loh’s speech “Live with Passion”. Ron was skillful while giving suggestions to improve. Since Ron has gone through that speech. He recognized the good things about entertainment is not just make your audience laugh. To inspire your audience is also called entertainment. He also spotted some areas to improved and offered the speaker to improve further based on Today’s speech.
Finally, technical role players reports from Ah counter also called our money making person of the meeting because every speech crutch members of the club liable to pay either 5 cents or 10 cents. Mathew Philippose, CC, ALB. He shared with us his report and we made good money, Grammarian Casper also shared his reports based on uses of language who used WOD how many times. Also excellent phrases used and misused words and pronunciation during the meeting and what is the correct way to pronounce. Time keeper EK Yeo, CC, CL shared his timing reports.about the meeting and time taken by each speaker. So far so good.
Finally our General Evaluator Geoff Andrew was in action. He prepared his report based on the overall conduct of the meeting. He shared with us what are the strengths of the meeting and where exactly we as a club can improve further. He also evaluated all the role players, evaluators and the whole club. Well it was time appreciate our best performers of the meeting. Drum roll and keep guessing name for each category.
Best Table Topics Speaker: KL Loh, ATMG.
Best Assigned Speech : KL Loh, ATMG.
Best Assigned Speech Evaluation: Hj. Hashim, DTM.
It was time do closing address by acting president in which he was supposed to summarise the whole speech, do the announcements and adjourn with always photo of the day ‘Group Picture’. We also celebrated the January babies’ Birthday. That’s all for the day. Stay tuned to think back and look forward for more updates. We are little late in producing our regular blog but nevertheless we are on our way to keep you updated for each event. See you all in our next blog about our ISTT contests which was held on 22.01.2019.
Blog writer: Manish Jha
