Meeting #430 Disconnect to Connect

It was an enchantress night on 12th March when we have our 430th club meeting. As usual everyone arrived earlier to enjoy the best "nasi lemak" in the town. This time we had the pleasure to invite our District Director of District 102, Dr. William Lau, DTM to join us in this meeting. Besides, there were up to 5 guests to join the meeting and 2 of them had decided to sign up the membership to join this family.

The meeting was called by ASAA, Rahman, PM 1 on 7.15pm where he had introduced all the ground rules and led the recital of the “Toastmaster’s Promise”. Next, our president, Chitirra, LD1 had her welcoming speech by introducing the theme of the day “Disconnect to Connect” and word of the day “Refreshing”. As a culture of our club, all people should stand a chance to speak and introduce ourselves whilst using the word “Refreshing” as much as possible.

Coming up, Dr. William Lau, DTM had given us an invocation speech. He talked about the power of humility which encouraged us to disconnect with ego and be humble and modest people. It was a very positive and inspiring speech to everyone. 7.45pm, it was time to introduce our role players of the day. KL Loh, ATMG, our Toastmaster of Evening, had introduced all the role players:

1. Chitirra (Ah-Counter)
2. Manish (Grammarian)
3. EK Yeo (Timer)
4. Aaron Chan (General Evaluator)

After that, Mike Chin started the Table Topics™ session. It was his first time to be the Table Topics™ Master which was a very good experience for him to learn and grow. This round there were 5 candidates who took their owned initiative to participate in the session. For some of them, it was their first time to be in this club and stand in front of everyone.

It came to the most exciting part which was the assigned project speech session. We had 3 speakers that were ready to give us their wonderful and miraculous speech. Our first speaker was Julie Leong, ACB, ALB with the title, Murder by Midnight. She was doing her Interpretative Reading, project no.4 and she was evaluated by CP Lau who just received his DTM one month ago. Our second speaker was Ron Yeap, ACB, CL with the title, How to Build a Great Determination with his project no.3 Make Them Laugh and his evaluator was Mathew Philippose, CC ALB.Ron had registered himself in at the very last minute yet he was still able to keep his level and most importantly, make us laugh! Last but not least was, Ken Chan, DTM with his title Lead by Storytelling, level 4 project no.1 and his evaluator was Hj. Hashim, DTM.

We started our evaluation and reporting after a short break. Aaron Chan, ACG, ALB had started his speech by explaining the purposes of this session. He invited Victor Ong, DTM to give his comments on those who participated in the Table Topics™ session. Next, it came to the individual speech evaluations where the panel evaluators had to give comments and ratings for their respectively assigned speakers. 

As usual, we had our open evaluation session, it was a session for everyone to speak out their points or comments to anyone. Then, it came to the reporting time, where all the role players had to present their own reports accordingly. Before the president announced the meeting adjourned, she announced few upcoming events and encouraged people to actively participate in those activities. This time we were slightly out of our time, the meeting ended at 10.15pm yet everyone had fun and wonderful moments with MMKL.

Best Table Topics Speaker: - DTM, Hj. Hashim
Best Assigned Speech:- DTM, Ken Chan
Best Assigned Speech Evaluation:- DTM, Hj. Hashim

Blog Writer: Mike Chin

Meeting #429 World NGO Day: A Good Cause

Meeting 429

We gathered today on the 26^th of Feb 2019 just as how Sir Ralph C. Smedley had had a gathering in the basement of YMCA in Santa Ana, California in 1924. A non-governmental organisation with a purpose to serve the public to speak. We stand proud as an NGO of 95 years and so we decided to commemorate ourselves with the theme revolving around World NGO Day that celebrates thousands of other humanitarian organizations. 

The meeting proper began at 7.15pm sharp with Manish Jha, IP1 as the Assistant SAA calling the meeting to order, introducing the house rules and leading the Toastmasters’ Promise recital. Something that reminds as to why we are here to serve the society in public speaking and leadership.

He then went on to invite the President Chitirra who welcomed the guests and invited the Grammarian to introduce the word of the day which was “Benevolence” which means kind-heartedness, public-spiritedness which is what this club is about. All the members and guests introduced themselves and spoke about the different NGOs they were involved with in their lives. Apart from Toastmasters, some were from the Red Cross, some from the Lion’s club, some associated themselves with sports service and volunteers for rehabilitation, all of which were noble causes. 

Ken Chan, DTM then came on to the stage to give out his invocation speech full of class and calibre always awakening our spirits before we head on to the meeting. 

We then had our Toastmaster of the Evening, Ron Yeap, ACB, CL always bright and happy to take on the stage and put on his TME cap with style. The dedicated role players for the day were Abdul Rahman, PM1 as the Ah-Counter, Shain Anand as the Grammarian, Wendy Sim, CC as the Timer and of course our guest of honour was Goh Chee Yong, IP2 as the General Evaluator. 

Our creative Table Topics™ Master, CP Lau, DTM brought on some Mandarin Oranges for his speakers to choose from and created topics that were surrounding the theme of the day. Everyone spoke happily on their feet at this fun session. 

Next it was time for the Assigned Speech Session and we had 3 amazing speakers rock the stage. First up was Mike Chin with his speech Change Your Mind, Change Your Life. His evaluator was Chitirra. He indeed shared tips and reasons as to why should change our thoughts in order to change our life and inspired us all. Then came along Ken Chan, DTM with his evaluator Mathew Philippose, CC, ALB. His speech title was K.I.D. No I’m not kidding. It was K.I.D. as in Keep Improving Daily. He shared with us on the steps to move forward in life and the life was like a camera. Take a shot, if it’s blur, take another one and develop yourself. Our final speaker was Julia Leong, ACB, ALB and her evaluator was Hj. Hashim, DTM. She did an interpretive reading of a Monodrama entitled Duchess of Padua. She moved us all with a melodramatic love scene that almost left me crying when she enacted the break up scene. 

We had a short break to enjoy the feast of Money Mastery-KL which was our signature ‘Nasi Lemak’ and then proceeded with the Evaluations session which we call the breakfast for champions. As per the order of the speakers and their respective evaluators, Chitirra, Mathew Phillippose, CC, ALB and Hj. Hashim, DTM came and gave their best evaluations. Our General Evaluator then called upon the technical role players to give out their reports and gave his personal review of the club. 

Alas, it was time for the awards session and the best speakers for the night got their certs of recognition as follows:

Best Table Topics™ Speaker:  DTM, Hj. Hashim
Best Evaluator: DTM, Hj. Hashim
Best Speaker: Julia Leong, ACB, ALB

It was truly a fun filled night and we all did recognise our purpose here tonight as a member of a huge NGO. As we always look forward to the next meeting, we bid goodbye and goodnight and called the meeting to adjourn with a lovely group photograph. 

 

Blog writer:  Chitirra

Meeting No# 428 Valentine: Endless Love

     

  

MMKL Toastmasters had a memorable meeting on 12th February. It was just two days earlier from Valentine’s Day and all of us just came back from the Chinese New Year holidays fully fresh and super exited for the first meeting of the month. It was beyond doubt a special evening as we gathered under the umbrella of Toastmaster’s endless love.

Abdul Rahman, PM1 was the SAA for this meeting, It was a good practice for him to get him enrolled in multiple roles and strengthen a role player in club, as he recently joined the club. Before the meeting he made sure everything was in order. At 7:15pm meeting was kicked off. He reminded the guests and the MMKL members  the house rules. Then he started to serenade with the first five promises of Toastmasters with his powerful voice and asked everyone to repeat line by line as he finished. He introduced the acting president KT Chok PM3 and invited him over to the stage. He is the man with magnificent words and good charisma on the stage. KT Chok started his speech with his shining smile greeting and welcoming the special guests and MMKL members. He expressed his appreciation and thanked the guests and our General evaluator for this evening Lucky, DTM.

Nevertheless, he mentioned the theme of the day which was “Valentine: Endless Love” and called upon grammarian to spread out the word of the day. The word which is always interchanged between two lovers and expressed their true feeling of love, the word was “Serenade”, the best you sing for your only love.  In a while he encourage everyone to introduce themselves and to make use of the word and theme of the day where possible. As his opening address about to end, he invited over the Toastmaster of the evening Shain Anand to shine on the stage and run the show. Shain greeted and welcomed everyone and proudly he spoke thoroughly the history of the Toastmaster International. He introduced the role players of the meeting as follows, where everyone explained their roles to the audience:

1. Chester Liam (Ah-Counter)

2. Ng Yee Chia (Grammarian)

3. Serena Kong,  ACB, CL (Timer) 

4. Lucky, DTM       (General Evaluator)  

At 7:55pm, Shain announced the starting of the table topics session and he called upon Lim Ting, IP1 to brief and run the session. The topics were fascinating and related to occasion of love & valentine, Lim Ting did a great job arranging such innovative topics to the contests. Five participants managed to get onto the stage bravely to take the challenge and speak out. Those were Clarence, Srinivas, Ken Chan, Rahman & KT Chok.  They all gave a good 1- 2 minutes speech to audience. They replied to the table topics with quick thinking and giving their best views & personal experience on each related topics. It was a great session indeed. After the session, the timer announced that all the participants were within the allowable time and there were no disqualification and everyone voted for the best Table Topic speech.

At 8:05pm, it was the time that everyone were waiting for, the assigned Project Speech session. Four speakers were ready & motivated to run this session and what a full moon coincidence to notice that all the speakers are doing their speeches from the same Presentation Mastery pathway, two were giving speech from level 1 and the other two were from level 3. 

To start with 1st speaker Clarence Tessensohn, EC4 and PM1 with speech title of “Because I am …” his speech Project was taken from Level 1 Evaluation and Feedback. His confidence on the stage was noticed by attendees. Well he is actually a linguist, he spoke about his personal experiences and journey of being a teacher and how this impacts and have a good cause in his life. At end of his speech, you would really feel giving the respect and more appreciation for the teachers and their important role in society.

Abdulrahman was the 2nd speaker in this session, and his speech title was “The Golden Secrets of Hiking”. He was doing his last project speech in Presentation Mastery Level 1 Research & Presenting. Breathtakingly he revealed his research outcomes and findings on the importance, benefits and the secrets of why people should do more hiking. He got a good move to conclusion of his speech which was easy to capture the audience when he said the golden secrets of hiking are actually coming from the first letter of the word its self H ( Hope, Healing , Healthy, Happy & Harmony) and by the fifth word he summarized his overall speech. He was feeling motivated and inspired by the audience who acknowledged his wonderful speech.

The 3rd speaker was Srinivas KM, DTM. He was doing his Project 3 Introduction to

Toastmasters Mentoring with an attractive title of “Man in the Mirror”. He is a DTM and he got the charisma  and the professional speaker criteria. He shared with audience his personal experience and stories about him and his mentor. His speech was kind of serious and humorous speech at the same time. The audience was ultimately engaged throughout his speech and it was impact speech to everyone.  

Guess who the 4th speaker was. He is the champion of MMKL International Speech Contest 2018/2019, Ken Chan, DTM. This time he was doing his level 2, Project 3, Introduction to Toastmasters Mentoring with title “Protege with a Cause” from the Presentation Mastery path. Ken is well known charismatic personality to audience. He spoke about his journey in Toastmasters and how he was influenced by his Mentor Late Francis, DTM, how his mentor guided him to the way of success in Toastmasters. I personally felt touched listening to his speech, I saw the sadness in his eyes and sorrow tones talking about Late Francis, but Ken was smart enough to bring us out and put some humorous story in his speech.

After this session, it was the time for everyone to go for break and enjoy the variety of food, other than our usual local food of club Nasi Lemak, chicken and curry puffs. Our lovely fellow members who were celebrating Chinese New Year, brought some homemade cookies, fruits, and it was delicious & yummy food.

After the break, at 8:55pm, we resumed the meeting and it was the Evaluation & Reports Session. TME Shain called upon the General Evaluator Lakhmichand, DTM to come onto stage and run through this session, Lakhmichand, DTM always shows his sincere support & love to MMKL club through all past 16 years. We really appreciated his efforts and contribution to the club. He invited the Table Topic Evaluator JP, CC, CL, to give his constructive feedback to the participants of Table Topics. I like the way how he described each speaker focusing on the area of strength and the area of improvements. He also shows some expressions and vocal variety & gestures that speakers could help to make their speech better. 

After JP finish his Table Topic evaluation, Lakhmichand, DTM gave his comments and was impressed from the way JP evaluated each personal in brief detail.

Lakhmichaned called upon the first evaluator Srinivas KM, DTM to evaluate the first assigned project speaker Clarence. Srinivas spotted all the strengths and weaknesses in Clarence’s speech. He is a veteran Toastmaster, he shared with audience the points about vocal variety, gestures and clarity in Clarence’s speech which was inspiring for speaker to listen to. On the other hand, Srinivas mentioned that Clarence should challenge himself and improved for his next speech.

The 2nd evaluator was Manish Jha, IP1, He was impressed with Rahman‘s improvement from his previous speeches. Manish shared with the audience the areas where Rahman has excelled in his speech and also how Rahman delivered an impactful speech about hiking. Eventually he shared with the audience the captured points where Rahman need to challenge himself and improve. It was constructive feedback Rahman‘s received.

The 3rd valuator was Clarence. He was going to evaluate Srinivas's, his evaluator’s, speech, that was something you can see common in toastmaster and it shows being a Toastmaster you are capable of wearing multiple caps at same time. He did an excellent evaluation on Srinivas and likewise he also didn’t make it easy for him.

The last but not the least, KT Chok, PM3 was evaluating Ken Chan, DTM, He mentioned to audience how Ken has excelled in his speech and he also repeated some good phrases said by Ken, DTM demonstrating to the audience the strength and how the professional speaker should be. It was hard for him to spot any areas where the speaker should improve. However KT suggested some minor points for Ken to be improved for his next speech. 

It was the time for our Distinguished General Evaluator Lakhmichnad, DTM to give his feedback to the evaluators. He appreciated all evaluators and mentioned everyone delivered excellent constructive feedback.  He also allowed for the audience for open evaluation and giving thoughts in the speaker’s performance. At 9:30pm He invited all the role players (Ah Counter, Grammarian and Timer) to share their reports with audience. Nevertheless Lakhmichan revealed his overall feedback on this evening’s meeting, He evaluated all the role players, evaluators and the whole club. He mentioned that MMKL club is one of his favorite club which he would never hesitate to come for any next meeting. We really appreciate his continuous efforts and his experience sharing to us.

Before the meeting ended, it was time to appreciate our best performers of the meeting. TME Invited the acting president KT Chok on stage to give the appreciation certificates and gifts. Everyone were exited to hear the result, Drum roll and keep guessing name for each category. For this evening the awards goes to

Best Table Topics Speaker: Clarence Tessensohn, EC4, PM1

Best Assigned Speech: Ken Chen, DTM

Best Assigned Speech Evaluation: Srinivas KM, DTM

At 9:45pm, it was the time to do the closing address by acting president and the meeting was adjourned with the always remarkable photo of the day ‘Group Picture’.  After the session, we also celebrated the February baby’s Birthday. That was the events of the evening, hope you enjoy reading it and See you all in our next blog.

Meeting #427 Fortune and Luck (CNY)

Have you forgotten Chinese New Year or you still remember? We Toastmasters always look for the occasions and chances to celebrate each moment. Well, pretty fair we had our theme ‘Fortune and Luck’ and Word of the Day – Beatific. This year is called The Year of Pig according to the Chinese calendar. 

For this meeting, we were supposed to have Ramdas, DTM as our General Evaluator but when he couldn’t make it due to his personal reasons. He arranged a replacement, guess who DTM, Robert Ram. We were very happy but guess what, on that day he was coming from Singapore and we decided to have our General Evaluator our Division C Director DTM Ken Koh from EXTOL TMC who at first was supposed to be a project speech evaluator. Well, DTM Robert Ram became one of our project speech evaluators. Yes, sometime it happens. There was another story this evening. We were already informed that our club president can’t make it so our VPE was geared up to take up this role and run the meeting but guess what our VPE got stuck at work and our brave VPM took up the control and run the meeting from the beginning to the end. It was interesting. 

Our meeting was called to order by our SAA, DTM CP Lau. He introduced the house rules, led the members with recital of Toastmasters Promises and nicely handed over the control to our Acting president VPM, KT Chok, PM4.  Our president in his opening address introduced the theme  of the day ‘Fortune and Luck’, he also explained the theme and asked all the members and guests to introduced themselves. He called upon Invocation speaker DTM Ken Chan. Since I was late due to my work but what I heard from others. He was excellent at inspiring and entertaining the audience.  Finally, our Toastmaster of the Evening EK Yeo, CC, CL took control to run the main meeting. In Toastmasters meeting we usually have three items in our agenda:  Table Topics, Prepared speeches and Evaluation.

It was around 7:50 and our TME called Table Topics Master Wendy Sim, CC to conduct the Table Topics session.  Wendy Sim, CC is the most improved Toastmaster in our club. She has got tremendous improvement in her ability of doing speeches as well as in her leadership. She is also our Immediate Past President. She was diligent to conduct this session. She prepared 6-7 topics and guess what?  All topics were awesome, based on Chinese New Year. In fact all 4 guests and including one of our member attempted the Table Topics. As good as the topics were thrilling , I would say all the Table Topics speaker were bold enough to make their speeches convincing with their personal story, logics and emotions. 

Time turned and TME, started with projects speech session, First speaker Phang Chew Yee was doing her ice breaker. Abdul rahman, a new member, was her evaluator who already gone through this experience. The speaker came up with her title “Who is Phang Chew Yee”. Interestingly, she brought props which say her name in Chinese and explain in English what the meaning of her name ‘Swallow in the Autumn’. Then she talked about her spiritual background, education and career. Overall, we as an audience get to know more about her and she was pretty good about doing her 1st speech as ice breaker from Pathways, Presentation Mastery Level 1. She was given a standing ovation for completing her Ice Breaker Speech.

Our 2nd Speaker was Mathew Philippose, CC, ALB. Mathew is a professional Trainer in Pharma Company. He has done many speeches before. He is one who can prepare a mesmerising speech in 1 hour and meet the objectives of the speech. However, Mathew was prepared for his speech based on pathway – Effective Coaching, Level 1, Researching & Presenting. He came up with his speech Title “Fear of Public Speaking”.  He talked about how the transformation happened in his life and overcome Fear of Public Speaking. His speech evaluator was KT Chok, PM4 who really gave his evaluation which was constructive and uplifting to the speaker. It needs great deal of listening skills to do evaluation.

Our Final speaker of the day was DTM, Ken Chan. He was doing his speech from Presentation Mastery Path, Level 2, Understand your communication style. His speech title was ‘D.O.P.E.’. His speech evaluator was DTM, Robert Ram. He started with his speech and explained what is D.O.P.E. He asked audience, which personality you are. D –Dove, O –Owl, P –Peacock and Eagle. He first explained the characteristics of each bird and asked which bird are you to create some example in order to understand more about yourself. We knew more about ourselves. All the three speakers did a great Job.

Finally there was break time for 10 minutes. People rush over to Nasi Lemak. MM-KL nasi lemak is very special. 

Right after that break, our TME EK Yeo, CC, CL, called our GE to take over the evaluation session. Our General Evaluator was Ken Koh, Division C Director. He explained the evaluation session first then he called each evaluator one by one to share their evaluation for the speeches just had. First as per agenda there was Table Topics evaluator DTM, CP Lau who evaluated all the five speakers. 

In sequence, here came each project speech evaluator. Abdul Rahman evaluated Phang Chew Yee’s speech. He was doing evaluation for the first time. The best thing was he was able to good suggestion to improve her speech and bring to next level. Then the seasoned evaluators KT chok, PM4 and Robert Ram, DTM  gave wonderful evaluation for the two speakers respectively, Mathew Philippose, CC, ALB and Ken Chan, DTM. In evaluation, usually we as a speech evaluator we recognised the best things displayed in the speech and highlight the room for improvement. Our general evaluator Ken Koh, DTM acknowledged the best part of the club and suggested rooms for the improvement.

Finally it was time appreciate the best performers of the Day:

Best Table Topics Speaker:  Hj. Hashim, DTM

Best Project Speech Evaluation: Robert Ram, DTM

General Evaluator:  Ken Koh, DTM.

Nevertheless it was a Beatific meeting. Our acting president VPM, KT Chok, PM4 appreciated all the best performers and he summarised the whole meeting. We ended our meeting with as usual memorable group picture. See you all in our next meeting.