Meeting #431 Time & Tide

 

Tick tock, 7.15 on the clock,
We called for the meeting, with the gavel’s hard knock
9 new guests, to our club today flocked,
Oh yeah baby, MMKL was about to rock!!!

The 431st meeting themed ‘Time & Tide’ of a club that had made it through the tests of time was held on 26th March 2019. As Abdul Rahman, PM1 the Assistant SAA called the meeting to order at sharp 7.15pm, we were all seated with the men buttoning their sleeves and ladies adjusting the creases on their skirts, making ourselves comfortable, prepping up for a whale of a time for today’s session. 

Abdul Rahman, PM1 led us through the Toastmaster’s Promise and invited the President, Chitirra,LD1 to take the stage. 

The President welcomed the overwhelming number of members and guests and honoured the ever so experienced General Evaluator, Ramdas Nayar, DTM. Following, the Grammarian Phang Chew Yee, CC was invited to introduce the word of the day ‘Epoch’ which means a particular or beginning period of time in history or a person’s life. 

The President shared the epoch of her Toastmasters’ journey with all and explained how she grew to become the President today. She also shared a very valuable lesson on how time has a way of teaching us many lessons and whatever happens at a particular time, even if it’s a sad or unforeseen occasion, it only happens at the right time for the right reason. With that, everyone gave their 2 cents about time of which is worth greater than any amount of galleons in the universe. Once gone, never to return. Just as how 2 seconds have gone as you read that statement. Once we were done with the round of introduction, which to our surprise was done within the given time limit as we usually exceed it, we then moved on to the meeting proper. Interesting how the theme kept us in line today.
To save time, today we had a terrific Toastmaster to bring us through the meeting in a timely manner by being the Toastmaster of the Evening and the Invocation Speaker both at once. The tenacious, tremendous and tiger of a man, KL Loh, ATMG led us through the meeting with vigour and verve and lifted our spirits with his invocation smoothly slipped in along the way. Well after all, when it comes to talking about time, KL Loh, ATMG is the king who awakened our awareness and put the procrastination monkey in us to sleep in his champion speech. 

The meeting started with the first session which was the brain teasing, thought training, Table Topics™ Session by our Table Topics™ Master, Chitirra, LD1. She made a pretty little paper plate clock with 12 topics stuck around it as the time from 1 o’clock to 12 o’clock. Behind each hour was a quote on time mentioned by celebrities and authors. A pretty fun way to emphasise the theme of the day. Members and guests a galore stood on their feet and spoke their thoughts about the quotes they received as topics. It was a thoroughly splendid session. 

We then proceeded with the Project Speeches where members plan their speaking slots to fulfil their speaking requirements as per their designed Toastmasters’ education. First up was our Ken Chan, DTM doing his Pathways Level 4 Project 2 – Manage Projects Successfully. As always with his motivational and management speeches, today he shared with us knowledge through his speech entitled “Now Everyone Can LEAD!”. Following was Abdul Rahman, PM1, one of our members who has been with the club for about 6 months now and has shown us that with practice and some time you can improve yourself vastly. Today he did his Level 2 Project 1 – Understanding Your Communication Style and gave off such a cute performance on how one message can be delivered in 4 different ways with his speech entitled “Keep Your Ultimate Rhythm But Be Adaptable”. Last but not least, we had our club’s Queen of Table Topics™ Julia Leong, ACB, ALB do her Project 5 under the Interpretive Reading Series which was The Oratorical Speech. Her title was ‘I Have A Dream’ which was literally her taking us back through time to 1963 by reading out Martin Luther King, Jr’s legendary speech with her best vocal variety. Truly she was amazing and is heading on to greater heights for as I type this, simultaneously she’s being voted in to be the next Area Director for the following term. 

Upon listening to all the wonderful speeches, our minds got full but our tummies were rumbling and so we went off for a short break to enjoy our timeless ‘Nasi Lemak’ moment.

But wait, there’s more! As much as waiting is one of the hardest things, this was worth the wait. It was time for the Evaluations Session where we will be fed like kings with constructive feedback. Our General Evaluator, Ramdas Nayar, DTM, led this session and kicked it off with the Table Topics™ evaluation by Ron Yeap, ACB, CL. Following, we had the panel of evaluators give their feedback to the project speakers. The humble Mathew Phillippose, CC, ALB evaluated Ken Chan, DTM, the bubbly Hj. Hashim, DTM evaluated Abdul Rahman, PM1 and finally the cheeky Ken Chan, DTM evaluated Julia Leong, ACB, ALB. 

Speaking of which, this just in, how time tells us news at the perfect moment. As I type this, I am receiving the news that Julia Leong, ACB, ALB has officially been elected Area Director of C1 for the Term 2019/2020. Congratulations Julia and we will be right behind you always through all your challenges and triumphant moments as the next Area Director.

To continue with, after the speech evaluations we had our usual Open Evaluation where all members from the floor can provide their feedback to the project speakers. Finally, we had our technical role players do their thing by reading out their reports for the respective specialised roles. EK Yeo, CC, CL was the Ah-Counter listening carefully to the slightest speech crutch, Grammarian, Phang Chew Yee, CC gave her best feedback on the language usage and Shain Anand was our Rolex for the day and gave his Timer’s report down to the last second. In Toastmasters, time is of essence just as our theme goes.

Alas, our external but crucial role player, General Evaluator, Ramdas Nayar, DTM gave his kind and generous feedback for us all. Upon that, we had a special session where our current Area Director who is also our club member, Ron Yeap, ACB, CL, gave his Area Director’s address highlighting the strengths and improvements of our club. For the record, we have successfully achieved our President’s Distinguished status by achieving 9/10 for our club DCP before April 2019. We will be going up the stage as a club on 27th April at the District 102 Annual Conference as proud members who have withheld this tradition over the last 16 years consecutively. We could have done this without the help of each and every member who have contributed to these key KPIs. As always, we live by our motto, friends helping friends succeed. Let’s strive for the 10/10 mark!

Time was ticking and we were at our close. President, Chitirra, LD1, once again took the stage to give out the awards for the best speakers, make some announcements and call the meeting to a close. 

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

And so the meeting was called to adjourn that night and although we may not have this very moment again, we can always capture it as a memorable group photograph. At least time can’t take that away from us, or so we hope. It was a splendid meeting and truly one can never tell how time flies so fast when we are enjoying something, and how painfully slow it moves when we’re not. Today time flew like a jet and it’s going to creep until it’s time again for our next meeting. I can’t wait but for now I’ll leave you with a quote to ponder your time away with.   

Every so often, we all gaze into the abyss. It's a depressing fact of life that eventually the clock expires; eventually the sand in the hourglass runs out. It's the leaving behind of everything that matters to us that hurts the most. – Ben Shapiro

Blog Writer: Chitirra