11.06.2019, Meeting No #437- Aidilfitri: Heart To Heart

Hari Raya Aidilfitri, marks the end of Ramadan and is considered the festival of gratitude to God and an occasion celebrated with families and loved ones. It is also the time of feasts, homecoming, contemplation, forgiveness and reconciliation. So, the MMKL family decided to celebrate the same in our Aidilfitri - Heart to Heart themed meeting. Members were asked to come in traditional Hari Raya attire. The room was filled with colourful outfits to suit the theme of the day.

CS Ong, the ASAA for the evening started the meeting with the Toastmaster’s promise and the stage was handed over to the club President Chitirra. She gave welcomed the guests and invited the Grammarian to introduce the Word of the Day “Gratitude” which means the quality of being thankful

Up next, our incoming President for next term, KL Loh ATMG came on to the stage for the Invocation speech.

The Toastmaster of the evening was Ron Yeap ACB, CL. He also came in the traditional Baju Melayu attire and started the session with a brief history of Toastmasters. After that he introduced the role players. The General Evaluator(GE) for the meeting was Vasudevan ACB, ALB. Slowly, we were moving into the core of the Toastmasters meeting. 

The first session was Table Topics session which was controlled by Wendy Sim CC, as the Table Topics Master. She invited volunteers for the session by offering green Raya packets containing money. Following were the Table Topics Contestants:

1.    Jocelyn

2.    Abdul Rahman

3.    Chew Yee

4.    Paul Tan

Up next was the assigned speech session. We had 3 speakers on the night.

First speaker was Ken Chan, who was delivering Level 1: Project 3 Researching and Presenting speech and his speech title was MBTI. MBTI means Myers–Briggs Type Indicator which is an introspective self-report questionnaire with the purpose of indicating differing psychological preferences in how people perceive the world around them and make decisions.

Second Speaker was Vijaykumar, who was delivering his Ice Breaker speech from the path Presentation Mastery. His speech title was My life.  He spoke about his journey of 60 years in his life.

Final speaker was Rajendra,who was delivering Level 1 Project 2 Researching and Presenting project. His speech was  titled An Unusual Experience. He spoke about stress in his life and how he overcome those. 

After the speech session, our VPM KT Chok,took over the stage to induct 2 new members into the club Jocelyn & CS Ong. A break was observed for 10 minutes.

Post break, GE Vasudevan took over the stage for the evaluation session. He explained the session and introduced his panel of evaluators and role players for the reports.

1. Table Topics Evaluator: Ng Swee Lyn, ACB, ALB

2. Speech Evaluator for Ken Chan: EK Yeo, CC, CL

3. Speech Evaluator for Vijaykumar: Haji Hashim DTM

4. Speech Evaluator for Rajendra: Shain Anand

5. Ah-counter : Chew Yee, CC

6. Grammarian: Abdul Rahman, PM1

7. Timer: Cetani Chen, ACS, ALB

8. Silent Evaluator for Shain: Uma Vasudevan, CC, CL

TME handed over the control to President Chitirra who took us through the Awards and Presentation session

Best Assigned Speech: Rajendra

Best Table Topics Speaker: Jocelyn

Best Evaluator: Haji Hashim Adnan DTM

The meeting was adjourned, group photo was taken and we signed off by cutting cake for June birthday babies.

Blog Writer - Shain Anand.

See you all on 25th June 2019.

Regards,
MM-KL
EXCO
2018/2019

Blog 436 – I smile, you smile

Counting down to the final 3 meetings of the term, we started the meeting with the theme of the day, I smile, you smile which warmed up the atmosphere in the meeting room.

Ek Yeo, who was our Assistant Sergeant At Arms, called the meeting to order by leading us to recite the Toastmaster’s Promises.

It was a special day for our Madam President, Chitirra, LD1 who then took over the stage and gave her presidential opening address. With the theme of the day, I Smile, You Smile, she warmed the room with a wide smile on her face while sharing how happy she felt spending time with us at Toastmaster on her birthday. She then proceeded to invite our grammarian, Shain Anand to introduce the word of the day, Pleasure. A few guest joined us with a round of self-introduction, where we got to know each other better and gave each of us the opportunity to speak and share our thoughts on the word of the day as well as theme of the day.

Malaysia is a multicultural country where we celebrate a variety of unique festivals together. Being in the Ramadan month, we had a wonderful “buka puasa” or fast breaking session with our Muslim members by bringing forward our usual break time and enjoying the signature nasi lemak and bananas while we had a wonderful time bonding with each other.

The meeting resumed when our Toastmaster of the Evening, Manish Jha, IP1, invited Matthew Philippose, CC, ALB, on stage. Matthew blew our mind with his uplifting invocation speech. Manish then took over the floor to brief our guest and reminded us of the history of Toastmaster International and how the leadership system has brought us to become one of the most successful non profit organizations. 

We have our members and a special guest from Toastmaster TTDI, ACS, ALB, Shari Wiemer, whom took up the following roles during the meeting:-

1. General Evaluator – Shari Wiemer, ACS, ALB
2. Ah Counter – VijayKumar,CC
3. Grammarian – Shain Ahnand
4. Timer – Wendy Sim, CC

Thank you for demonstrating how a great team work can be done. Your contributions had made the meeting run smoothly.

Next, came the adrenaline ride of the meeting, where we had the fun and exciting Table Topics session, nicely led by our president, LD1, Chitirra. In addition to introducing the purpose, objective and rules of the session to us, she gave our brave speakers a Ferrero Rocher chocolate as a reward on their courage to challenge the impromptu speeches on stage! Kudos to all 5 speakers, Paul Tan, KT Chok, Jocelyn, Danis and CS Ong, whom raised up to the challenge!

And Congratulations to CS Ong, our newly joined Toastmaster member for being voted as the Best Table Topics Speech award! His speech was very well delivered with confidence!

Moving on to the highlight of the meeting, our Assigned Speech Session, where we have our first speaker of the day, DTM, CP Lau, delivering his speech title, Golden Questions. It was nothing but a fruitful and eye opening experience to see a seasoned DTM dancing across the stage with his well delivered speech! The 2 golden questions which we all can learn to apply in our daily life for a more productive results are, What went well, and How can we do better. Thank you for sharing with us these golden questions CP Lau! Up next, our second and last speaker of the day was yet another

outstanding speaker, ACB, ALB, Julia Leong who had presented to us how her solar hot water system can help to save the environment. A very convincing presentation! Some of us were even interested to find out more about the product after the speech!

It was then time for a short 5 minutes break for our members and the guest before moving into our Evaluation and Reports Session.

Our General Evaluator Shari Wiemer, ACS, ALB, led us through the evaluation and report session enthusiastically and she shared with us some of the techniques practiced by her when evaluating a speech. She introduced the Pie concept, where we could point out 2 good points from a speech and 2 suggestions for improvement follow by an encouraging remark to motivate and inspire the speaker to do better! Thank you Shari! She then invited our Table Topics Evaluator of the day, ATMG, KL Loh to share with us his evaluation on our 5 brave speakers. KL did an excellent evaluation and provided constructive feedback to each of the speakers! Next, Rey Thean gave her first evaluation on DTM CP Lau’s Speech, great job on integrating the golden questions into the evaluation! The floor was then passed to CC, ALB,Mathew Philipose for the evaluation of ACB, ALB, Julia Leong’s speech swiftly. 

There was a special evaluation session by CC,CL, Shaun Koshy, who evaluated Rey’s evaluation. It was an eye opening session seeing how nicely the evaluation was given! After a short period of open evaluation, each technical role player presented their report to the general evaluator.

Towards the end of the meeting, the President presented the award to our best table topic speaker CS Ong and also presented a token of appreciation to our general evaluator, Shari Wiemer.

Toastmaster is a platform for us to practice our public speaking skills, polish our communications skills and enhance our leadership skills! Here we all grow at our pace to one day bloom into our fullest potential!

Blog Writer - Rey Thean.

See you all on 11th June 2019.

Regards,
MM-KL
EXCO
2018/2019