Money Mastery-KL Toastmasters Club (#8141): 27.08.2019 Meeting # 443- Pursuit of Excellence

Theme: Pursuit of Excellence
Word of The Day: Passion

I was joyous when received the agenda of the meeting, on top right of the corner, I noticed a ribbon beside the DCP achievement which stated that the club has achieved Distinguished status with 5 points in the pocket. Well done Money Mastery-KL! I think this could be a record achievement for the club to be on the fastest track to achieve Distinguished Club’s status within 2 months in the term.

The climax of the meeting started building up as early as 6.45pm, when members and guests started to fill up the meeting hall. Our Guest of Honour would be non-other than the General Evaluator, Lee Yau Sin, DTM from Super Speakers Toastmasters Club.

The meeting started on time by the Assistant Sergeant At Arm, Rajendra, who led us through the Toastmasters Promise as well as the house rules.

KL Loh, ATMG, our president took over the stage with a triumphant mood, excitedly explained our theme of the meeting “Pursuit of Excellence”. It is an easy theme to relate to our personal goals and career objectives, therefore, the members and guests spoke their heart out about the view on the theme when they were asked to introduce themselves.

The stage was handed over to the all-suit-up handsome Toastmaster of the Evening (our version of an emcee), Abdulrahman, PM2. Our TME detailed out the history of Toastmasters International, and the history of our club. Before the real deal of the meeting started, he also invited the role players in the meeting, the Ah-Counter, Grammarian, Timer and General Evaluator to explain their role. This instantly gave a better understanding to the guests what they could expect in the meeting later.

The first speaker invited to the stage, was our Humour Master, KT Chok, PM4. In conjunction of the upcoming Humorous Speech Contest, KT tickled our funny bones with humour stories drawing from our stigma about prospective jobs. Thank you KT, for showing us humour element can be easily found in our daily lives.

Another chapter of the meeting follow suit, it was the Table Topics^TM session. Our Table Topics^TM Master came ready with 5 questions to challenge the members and guests. Our season Table Topics challenger, CS Ong kick-started the ball. Then the guests Hai Liang, Sharn Lee, Solmaz and Lina took up the challenge as well. They did well as a first-timer to speak impromptu.

Table Topics™ Master: Wendy Sim, CC

The meeting will not be exciting without members delivering their prepared speeches or project speeches. So we had four of them. Among them are our VPE – Rey Thean; senior member Mathew Philippose, EC1; our Area Director Julia Leong, ACS, ALB; and yours truly, Ron Yeap, ACB, CL.

Listening to prepared speeches were one of the most entertaining moment, as we were able to listen to the speakers with their life stories, various perspective on certain subjects and so on. We learned some real estate insight with Rey’s personal sharing as a property agent; Mathew led us through his leadership experience towards the Sales Managers in the pharmaceutical company he works in; Julia entertained us with a dramatic speech that created suspense but was a happy ending eventually. Yours truly delivered a speech about a drug addict that was saved by his father’s unconditional love. The rest of the speakers were doing very well, making my wish to earn the Best Speaker at stake.

The meeting was adjourned for a short break after this two-third of the meeting has been conducted. When we return on the final session, it was called the Evaluation Session.

Our General Evaluator, Lee Yau Sin, DTM led the whole evaluation session. This session is often called the breakfast for champions, as through the feedback given by the evaluators, we knew where we still able to improve ourselves.

EK Yeo, CC, CL, kick-started the first evaluation by giving his feedback to the Table Topics speakers. The evaluation flow continued with CS Ong gave his evaluation to Rey Thean; Chitirra, LD1 for her evaluation towards Mathew; Hj Hashim gave his evaluation on me; and lastly, our President double his role as the Evaluator to Julia Leong. On top of that, Vijaykumar, CC also delivered his evaluation on CS Ong’s Pathways evaluation speech

Unfortunately, there’s 2 evaluators that spoke out of timing and we did not proceed to vote for the Best Speech Evaluator. Nonetheless, this did not deprive us to celebrate the Best Table Topics Speaker and Best Project Speaker.

Our guest, Lina, won the Best Table Topics Speaker, while our first Speaker, Rey, won the Best Project Speaker. This was her first winning as a Best Project Speaker, congratulations on her achievement.

UP:Standing Ovation to Ron Yeap, ACB, CL as he completed his ACS goal.

Down (from left): 1. Table Topics™ winner: Lina,

Down (from left):2. Best Project Speech Winner: Rey Thean

Down (from left): 3. Area President Distinguished Award: Manish Jha, IP1

Down (from left): 4. GE Token Appreciation: Lee Yau Sin, DTM

Our meeting ended with President Loh reignited our emotion again by thanking the guest for gracing our meeting and role players for giving their best performance to make this meeting run successfully. President did not forget to call for standing ovation to me, for completing Advanced Communicator Silver goal. I gracefully thank all of my club members for their support.

As a routine, we should not leave the meeting without a group photo. I definitely looking forward for another exciting meeting with the members and guest on September 10!!