"Children
are wearing new clothes bright colours fill the streets,
Their
faces full laughter their pockets full of sweets,
Let us rejoice indeed, This is the day of
Eid"
The
feeling of first breakfast
Being
able to enjoy food again during the day! It
felt amazing. This
feeling is coming after a month long of day-time fasting. I
have requested my family in Yemen to donate zakat al-fitr on behalf of me.
For
Muslims, this charity is associated with the festival of eid al-fitr (Arabic).
Zakat
al-fitr (charity of breaking the fast) is practiced by Muslims around the globe
where, they usually donate a meal worth to the needy on the last day of fasting
or just before performing the prayer of the first day of breaking the fast. The
goal of this charity is to share joy with the needy people on that day. New
clothes and lots of sweet.
Here
in Malaysia where I stay, I was able to see some of my neighbors all wearing
new colorful clothes. Some
of them were with their kids preparing to go out on a day trip, to visit their
relatives.
I
still can see how joyful these kids cheerfully running down the staircase with
their new clothes and probably after enjoying lots of sweet and receiving tons
of money. It
reminds me with my family back home and how we used to celebrate this festival. Despite
the restriction and social distancing, it did not stop people to express their
joy for this festival.
Physical
distancing but never been a social distancing
Same
for us in Money Mastery- KL Toastmasters club, social distancing did
not stop MMKL-ers from having their social connection despite the enforced
physical distancing.
We
were able to enjoy our zoom meeting for the 3rd time on the 3rd
day of the festival.
Having
our assistant Sergeant-at-arms Rey Thean, PM1 to kick start the meeting at 7.25
pm, briefing us and our honorable guest about the meeting rules and the
Toastmasters’ promise.
Selamat
Hari Raya
With
these words our charming President, KL Loh, ATMG, started welcoming everyone to
the meeting. Seeing
him with his sincere smile on my laptop screen It gave me almost the same warm
feeling that I am craving for in a toastmaster meeting.
To
make sure that everyone feels warm in the meeting he led an ice breaking
session for all participants. All
the other thirteen members and three guests gave a self-introduction and said
few words about the theme of the meeting and word of the day.
Think
on your feet
At around 7:40pm, our Toastmaster of the evening
(TME), Manish Jha, IP1 took control and started warming up the meeting with his
smart dress and enthusiastic voice. He started by highlighting the success of
the pathway program quoting some statistics data from the Toastmasters
International.
He then passed control to our Table Topics®
Master, Nantha Kumar who led the first session of the meeting. In this impromptu speech session and what we call in
toastmaster Table Topics®, where it challenges new guests and
members to speak and think on their feet.
Five brave souls took up the challenge and it went
like this:
- Hai Liang spoke on what
he appreciates the most in people, followed by
- Mathew, EC1, shared
about his proudest moment, The third speaker was
- Elysia Teh, DTM,
described her happiest moment, followed by
- Rey Thean, PM1, shared
on what she loves to do, and finally the session ended up by
- CP Lau, DTM, humorously
shared about his nicest thing he has ever done to someone.
Prepared
speeches
The next session was the prepared speeches session.
The TME Manish Jha, IP1, introduced the three speakers and gave a short
synopsis from their speeches.
The first speaker was Julia Leong, ACG, ALB who was
attempting her Presentation Mastery Pathway for the first time. She had given us a six-minute Ice Breaker. She introduced herself to the club from the moment
she was born to the moment where she is now, she titled her speech with “Legacy
From My Matriarch”.
She was then followed by me, where I was attempting my
Innovative Planning Pathway. It was my first prepared speech in the club and I
had to give an Ice Breaker about myself. I spoke for 8 minutes, shared my story
how I first thought of Malaysia and how I ended up in Toastmasters.
The third speaker was VijayKumar, CC, attempting Effective
Coaching Pathway for his third
project in level 1, where he needed to Research and Present a well-researched
speech on Design Thinking.
At 9:10 pm we had a break for 5 minutes marking the
end of our 2nd session and preparing for the next one.
Evaluation
session
This is the last session of the meeting where both
speakers in impromptu and prepared speeches session were given an evaluation as
a feedback to help them improve on their speeches.
Our General Evaluator (GE), Geoff Andrew, DTM led the
session. With his kind words and sincere heart, Geoff Andrew,
DTM, explained the purpose of the evaluation session which serves to motivate
members and giving them a feedback on how to improve on next speeches.
He started by passing control to the table topic
evaluator, Chitirra, LD1, which she gave a 5-minute evaluation feedback to the
five speakers who attempted the Table Topics® at the beginning of
the meeting. Another three evaluators, Hai Liang, CP Lau, DTM and
Elysia Teh, DTM, took turns to give a 3-minute evaluation feedback for the
three project speakers including me.
CP Lau, DTM was evaluating my speech and he started by
praising me for the things that I did well in my speech. It gave me a nice feeling to open my heart and listen
more to him before he pointed out the things that I need to work on and finally
he ended his two-minute speech by telling me the things that I need to
challenge myself in the future. Receiving that feedback, I felt like he was
really listening attentively to my speech.
Receiving feedback is uncomfortable sometimes but with
CP Lau’s sincere heart and caring words, I was able to listen and accept. This
is what Toastmasters all about “positive learning environment”.
Speech crutches, grammar, and time
management
We then had Ah-counter, Maheindran to tell each speaker how
many speech crutches we unconsciously did while speaking. There was also a
5-minute Grammarian report by EK Yeo, CC, CL, to give us some feedback on the
correct pronunciation and misspelled words and nice phrase that we used during
our speeches.
And there was a timing report by Timer, Abdulrahman, PM2,
where he let each speaker knows about their speech time. For me I was speaking
for 8 minutes where I should not exceed 6 minutes.Exceeding time had left me,
and Vijay disqualified from entering the voting for best speaker award.
A good lesson to learn!
Conclusion
The General Evaluator gave his overall feedback on the
meeting before presenting the digital certificates to Best Table Topics® speaker
and Best Speech Evaluator. We were able to take some screen photos before
we left the meeting with many thoughts in mind.
I was so excited to attend the meeting after being lonely at
home for a long time. This meeting gave me a chance to be connected with my
club members. Despite the physical distance, we never felt the social distance.
Thanks to Toastmasters and to Zoom meeting made it possible
for us to learn and connect.
I am still wondering what should we call it, a social
distancing, or a physical distancing?
(let me know in the comments)
Blog Writer: Salem Saleh, IP3
Regards,
MM-KL EXCO
2019/2020
