Toastmasters Meeting # 356

Theme of the day: Mentor's Day,
Word of the day: Embolden

It was 31^st of May.  I tried to capture this whole meeting in my mind trying to portray as I remember the whole interesting moments. We had energetic, enthusiastic and high standard meeting. We learn with a lots of fun. So, you feel to join us soon. You are most welcome.

Let me give you a glimpse of this meeting which was just over recently.. 

We began our meeting by 7:15 PM. Our SAA of the day CC (competent communicator) Sivadas took control of the stage and called for the meeting with full swing while making sure everyone is attentive and ready to proceed.  

SAA Sivadas, TME Kelvin Chong, Members recital the Toastmaster's promise

This was the time for our presidential opening address. Our club president Mathew Philippose CC, CL. What can I say about him? He is very enthusiastic and encouraging person. He speaks like more or less Barack Obama. He open the meeting and set the floor with fire of excitement and inspiration. Theme of the day was Mentor’s day. Every one of us shared their perspective of mentor’s day and their memory with their great mentors in life. The air at the club meeting was charged up the introductions with great expectations for the whole upcoming sessions of the day. 

Grammarian: CS Quah, President: Mathew Philippose

With much excitement we move forward to the next part of the meeting with our Toastmaster of the Evening (TME) Kelvin Chong. This man is our all-time humour person, he   jumped in and took control of the stage.

While leading the meeting forward, Kelvin created humour trying to read different from his script. He blamed the error to his eye sight bringing laughter to us. Kelvin has a humorous way keeping audience on their toes by quoting mistakes deliberately.  He managed pretty much well. To be chair of a meeting has challenges we may say it is not bed of roses. However, he enjoyed making this role a bed of roses.  

He called each role player to share the objectives of their role at the meeting. Kelvin highlighted history of Toastmasters International for the benefit of guests. The humorous disposition by Kelvin gave much fun with a lasting memory.

As our Table Topic master of the meeting Dr. Thilla ACG, ALB to took control from the toastmasters of the meeting. She made many to speak on their feet through the impromptu speeches.

Impromptu speech is to practice and keeping speaker’s idea clearly, concisely and effectively with one or two illustration in just 2 minutes of time. Not easy right? 

It takes big courage when you need to keep your ideas or words concisely and effectively in just two minutes to the people. There various experiences, you will find some people who can speak at length while others cannot even speak for a minute in front of the audience. In both the cases speaker needs to learn how to present or communicate effectively and timely manners. That is why MM KL Toastmasters club is committed to members to make mistakes and learn to develop the best ability in public speaking, leadership roles and off course writing.

Our self-motivated five speakers took courage and spoke their mind. Beautiful and meaningful topics were given to our impromptu speakers. I was the first speaker yes, it is myself, Manish Kumar CC (Competent Communicator) was given a Topic to speak “Describe an emboldening experience you have had”. I spoke my mind and spoke about my wonderful experience of emboldening experience with my mentor in toastmasters as an example. Similarly all five of us spoke out our best. Impromptu speech session ends here, but still main part of the show was on the way. Guess what?

Has the control of the meeting changed hands to the TME Kelvin Chong, it was the time to experience the prepared assignment speech session from the CC (competent communication) manual and advanced manuals of toastmasters program. On this day, we had four power pack speakers to fuel the audience’s mind and spirit.

Sharply 8.00 PM our 1^st speaker’s name Chong Ji Seng was announced by the Toastmaster of the evening Kelvin Chong. Toastmaster Ji Sheng in his speech took us to his world of vacation, it is in  Pulau Redang Island which is just 300-400 KM away from KL to describe how to have happy honeymoon or just happy time for anyone and everyone in Malaysia. He thus completed his 4^th speech which was Titled- Vacation (the project was - How to Say it).

We not only enjoyed his adventurous trip with a big group of friends but also he shared his memory humour during his journey of 8 hours instead of 4 hours and a lot more, which allowed us the audience to connect with his story very well. By the end he managed to say, you too must go and enjoy the beauty of this place. Very mesmerising. He amazed us with his humorous and storytelling skill.  To be honest I was his evaluator. I was very happy to evaluate his speech. He was awesome.

Our second speaker was Chee Heng King- He completed his last from the CC manual, speech number 10 on this day. His speech: - Title Vincent Vann Gogh: A story of Resolve. Congratulations King to complete your first basic manual of toastmasters competent communication. The speech was to inspire the audience, and he really learned, how to inspire the audience with his inspiring story. He taught us, how to challenge our self and resolve any difficult situation with ease.

King, you have done very good job. This is an achievement not just for you, also for our club. You deserve to have standing ovation. Wish you great luck and have fun from the advanced manual’s speeches of toastmasters program.

Moving forward this was the time to inspire the audience once again by our all-time renowned speaker Ken Chan. His speech title: - Don’t worry, be happy. 

He not just inspired the whole audience with his great story and humours skill. He said, there are three types of people in the world 1. Optimists 2. Pessimists and 3. Opportunist with the example of half empty glass. He taught us how to be opportunists when situation comes to you and don’t over stress yourself in stressful situation- just be happy, soon everything will be alright to you.  It was really fantastic speech and worth listening him, also receiving valuable wisdoms from Ken. Thank you Ken Chan for inspiring and driving us to your message don’t worry, be happy. 

Our last speaker was none other than a seasoned and a very dedicated, strong and cute speaker our club president Mathew Phillipose. He is born to be a leader and a wonderful speaker. He delivered his speech from the Advanced manual Leadership Excellence Series- Title: - Giving Effective Feedback.

When he is on stage. Looks like the stage says, “Mathew Please don’t leave me, love you so much, see everybody looks charming and happy because of you”. In his speech, he didn’t just tell the fact how to give effective feedback. He came up with effective slides and explained technically how to give feedback effectively while understanding the context and highlight relevant points. Highlight carefully strength and weakness. Also show the example and suggestions how to improve. It was really worth listening you Mr President.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, it’s Time to enjoy our 10 minutes of break. Announced by our handsome TME (CC Kelvin Chong).

At 9 PM as per our schedule. We resumed our meeting and the time finally jumped over to the pocket of our generous and sincere General Evaluator DTM (Distinguished Toastmasters) Lim Thian Seng to take control of the stage and provide the constructive feedbacks on overall meeting. He really did great work on his part. We embrace and love evaluation because evaluation is the stepping stone to our success.

He cordially invited first, table topic evaluator- ATMG K.L Loh a seasoned speaker and meticulous evaluator. He clearly evaluated each table topic speakers and evaluated the speech structure, speech content, purpose and body language. He also encouraged the speakers to keep doing impromptu speeches regularly to be just perfect. 

Now time was flying to call Individual speech evaluators. One after another all the 3 speakers came over. With their mini speech to give appropriate and meaningful evaluation. I believe, evaluation was very much appropriate. I was the first evaluator followed by DTM Hj. Hasim and CP Lau, ACB, ALB.

Time finally came for technical evaluations in the row. Wow – our first time Grammarian toastmaster CS Quah did wonderful job: - This is very challenging job to catch up poor sentence structure and correcting them, he picked up wrongly pronounced words, highlighted the good phrase, also how many time everyone used the words of the day. Our TME managed to score highest to use highest number of times word of the day Embolden. Congratulations Kelvin Chong.

Ah counter- Sharian recently joined our club and completed CC and gave his Ah counter’s report for all the speech crutches. He was very quick in observing umm’s aah,la….etc. Congratulations Sharian to be competent communicator. Our intelligent timer EK Yeo,CC- He was the man who ran the meeting’s every session according to the schedule with his prompt time signals. He was really smart on recording the time.

General Evaluator

Our generous GE (General Evaluator- DTM) Lim Thian Seng gave ideas of areas of improvement. One such suggestion was to use skirting for the tables so that ladies with short skirts will feel comfortable. With a wink in his eyes he said this might attract more ladies to the club.  We welcome everyone to be the part our toastmaster’s family. We don’t discriminate anyone based on the race, colour, community etc. Means you too are welcome to see us and provide us your idea and tell us how we can improve more on anything and everything.

The Time soon caught up to the award ceremony: - As our GE handed to our club President after presiding the various evaluations and reports of role-players. Mr President called for the doll drum and without any delay announced “ladies and gentlemen, winner of the table topic speech is DTM Haji Hashim”. Surprisingly the best evaluation also went to DTM Haji Hashim.

 This was once again in the history of MM-KL TMC meeting DTM Haji Hashim grabbed both the awards and there was a thunderous applause when he departed from the stage. History is been written in  Money Mastery KL toastmasters club with DTM Haji Hashim name, I’m sure will be in the top 10 great toastmasters in the list. At last Mr President Summaries the meeting on learning things from the meeting in each aspects and adjourned the meeting by 10 PM.

My friend, this is such a place, even by mistake you are able to visit our Money Mastery-KL toastmasters club. I’m sure, soon you will able to make a choice to join MM – KL TMC. Lovely place, lovely people, you may find your lost friends around. You will have many surprises. Join hands in hand go together an extra mile in personal life as well as professional life. For more details- Do visit our Facebook website. https://www.facebook.com/groups/moneymasterykltmc/   

"The most beautiful thing 

you can wear is confidence."

My Journey as a Toastmaster... Manish Kumar

Whatever is your grade or position, if you know how and when to speak, and when to remain silent, your chances of real success are proportionately increased. -by Ralph C. Smedley, 1878 - 1965, Toastmasters Founder.

To be a Toastmaster these days is not difficult. However when you check with any member they have story to tell how they became a member of a Toastmasters club. Let me share with you my story. . You might be curious to know, how I came to Money Mastery-KL Toastmasters Club.

To tell the truth, I did not ask anyone because, I do not have many friends in this country other than my acquaintances. My best friend was my computer it was like my life partner.  I have heard much about toastmasters. I knew in my heart that being a Toastmaster will make a difference to my life. I searched toastmasters club in Google using search string “nearest toastmasters club in PJ”. I got a long list ah very confusing. I again changed my search string, I typed in Google toastmaster club nearby AMCORP mall, this is building my office was situated. I found Money Mastery-KL Toastmasters Club is the first location nearest to me, it showed it was Amcorp Mall right down my nose, this is where I worked.

Enthusiastically during my office lunch break time from work, office I went to verify the location. To my surprise it was no more there. I decided to go back and do a search again in the internet. I realised there was a contact number of a person who was a member of the club. His name was Hj Hashim. I called the number, I was greeted by a very friendly voice. He was so informative, he even gave me the route map, the day and time of the meeting. He even gave me other contact numbers to help me. Being armed with information I waited excitedly for the club meeting date.

The club meets on 2^nd 4^th and 5^th Tuesdays. I was there on the earliest date, and on reaching the club. I was really emboldened by the tones of every members. I was impressed by the friendly atmosphere, senior members like Hj. Hashim, Ken Chan, Mathew Philippose- who later became my Mentor, Serena Kong, and of course our  VPE, Ron Yeap.

It has been a year by now. I picked up my Competent Communication (CC) Manual and stood to give different types of speeches that covered 10 topics. I took nearly 10 months to be awarded as a Competent Communicator. During this period I worked on 10 different lessons through speeches to shape me to be good confident speaker. The toastmaster’s journey is superb. You will never regret if you commit yourself to be toastmaster once in your life time. Now, I truly enjoy each toastmasters meeting, every event, and every contest. Feel blessed to have such great friends like family members.

                       

Our club is rich in achievements and achievers. I also met a great mentor exclusively Senior KL Loh who had been very instrumental in helping me with my final CC speech. This is my journey of toastmasters and what about you? I am sure you too like to have a toastmaster experience like me.   

Make a decision and join us to win the world champions of public speaking. We will be happy to have you. Our motto is to “Friends helping friends to succeed”.  We learn from each other and friends help you succeed. It is a place you become leaders of tomorrow and create a great future. 

Toastmasters Meeting #350, #351 & #352

Money Mastery-KL Toastmasters club maybe similar to any toastmasters club in town. However if one were to visit the meetings you will notice a spectacular difference and excitement in each meeting. Surely our club is rich in experience and strength through many years. The motto of the club is “Friends helping friends to succeed” as witnessed many progressing as eloquent affluent speakers and leaders.

Each meeting has a theme and a Word of the Day. However if one were to take a look at the meetings the agenda is almost the same in each meeting but the spirit of the meeting itself is unique itself. In each of our meetings we have a theme that shapes the meeting. For example our meeting #350 held on 22nd March the theme was “World Water Day”, meeting #351 it was “Astound yourself” and meeting #352 it was “Dancing with life”.  There is a new word you learn in each of our meetings, the Word of the Day, enlightens an individual to learn a new word and use it. 

Usually during the President’s address, members are asked to introduce themselves and try to use the theme and the word of the day in their introduction.  This has given each person the opportunity to experience speaking in a small group. To add to it we have the table topic Master who also uses the theme of the day, for the table topics session. It is a session where both the members and guests are encouraged to give an impromptu speech for two minutes. We call this, “speaking on their feet”. We also invite guests to participate the table topics too.

Humor session is special because it livens the meeting.  For our meeting #350 it was humorous man Vicente Jr. Banaag, CC, CL (from Scope Toastmasters Club) played this role, for meeting #351 it was one of our newly joined member, CS Quah. Everyone enjoy this session. Sometimes, in the beginning of a meeting, we have invocation presentation to charge a meeting with enthusiasm. Recently we had a young member in our recent meeting #351 Fung Jiun to play this role.

In toastmaster meetings we usually have prepared speeches either from Competent communication manual or Advance communication manual.  A toastmasters first speech is Ice breaker speech, during this period we had C. S. Quah. His speech title was “My journey in life". He shared much of their life. It was interesting because it helps the club members to know the new member better at the same time it is easy for a first time speaker to speak. Usually at the end of the first speech we gave a standing ovation at the end of his speech. This is to appreciate their effort and to honor them for taking the challenge.

Our Advance speeches in meeting #350  was delivered by Kelvin Chong, CC. Kelvin’s speech was a dramatic talk. His speech title was "Secrets of Winning Sales". Kelvin dramatized the speech showing 4 different types of sales people. He illustrated why a certain sales man can beat others with a better sales because he able to understand the customer needs better. As Kelvin always display a humorous outlook he kept the audience in stitches. 

In the meeting #350, we have a speech on leadership excellence series, our speaker EK Yeo, CC, CL talked about the goal setting and planning. This session was not only interesting but also filled with laud. KL Loh, ATMG, gave a weight comment as he witnessed EK's growth and hardwork. "EK, you have improved a lot and you speak more confident now!"

In #351 meeting, Ji Sheng talked about how the technology changed our life. Instead of we master the technologies, the technologies master us. Cheng Seng San gave his 7th speech on "Air pollution in Malaysia". This was a topic he did some research as was required by the speech objective. He displayed on the screen on the air pollution index in Malaysia and its harmful effects. He also shared on the precaution we can take. This is a very informative speech.  Talking about persuasive speech, our member Sharian Raj gave his 9th speech on Persuade with Power. He had a unique title "Abibliophobia".  The title of his speech looked a bit unique. The meaning of the title Sharian explained is the fear of running out of reading materials. It was a persuasive speech that challenged the audience into reading.

 

In this meeting #351, I saw different things. I saw how the new members completed the given new tasks. I saw Ji Sheng return to give his speech. I saw SS Cheng improved from mumbling and spoke loud now. I believe someday, he will turn out to be a confident speaker. I saw our new member Sharian spoke confidently in a new environment. I saw how the members astounded themselves in the meeting. I was bowled over by their fighting spirit. They might not know, they were not the same from the first day when they joined toastmaster. 

Meeting #352 was another great meeting. We had Ooi Yee who gave her 2nd Speech, she spoke a speech title,  "Air Fryer or Dishwasher". In her speech, she actually gave so much information on automatic dish washer that attracted most listeners to purchase one. In fact she challenged the men to buy for their wives. It was a good attempt for a second time speaker. Indirectly she was trying a persuasive speech. Chee Heng King, on the other hand, gave his 8th ppeech, the objective of this speech was to use Visual aids comfortable. He spoke on the title Stone and sand. He therefore brought sand and stone as the objects of his speech. He linked it with attitudes of people. How a person who is not firm in what he says is like the sand that blows away his credibility if he is not firm in what he believes. He demonstrated by blowing the sand. It was a good speech as all the photographers in the meeting missed to snap photos while he spoke. The advance speech was done by Ken Chan, DTM. He attempted his specialty speeches, on impromptu speaking. He was given a barrel of questions, to which he attempted very well. 

 

As we always say in toastmasters, evaluation is the breakfast of champions, so it is a must to have evaluation led by our General Evaluator. Usually General evaluators are from other clubs, The general evaluators were  Rubeinthiran, ACB, ALB  for meeting #350, Jocelyn Lim, ACB, ALB for meeting #351, and for meeting #352 we decided to have our own member Kelvin Chong, CC.

The evaluators for this period were all very experienced people whose evaluation is the reason we see much improvement in our speakers. The evaluators were  Haji Hashim, DTM, Dr  Thilla Chelliah, ACG, ALB Julia Leong, ACB, ALB, Manish Kumar, Serena Kong, ALB and also our Area Director Srinivas, ACB, CL who happened to be present in one of the meetings.

All our 3 meetings held recently meeting 350, 351, 352 maybe different in the speeches, in the themes, in the word of the day, in the speakers and evaluators and even the General evaluators. However they all have the same uplifting spirit in its own unique way. We wish many will visit our club to experience a difference.   

Lots of Love,

Mathew Philippose, CC, CL

President 2015/2016

A Growing Experience

 

We had experienced a very exciting month in March and April. These were the months where few members challenged themselves to took part in our Area C1 and Division C International Speech and Table Topics Contests. It was once said, "you cannot create experience. You must undergo it."

Kevin Khoo, CC and Ken Chan, DTM had represented the club to compete in our area International Speech and Table Topics contests and successfully advanced to division level. The journey of competing in both contests and advanced to Division level required hard work, smart work, dedication and lots of speech rehearsals, which was very stressful. It was so grateful that the club members were very supportive and gave their opinions to Kevin's speech on both speech rehearsals time in the club meetings.

Issac Marion said, "Every experience, good or bad, is a priceless collector's item." In fact, we had witnessed the transformation in Kevin. Well done, Kevin!

Ken, on the other hand, is a season speaker. In fact his speech had electrified many in the contests. Not only that, he always writes notes upon listens to any presented speeches. This is how he grows, excels and shines.

Besides, Ron Yeap, CC was assigned as Areas C1 & C3 International Speech and Table Topics (3rd April 2016) Contest Chair. The process in organizing the contests for both areas was not easy. He met difficulties, he found solutions, he solved them. Ron, experience is not what happens to you, it is what you do with what happens to you.

Not only that, few of the club members, Sharian, Fung Jiun, Manish Kumar and I were helped on the areas joint contests too. We learned by doing, it was so proud to see the members contribute their time to make the contests ran smoothly.




 Areas C1 & C3 Joint International Speech & Table Topics Contests 

Experience is the teacher of all things- Julius Caesar

Kevin Khoo- 2nd Place, Ken Chan- 1st Place

Division C International Speech & Table Topics Contests

Ken Chan- 3rd Place

Like an aspiring club, it has been our clubs dream to deliver a District Champion and also International Champion. The club will do the best to support the member. We will learn together, grow together and shine together. 

"Friends helping friends to succeed."

Reported by,

Mathew Philippose, CC, CL

President 2015/2016