5 July 2008 marked the new term. It was a brand new beginning, with new committee members. The atmosphere felt fresh. Already small changes were being made.
The meeting started 7 minutes late, with Qinmei as the Sergeant-At-Arms (SAA) asking everyone to introduce themselves and tell everyone what they hope to achieve in the coming week. Since the bulk of the members were A-Levels students, most of them were hoping to get used to college life once again or accustom to the new timetables.
After Qinmei’s welcoming address, it was John’s turn to give his first ever presidential address as the new president of the club. In his speech, he spoke about time. According to John, there is a time to do things, a time to focus and limited time to achieve our goals. He also reminded us on how we need to work hard to achieve the President’s Distinguished Award yet again this year.
Next up was Han Lian as the Toastmaster of the Morning (TOM) with his ‘warming up the audience’ session. He started off by asking the audience to take a deep breath as they did not look as awake and alert as they should be. The word of the day ‘attentive’ was then introduced by the Language Evaluator (LE), Kang Han.
Not before long, it was time for the ever exciting table topics session. The Table Topics Master (TTM), Jee Aik, took a different approach this time around. Before he asked for volunteers, he announced the topics. If within 10 seconds, no one volunteers to speak, he would choose them at random.
The first topic was ‘no man is an island’, which Han Lian volunteered to speak about. He spoke about how he discovered that when he was transferred to Inti Nilai which was in the middle of a jungle.
The second topic, ‘money is everything’ was presented by Ernest, our Immediate Past President (IPP), who made the effort to come even though he was no longer the president of our club. The word ‘money’ caught his attention, and this made him volunteer to speak about the topic. However, on his way to the stage, he forgot the topic. In the end, he spoke about how money saved him when he was stopped at a police road block.
The third topic, being ‘family is more important than friends’ was spoken about by Nikki, a first timer at our club. She reminded everyone that no matter how many friends we have, we will still turn to our families in the end.
The fourth topic was ‘evil people can become good people’. This topic was presented by Commander Anthony who told us how evil people can guide good people. Not only can evil people become good people, but also good people can become evil people.
The fifth and final topic was ‘sharing is caring’ which was spoken about by Pui Yee. She told us how she learnt to share, and that has brought her relationship with her brother closer. She said that you share because you care.
When the table topics session was over, Chee Hoong was called upon as the Table Topics Evaluator (TTE) to give his evaluation on each speaker. He was commended for his improvement in terms of giving more detailed and concise evaluations besides learning to point out ways to improve instead of just focusing on the strengths of each speaker.
The second part of the meeting was the assignment speeches.
The first assignment speaker was Jamie, giving her ice breaker speech entitled ‘The Little Girl’. She told a heartwarming story of her past even though at the beginning, she did tell us how she disliked introduction speeches. The topic she chose was definitely close to heart as she told us the story full with emotions.
The second assignment speaker was Boon Keong with his speech, ‘Leaders of a Great Nation’. According to him, we are all leaders of a great nation. We are all leaders of procrastination. He then moved on to give four simple tips to stop procrastinating, which were to list the essentials, create accountability, focus on small steps and set deadlines.
The third assignment speaker, Jook Yew’s speech title was ‘Football’. He started off with a short story of a young boy who wanted to play football and moved on to Malaysia and eventually, reminded us to be grateful of what we are and what we have.
The fourth assignment speaker was Han Lian, speaking about ‘Mind Your Language’. He told the audience many instances on how a simple punctuation can cause such a big difference, sometimes causing it to be misleading or even offensive.
The final part of the meeting was the evaluation session. After all, evaluation is the breakfast for winners. Each evaluator, Claudia, John and Joyce gave their evaluations respectively, thoroughly going through each point of improvements and strengths of each speaker. Next up was the reports from the Language Evaluator (LE), Kang Han, Ah Counter (AC) Denise and Timekeeper (TK) Boon Keong.
Before the business session and closing address, the new Area W2 Governor, Ernest, who happens to be our IPP as well gave an area governor’s address. Ernest was kind enough to introduce to us our roots, starting from club level to area to division and to district. For those of you who didn’t know, we are in Area W2, Division W and District 51. We are encouraged to go clubbing especially to those clubs of same area so that we can create a closer friendship and bond among area clubs.
Lastly, John as the president conducted the business session and gave a closing address. The best table topics speaker was Ernest, best assignment speaker Han Lian and the best evaluator was Joyce. John did acknowledge that there was just too much for him to say, but he did tell us about the upcoming events such as humour contests.
To New Beginnings,
Qinmei
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