the 27th of September

Toastmasters Meeting on the 27th September commenced exactly at 9.38am. Members and guests introduced themselves to break the ice and get the meeting up and running.

Denise, the table topics master, presented unique idioms as the day’s table topic titles and everyone on the floor are given the opportunity to speak based on the idiom. It was quite tough as speakers are to relate a story to the idiom. Nevertheless, the volunteers managed to speak their way through with good vocals and points. There were five speakers altogether, namely Joshua, a second timer as a guest at our club, Fun from UM toastmasters club, Boon Keong, Jamie and Ka Chuan. Micheal was the evaluator and for his evaluation, he offered praises for the speakers’ strong points. He also highlighted their weaknesses and suggested ways of improvement. It was a thorough evaluation.

Moving on, we had 2 ice breaker speeches. The first is given by Cassandra, titled “You will never know”. Her topic was interesting as we get to know things which we may never have guessed. Her speech contains bits and pieces of her life and incidents which mattered deeply to her. Second icebreaker speech was presented by Ka Chuan. He started his speech by narrating briefly about his birth which I found was really interesting. He moved to talk about his family and his involvement in sports. From his speech everyone got to know him as a good sportsman who can play many sports.

Third speech of the day was by Jamie titled the past and the future. She spoke about making decisions in life and the importance of following up with the decisions we made. It was a speech full of values we can absorb and put into practice. Last speech was by John Lee titled “The Roast”. It was a humorous speech as John “roasted” two “fictional” characters named Gajendran and Qinmei who were getting married. John’s speech left the audience roaring with laughter.

Next was the evaluation session. General evaluator Gajendran invited his team of evaluators to evaluate the speakers. First evaluator was Jee Aik, followed by John Lee, me(Chee Hoong) and lastly Qinmei. The evaluators offered compliments to the 1st timers Cassandra and Ka Chuan and they also gave sound advice to them. I pointed out the good points and weaknesses of Jamie while Qinmei did similarly for her evaluation. Our aim is to assist in any way we can to anhance their speaking skills. General evaluator also offered some pointers for the speakers to consider. The evaluation session was completed with the Ah counter report by Faiq, Timekeeper report by Pui Yee and language evaluator report by Qinmei.

The final agenda is the presidential address by John Lee. John Lee promoted the idea of visiting other clubs to gain exposure as well as contacts. He also mentioned the mentor-mentee system for our club which have been revived. The winners for best table topic speaker, best assignment speaker and best evaluator was announced. The champion for the day for best table topic speaker was Boon Keong. Best assignment speaker goes to John Lee while best evaluator falls on the hands of Qinmei. Congrats to everyone above. That ended our meeting for the day. I hope that everyone gained something from it and make the best they can out of their experience at HELP toastmasters club meeting.