Our Toastmaster Session today begun with our former champion in our international speech, Taufiq Tajuddin, where he talked about traffic jam due to us stopping and stare at traffic jam. Then it was James sharing with us about how he used alt-f4 to shut down all the unnecessary hindrance to double his productivity. After that, it was our guest who came up and volunteer when it was Angeline talking about how she stops, takes a break to keep ourselves sane. Yen Ling came up next and talked about how she took a break between her foundation course and her degree course, so that she could rejuvenate herself. Then we have our brave volunteer, Sean, a first time guest coming up to the platform and sharing about how a part time job helps him to develop the soft skill, and it shifted his paradigm being able to know more people.
After that, Aaron came up and give a really technical evaluation, on the minor things which we tend to neglect, about our body posture, thinking before we speak, and asking questions. Aaron is a really observant person, who have a unique perspective on the things we can improve on.
We took a break where members get to mingle with one another. Then, it was our first speech by our dear president, Pravena. She talked about the primary purpose of life – love. If our purpose is to bake a chocolate cake, we will need the ingredients. These ingredient, are the relationship with people. She then shared with us how we absolutely need relationship to support ourselves, to share our problems so that they could provide a buffer for us, and to have a meaningful life. When we are dying, all that we want, will be the warmth of people around them.
Next, we have our guest speaker, Aaliah Jamal walking up to the top floor at the age of 15, preparing to "commit suicide". The bungee jump. Why? The sole purpose was for her to be famous in her school. But once she was up there, she felt so nervous that she couldn’t jump. She struggled a lot, giving a lot of excuses, asking for claps, trying to get the Uncle beside her to comfort her. But at the end, she took the jump. For her, it was a leap out of the comfort zone, and an act of bravery. It was a really humorous speech.
Then, we have another really talented guest speaker, Ivanna, who need to present a controversial topic based on her speech objective. She came up to share with us how a left handed individual is recognized as evil in the past. In the 1960s, these people could be recognized as a witch, looked down upon, being laugh us etc. It was only at the modern society that we recognize that being right handed or left handed is not a choice. She then lead this to her primary topic – homosexuality. Why do we label people, based on their sexual orientation, instead of their personality? These people are discriminated, and have their rights taken away. A lot of homosexuals are fleeing their country, just because their identity is not recognized. She drew another parallel, if we were to live in a world which is dominated by homosexual, and parents say you must be one but you just feel like loving the opposite sex, can you stop loving someone? We do not need to determine gender, before we fall in love. She tackled a lot of questions about people’s perspective.
After that, General Evaluator Francis took the lead, and started the evaluation session. The first evaluator was Taufiq Tajuddin, sharing with us about Pravena had improved tremendously from day 1, and how it motivated him to go back to give a warm hug to his wife.
Then, we have Toastmasters Edward coming up to give his evaluation for Aaliah. He talked about Aaliah started off really well, immediately connecting with the audience by having humour and having a really good chronology order. Her speech also have a brilliant message to the audience, asking us to step out of our comfort zone.
Lastly, we have Jack Ying giving a really detailed evaluation. He talked about how Ivanna was did really well by having her speech as a discussion instead of a forceful debate about the topic. He talked about the message that Ivanna could be sending to us through her body language to emphasize on his stage presence.
General evaluator, Francis give us a perspective on how we need a healthy hamburger sandvich method in evaluation, by giving a compliment first, then on points of improvement, then back to some compliments again. The meeting ended on a high note.
- From the perspective of VPPR Vincent Sar
