Announcement

Fellow Toastmasters, do take note that our meeting tomorrow on 12 December 2015 (Saturday) is postponed to 19 December 2015 (Saturday) for most member's convenience.

There will be no meeting tomorrow. Thank you.

Joint Meeting with TCSH TM Club!

Today is a joint meeting with Taylor’s College Sri Hartamas and HELP University Toastmasters Club. We started off with an interesting introduction topic: Why are we optimistic in the things that we do. Reasons ranged from purpose, basic needs that we are privilege to have, arriving at the Toastmasters meeting on time, morning rituals and finding parking. Next, it was a joint presidential speech from Joanne, TCSH’s President, and Tory Yew, HUTMC’s VPE.

Table Topics - with a really unconventional way

Tze Wei from TCSH introduced a really, really unconventional Table Topics Session by introducing the wheel of fortune to pick the participants. Once they are randomly assigned, a short mv will be shown, and then the title of the Toastmasters Speech will be based on the song of the mv.

Janet Wong came up and joke about how she’s “all about the money”, but then she shared her ambition of becoming an educator, and life doesn’t have to center on money. Then, Steven came up and share us a story of him participating an event and forged strong relationships, and how he has to “let it go” despite how much he really wanted to stay longer in the event. After that, it was Rina who was given the topic “I am sexy and I know it”, who has a story of a boy who came to her and said “Excuse me you dropped something – my jaw.” She replied “You dropped something - my standard.”

Taufiq shared his own story, how his year begun with a huge success of becoming a district finalist in International Speech Contest and then how he lost a lot of money through starting a business, but he will “not stop believing” that he will be able to repeat his success. Bryan then came up to share about how he tries to “have a good time” with everything that he does by incorporating fun into everything in life, include those which others deem as mundane. Lastly, Cheong Min came up and shared about the “best day of her life”, as she stepped out of her comfort zone and joined cheerleading as it was something that she has always wanted to do. Table Topics Evaluator James Kan came up and gave a detailed and elaborated evaluation on all the table topic speakers after the speech.

Steven from TCSH TM

Janet Wong from TCSH TM

After the short break where we enjoyed the sandwich from Ahmad, the prepared speech session started off Cheong Min giving her CC1 speech “choices”. She started off as a village girl and then moved to the Kuala Lumpur. She couldn’t handle the change and felt really stressful about the changes. As a young and innocent girl her uncle asked her to drink more water as a cure. With the placebo effect, everything improved and her life changed. She ended her speech with a wonderful take home message: Life is a choice, and every choice takes us on a different journey.

Vincent begun the CC7 speech “dream” by sharing all the successes which begin with people who set a goal and a dream for ourselves. If we chose to let our family to be a shield from us, stating that we are not pursuing our dream because we want to go further in life, then what will you say, when your child came up to you and shared a dream of his? He then shared the story of Sylvester Stallone, about how he faced numerous failure and rejection before attaining success in his movie “Rocky”.

Vincent giving his CC7 speech

The third speaker, Soo Yee Theng gave a speech CC9 “Grateful” on how she begun really well initially as a SPM scorer. After she moved to her University, she started to get bombarded with many assignments and tests, and she started to feel home sick. However, she started to communicate with her family again, and she felt like the simplest messages to her family actually created so much connection within and she encourages us to do the same as well.

The fourth speaker, Ivanna gave her ACB2 speech “Stairs to Heaven”. Ivanna begun by sharing about how she wanted to write about the evolutionary theory, but her bible stated otherwise and she chose not to. She then proceeded to breaking down bible, and shared the story of how the world was created from the almighty bible. The really wonderful thing about her speech was her expressive way of telling the story with humor and sarcasm, which captivated the audience’s attention.

Ivanna doing her ACB2 Speech

In the evaluation session, Edward gave a short summary of Cheong Min speech and stated how she could improve the speech by lengthening the speech. Next, it was Shelby evaluating Vincent’s speech, where she gave a short and sweet evaluation which was based on the speech objectives. In between, Shelby shared a point of improvement, on how we shouldn’t overshadow the audience with our performance, but always to focus on the value in our speech. Taufiq then evaluated Yee Theng, on how she can use emotion to catalyze the persuasion. Lastly, Vincent Hoy shared a really strong evaluation with a well-versed language, and gave 3 challenges to her – know our audience, rehearse her punch line, and remain composure.

Shelby giving her evaluation for Vincent's Speech

Vincent Hoy giving his comprehensive evaluation

After the evaluations, it was the technical evaluation by Ah Counter Thivytria, Grammarian Thivina, and Timer Dheeno. General evaluator, Siok Looi from Speak Comm Toastmasters Club shared about how we really need to focus on time management – one thing that all young people get carried away. The best Table Topics Speaker was Taufiq Tajuddin, best prepared speech was Vincent Sar, and best evaluator was Vincent Hoy.

A huge thanks to our general evaluator, Siok LooI!

Best Table Topics Speaker, Taufiq

Cheong Min receiving her award for doing her speech the first time

Group Photo!

The meeting adjourned with Tory giving the presidential speech address.

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From the perspective of VPPR Vincent Sar.

Beautiful quotes:

“Don’t cry because it ended, smile because it happened.”

“A set back is a set up for come back.”

“Every choice takes us to a different journey.”

Stop & Stare!

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