the 27th of September

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.

The eve of the area contest

Friday, September 12, 2008

6th September - The eve of the area contest

At around 9.35am, Faiq, Sergeant-at-Arms for the day, called the meeting to order and warmed us up for public speaking by posing this question: Why did you join Toastmasters and how has it benefitted you?

Club President John Lee then proceeded to give his presidential address which highlighted that our club’s 99.9% college student population (excluding Ernest) brought youthful energy to other Toastmasters Clubs whose members are already working middle age adults.

Boon Keong, The Table Topics Master gave distinctly original Table Topics like “Why Did You Paint Your House Pink?” and “Why Do You Live Next to a Nuclear Power Plant?” And of course, we all sat back to enjoy the ensuing nonsensical oratory performance.

The meeting continued with the prepared speeches of the day. Jason Moi presented a speech that extracted valuable lessons from fishing to be applied in daily life. Jee Aik gave a modified version of his speech entitled “An Unusual Person” which was first presented during this year’s club Humorous Contest.

After the break, Qinmei then presented her speech entitled “Colours.” She explained the emotions usually associated with colours and what the colours meant to her.

Last but not least, Ernest the Area governor was up! He gave a speech entitled “My Youth Symptom.” Ernest described the acne problems he faced during his later teenage years and how it destroyed his “handsome face” (Quoted directly from speech), but also how it wrecked his self-esteem as well. His speech was not only entertaining but also taught us a valuable lesson that we should not dwell solely on our weaknesses but focus on our strengths.

As the meeting drew to a close, the anticipation grew as we are just a few more hours away from the Area W2 Humorous Speech and Evaluation Contest which our club will be proudly hosting. Pictures are coming soon! Hang on to your hats ladies and gentlemen!