By Carmen, Chong
After a long break (due to there being five Mondays in
September), let’s RELIGHT YOUR FIRE and AWAKEN your passion in public
speaking! It was a call to celebrate
Deepavali in advance with our Hindu
& Non-Hindu friends and what better way to do that than with our Deepavali
Edition Meeting with the theme ‘Relight Your Fire’!
Diwali is known as the
festival of lights. Light symbolizes true knowledge. True knowledge arises by
an inner awakening – chakrās.
Hence, our Word of The Day is ‘Awaken’ (or Awakening)! All the members and
guests were encouraged to use the Word of The Day as often as they could.
To add some ‘spice’
to the atmosphere, we decorated our meeting room as creatively (and safely) as
we could. Here’s our masterpiece:
Ta-da!!! Full colour printing on high quality paper with meaningful messages - décor filled with the feeling of Diwali! We stuck all these great pictures all around the wall of our meeting room before the meeting starts.
Ta-da!!! Full colour printing on high quality paper with meaningful messages - décor filled with the feeling of Diwali! We stuck all these great pictures all around the wall of our meeting room before the meeting starts.
Tonight, we not only had guests come and join us, but one of our members,
who comes all the way from Japan, Ted
Saraki, made an appearance too! After having spent several months in the US,
we’re glad to
see you again, Ted!
It’s 7pm! Our meeting started off with the Presiding Speech, hosted by our lovely and charming club
treasurer, Becky Benjamin. She is the best representative to kick start the meeting and her presence definitely helped add more ‘spice’ to the atmosphere. I’m sure you know why… *evil smile*
treasurer, Becky Benjamin. She is the best representative to kick start the meeting and her presence definitely helped add more ‘spice’ to the atmosphere. I’m sure you know why… *evil smile*
Mid Valley Toastmasters Club has few
‘humor sifus’ that you should know of. One of the humor sifus has volunteered
himself to be the Toastmasters of the Evening (TME, or you may also call it ‘Emcee’).
He is none other than our ‘youngest’ member in the Club – Mr. Wong Woon Pen!
There are also a few Champion Speakers that you should know of in Mid Valley Toastmasters Club. They were the Contest Winners in various public speaking competitions from Club Level up to District Level. Again, this ‘Champion Speaker’ volunteered himself to be our Table Topic Master and he is none other than our Vice President of Educations, Timothy Nakayama! He creatively categorized the table topics into 3 different categories, easiest (green), slightly hard (amber) and hardest (red). Table Topic Speakers can choose their Table Topic number in these 3 different categories.
He played around with the theme of ‘Relight Your Fire’ and came out with a few interesting Table Topics. Our first table topic challenger, Mantosh, who is also our visitor of the evening, took up the challenge and chose the hardest Table Topic in the RED category with the title of ‘The Night is Always Darkest Before The Dawn’. He spoke calmly and he showed ZERO nervousness while delivering his impromptu speech. If you like listening to a deep and manly voice, you will love listening to Mantosh speak!
Our second table topic challenger, Tan Yong Jue, who is also
one of our newly-joined members, chose the slightly hard table topic in the
AMBER category with the speech title ‘Time to Stop’. He impressed us without a
single word the moment he came onto the stage with his bare feet.
Was it part
of the speech? He said credited his bare feet to the marathon run he joined
yesterday.
Our third Table Topic challenger, who is also one of our
Champion Speakers in Mid Valley Toastmasters Club, Ian Lai, took up the
challenge. Catching us by surprise, he
chose the easiest table topic in the GREEN category with his speech title ‘Keep
The Fire Burning’. His charisma and confidence is always there to impress us.
Kudos to him and hats off there!
Lastly, our final challenger, Scott, who is also the visitor
of the evening, chose the table topic in
the GREEN category with his speech title of ‘The Light of My Life’. Throughout
his speech, we can imagine how lovely he is with his wife.
We had 4 Table Topic challengers of the evening! Let’s give
a round of applause to them *clap*!
Coming up next on our
agenda, it was the session for all the project speeches. Our first project
speaker, TM Tan Yong Jue, delivered his CC#3 speech with his speech title
‘Fighting My Inner Demons’. He told us the struggle within himself before and
during his participation in the marathon
run that just happened the day before. Hope your legs will be alright soon,
Yong Jue!
Our second project speaker of the evening who is also our
pretty Vice President of Membership, CC Mi Shan, Wong, delivered her Successful
Club Series speech with the title ‘The Toastmasters Education Program’. Her
speech not only helped the guests to better understand the learning journey in
Toastmasters but also helped clear any
doubts our members might have had, especially during the FAQ session.
After the prepared speeches session, it was time for the breakfast of Champions – Evaluation session. Our General Evaluator, Sharm Siva, ACB (all the way from KL Advanced TMC), took control and called upon our Table Topic Evaluator, Vivien Lim to give her feedback to all of our four Table Topic challengers.
Our next evaluator for Tan Yong Jue, Carmen Chong, TM,
shared her point of view with Yong Jue and also the members and guests. She was
going to participate in the upcoming
Division E Humorous and Evaluation Contest, hence, she requested an open
evaluation on her evaluation to the
speaker Tan Yong Jue. She appreciated
all the constructive feedback given to her. May these advice help AWAKEN
the skills within her and bring her to the next level.
After the evaluation session, it was the
time for technical reports! We had full support from all our eager learner
members: Grammarian (Kow Che Khon), Timekeeper (Ryan Ting), and Ah Counter (Ivy
Liew).
You reap what you sow! It came to the time for Awards! The
Best Table Topic Speaker went to…… *drum roll please*……… Ian Lai!!!!
Congratulations to Ian!
Also, we would like to present a token of appreciation to
our General Evaluator, Sharm Siva, for making her effort to come to our Club
and giving her valuable feedback to us.
Finally, it was time for the closing speech by our young, handsome and humorous
President, Shim Chee Loon. Our meeting ended at 9.25pm with a good laugh.
Thanks for delivering your humorous closing speech, President Shim!
Sometimes, it is hard for words to explain every single detail of what happened during the meeting. Therefore, we urge you to visit our Club at least once in your lifetime!
To find out more about the club, you can check us out at:
Facebook Fans Page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/24868919976/
Or, you can also contact us to more details:
1) Vice President of Membership, MiShan Wong: mishan22@hotmail.com, or
2) Vice President of Educations, Timothy
Nakayama: timothynakayama@hotmail.com
We will see you in our next meeting!
With Love,
Mid Valley Toastmasters Club
