Monday, December 15, 2014

Meeting #250: Holly Jolly Christmas! (Written By Wan Pin, Siew; Edited by Timothy Nakayama)

By Wan Pin, Siew


The theme for the 250th Mid Valley Toastmasters Club meeting was Holly Jolly Christmas and would prove a most jubilant night for all who attended. In light of the fact that the club had reached its 250th meetinga great milestone for any club, there were some tweaks here and there in respect to the meeting agenda  what better way to spice up a meeting than by adding some twists and turns to the normal proceedings? 

Firstly, all participants were encouraged to dress according to the Holly Jolly Christmas dress code  gold, black and green! Most complied.  


Secondly, while we have always begun the meeting with the Toastmaster of the Evening (TME) introducing guests and new members alike to the wonders of Toastmasters International , things went a little different this time. The TME, Woo Li Ping, delivered the introduction in quiz-form, where she would quiz the members and guests alike on Toastmasters Internationals historyIf you failed to get the answer right, you would be sent up the stage to do a bit of a dance, to a Christmas song no less! Li Ping gleefully went about picking on the unfortunate victims for her quiz, but alas, most of the members and guests alike were well-versed in Toastmasters history  so, I have to say, that I, as the writer of this post, was pretty disappointed with that!  Oh, and well, yeah, just an FYI  I failed to answer one of Li Pings questions, so I had to dance in front of everyone. Haha. Go ahead. Laugh. 


Even the Table Topics session enjoyed a revamp. Instead of providing a topic for the courageous volunteer to speak extemporaneously on, the whole session took the form of a chain story, whereby the very first speaker begun telling the first part of the story, in any way he/she likes, and then the next speaker has to continue on with the story, and then you keep on passing the story on to the next and next speaker until one speaker concludes the story. So its like a giant make-your-story-up-as-you-go-along game plan, with each speaker getting an entire minute to stamp his or her creativity upon the story. 

As the Table Topic Master, Chong Carmen got things going by hand-picking our President Shim as the first speaker  and he was given the very first two words to begin the telling of the story: Christmas Gift 
Lets just say that the story became OMG Crazy after that. I cant remember much of this rather hilariously-told story, but the basic premise is: 
A young man wanted to present a Christmas gift (perfume!) to his girlfriend, in her house. However, he got knocked out by his girlfriends father (ouch!) and, after regaining consciousness, police barged into the house and then subsequently chased the young man out. As the plot thickens, our unlikely hero bumps into his ex-girlfriend on the streets, and attempts to court her, despite knowing full-well that he already has a girlfriend. 
What happened next? Well, like I said, I cant quite remember! My excuse? Too absorbed in the story itself that I forgot to take down any notes! 

The night continued and we reached the Prepared Speeches session. 3 speakers were delivering their speeches that night.  

Becky Benjamin spoke on Stress, whereby she defined stress and then spoke on how we could manage it. If youre the type who has a lot of stress but were not present at our 250th meeting, I would suggest you contact Becky in order to learn how to manage stress!  


The second speech of the night was Hair Care, by Ivy Liew. To be honest, I wasnt aware that there were 8 types of hair-care products that we could make use of in our everyday lives. Well, that was a very informative session from Ivy. Kudos to her! 


And lastly, we had The Story of an Ethiopian Girl by Mi Shan. The speech was a story, about the life of an Ethiopian girl who suffered from fistula. Although Im not a lady, but I believe that living in a less-developed country, where  52% of the women give birth without a trained maternal health professional present, can be an extremely difficult situation for any woman.  I think we should cherish the fact that we live in a decent developing country , where we have up-to-date medical technology and where most people can afford the treatment required to cure similar afflictions.  


During the refreshment break, we celebrated the 250th meeting by consuming a very yummy raspberry cheese-cake (no eggs).  

(From Left to Right: Best Table Topic Speaker [Timothy]; Best Prepared Speech Speaker [Mi Shan]; Best Evaluator [Carmen])

It was a great night, to be honest, especially the Table Topic session and Introductory Quiz. All of the role players did a very good job in making this an awesomely spectacular meeting. If you are reading this but are not yet a Toastmaster, come JOIN US NOW! Not later, but now! You dont even need to think about it  just come! I guarantee, that once you come, you will be thinking why you never made time to discover the goodness that is Toastmasters much earlier! 


Say Cheese session: 
Happy 250th Meeting for Mid Valley Toastmasters Club!

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