Fifteenth Meeting - Chinese New Year

It was our fifteenth meeting with the theme “Chinese New Year”. We have started the meeting at about 5.30 pm and you could see all the decorations were in red, including the red carnation flowers tied to the chairs. Now, that was something ‘sweet’. There was the ‘angpau’ pasted all over the meeting room, but sadly - without the money inside. We also had members and guests wearing red (except for some wearing all black…but it was okay as long as you look good).

The word of the day was “Gregarious”, meaning: seeking and enjoying the company of others of the same kind. Example of the word usage: Alex tends to be gregarious whenever he participates in the activities held by the Chelsea Fan Club.

The Sergeant-at Arms called the meeting to order and our President gave some welcoming speech for the meeting. Then, she requested all the members and guests to introduce themselves and to explain the activities they may have planned for the upcoming Chinese New Year. Later, Toastmaster of the Evening, TM Rishi took over the floor and explained briefly about the Toastmasters organization and Chinese New Year celebration.

After that, it was the Table Topics Session by TM Nyuk Jet. The questions were related to Chinese New Year theme. All the members and guests who participated in the session received some gifts prepared by Nyuk Jet. Good going, Table Topics Master. I and the Grammarian were so thirsty as soon as we saw Nyuk Jet taking out the Sarsi can drink from a bag. Hmmm….The Table Topics Speakers were as the following:

1. Guan
2. Vighnes
3. Mahathir
4. Kimmy
5. Kai Xin
6. Syu Yu

Next was the evaluation session by our Table Topics Evaluator, Dr Devi (our very own lecturer from the Linguistic Faculty, UM, and an experienced Toastmaster member). Dr Devi’s evaluation made us to think the new ways to improve ourselves as a better table topics speaker.

Then, the time came for the main event of the meeting – Project Speeches. The meeting was very special as we had 3 new speakers starting their way through Toastmasters. The project speakers were as the following:

1. CC Project # 1 – Ice Breaker – ‘Chinese New Year Experience’ by TM Ras Hadi
2. CC Project # 1 – Ice Breaker – ‘She?!’ by TM Yee Xin
3. CC Project # 1 – Ice Breaker – ‘Myself’ by TM Khairil

TM Ras Hadi shared about his experience living with his mother and grandmother in Penang, while TM Yee Xin shared her feelings of choosing to study Environmental Engineering. TM Khairil shared his story of how he ended up in Accounting course. Ice Breaker is all about sharing, and we had a great session of sharing experiences and feelings (from the speakers). We gave three standing ovation for all the speakers as to congratulate and encourage them for taking the first step in public speaking by Toastmasters way.

The General Evaluator, Dr Devi, took control of the session for an overall evaluation of the meeting. Our Speech Evaluators were CC Kimmy and TM Deborah. In this meeting, all our evaluators were from University of Malaya itself. We do have our own qualified evaluators. Not forgetting the role players - TM Hakim (Ah Counter), TM Ras Hadi (Grammarian) and TM Bee Guan (Time Keeper).

Thank you to all the evaluators and role players.

Last but not least, the award session. We had the awards for Best Table Topics Speaker and Best Project Speech Speaker.

The Best Table Topics Speakers goes to…..drum roll…..drum roll…..

VIGHNES

The Best Project Speech Speaker goes to…….drum roll……drum roll……

RAS HADI

Congratulations for award winners.

Our next meeting details will be in the month of February. Do keep surfing our blog for more details of our upcoming meetings. We will also post it in the perdanamail soon.

TM Rishi
VP Public Relations,
UM TMC.