24th Meeting - Good Day, Good Luck, Good Bye

It has been 4 hours since our final official meeting of the Session 2008/2009 ended. You can consider this report as a ‘freshly written’ report and this is the final report of its kind since I started to write from June 2008. What made me to write this report so soon? Actually, I’m feeling a bit sad right now as it was our official final meeting.

Our 24th meeting was held on 8th April 2009 with the theme ‘Good Day, Good Luck, & Good Bye’. The word of the day was ‘Farewell’. Example of sentence – ‘We said our sad farewells and got on the bus’. But in our case, it was farewell to the Session 2008/2009. Sadly, our Sergeant-at Arms, TM Grace Kang, couldn’t make it to our meeting today as she has to concentrate on her dissertation. She is one of our officers who will be leaving to her hometown after completing her courses this final semester.

Our lovely President, CC Kimmy Foo, gave a welcoming speech to all the members and guests who attended our meaningful meeting today. During the introductory session, TM Grace Rebekah, explained briefly on the feelings she was experiencing in the final moments of undergraduate life, including being an officer of UM TMC, and it touched most of our hearts - definitely mine.

The Toastmaster of the Evening was CC Bee Guan. Yes, it’s Competent Communicator Bee Guan. He explained about the history of Toastmasters. However, we also realized that he was trying to say, to express something, but he quickly changed the topic. Bee Guan, did you want to share something with us? It’s still not too late. Next was the Table Topics Session with CC Kimmy Foo as the Table Topics Master.

Kimmy pasted six questions using the ‘paste-it-on stickers’ on the whiteboard with the words ‘Good’, ‘Day’, ‘Luck’ and ‘Bye’ on it (relating to the theme of the meeting). Her method was simple but innovative. The Table Topics Speakers were

1. Grace Rebekah
2. Deborah Chow
3. Vijay
4. Hala
5. Alaa
6. Yu He

We can observe that all the speakers were improving in their impromptu speech - fluent speech with fewer pauses and fast thinking. We had a first time speaker too– Hala. Thanks Alaa for inviting you friend to our meeting - hoping that Hala have enjoyed our meeting. The questions prepared by Kimmy were imaginative with reality kind of thing and it was quite difficult – 1) What would be your two wishes? 2) Baby boy or baby girl? and 3)Lover or mother?.... Bravo to our Table Topics Speakers.

Our Table Topics Evaluator was ATMB Christine Ong, all the way from Midvalley Toastmasters Club. She gave an evaluation on all the speakers especially to our new members. Usually in every evaluation (even if we are not the one evaluated) there would be some points of improvements that might be useful for our presentation later on.

Next was the Project Speeches as the following:

1. CC Project 2 – ‘Colours’ by TM Wan Xin
2. CC Project 2 – ‘It’s in your Blood’ by TM Roanne
3. CC Project 2 - ‘ Communicate with Yourself’ by TM Yu He
4. CC Project 3 – ‘Just Say No’ by TM Yee Sin

I would say that all of the speeches were very informative with some homework done by the speakers. If you want to memorize, use the blue paper!!! If your blood is ‘O’ type, you better exercise!!! Organize yourself with diary and just say ‘NO’ in accordance to the situation.

Our General Evaluator, ATMB Christine Ong took over the floor from the TME to give the overall evaluation of the meeting. The evaluators of Speech Projects were as the following:

1. CC Bee Guan
2. CC Kimmy Foo
3. CC Deborah
4. DTM Vincent Hor

I think we have managed to produce experienced internal evaluators by looking at the evaluation by our 3 CC’s. All of them utilized the maximum time of evaluation to highlight the points of improvements to the respective speakers. Kudos, UM TMC’s CCs. I had to admit that, as the timer, I purposely didn’t show the timing cards to DTM Vincent and ATMB Christine Ong in order to get as much as improvement points we could from the experts.

The other role players to help the General Evaluator were

Ah Counter : TM Hadi (our first-time Ah Counter)
Grammarian : TM Ras Hadi
Time Keeper : TM Rishi

Finally, the awards session….the Best Table Topics Speaker goes to.…drum roll….drum roll….

DEBORAH CHOW

Congrats Deborah.

During the closing session, we celebrated the 2nd birthday of UM TMC, which is supposed to be on 18th April 2009, but have to be brought forward…and yes, we had the chocolate cake….mmmm…..

I still couldn’t believe it has been already one year and we have completed our official final meeting. I feel as if I’m losing something important. The joyful moments, the unforgettable memories, the hard times, the sunny days, and the rainy days with the officers and members of UM TMC. You are right Bee Guan,

The most precious thing we found in UM TMC is not the public speaking skills, but the friendship that has built up among us in UM TMC. We are so close and strong as if we are a family.

THE FAMILY of UM TMC

I could feel that we officers were all sad after the meeting ends; it was just that we did not show the facial expression.

Usually in every report, I would tease the President by asking some silly questions, but in this report, I would be asking the President a formal question.

Dear President, could you give us a word of one or two in the blog before you and some of the UM TMC officers retire by the end of May (after your exams)? Thanks Kimmy.

A very thank you to DTM Vincent Hor and ATMB Christine Ong for being there for us. We really appreciate it to have experts in our club. We feel that you are one of our family members in UM TMC.

We might be having two more meetings in May especially for our members who will be staying in Klang Valley during the breaks, but it’s still yet to be confirmed. Please log in to our blog from time-to-time for more information.

Rishi,

VPPR,

UM TMC,

2008/2009.