Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri, friends and readers.
Last Tuesday, we hosted our Hari Raya open house for members and guests. Most of us finally had the chance to savour our president’s mushroom pasta. Thanks to everyone who brought in scrumptious food and drinks.
Members during the meeting
After our tummies were filled, the Toastmaster of the Evening, Chang Seng Yee, CC started the meeting energetically, followed by the introductions of role players.
As her thought of the day, Seng Yee shared that everyone feels down from time to time. So she encouraged us to surround ourselves with positive people because those are the people who will lift us up.
The Grammarian for the evening, TM Liyana Sidek, a visiting member from UBD Toastmasters’ Club, introduced the Word of the Day- ‘Harrowing’. It is an adjective which means agonizing, excruciating, torturous. Thank you Liyana.
TM Liyana explaining the word of the day
Our first time Timer and Tip, TM Adah Rani shared that “Time is precious, so waste it wisely to make every sentences count”.
“Learn, Teach, Love”, was the topic of Reuben Chin’s, ACS, ALB CC2 speech. He began by saying that passion is the vital ingredient in life to success. However most of us are still in the midst of finding out what we are passionate about. So he gave us 3 steps to find our passion. Explore a new skill set by learning it. Learn it enough to teach it so the education continues. Teach it to others so that the love for it will manifest. Once you’ve learned to love it enough, you’ll want to protect it. That is how one will find passion in life.
Reuben Chin, ACS, ALB delivers his cc3 speech
For the second prepared speech (CC7) entitled “The Skinner Box”, TM Jordan Yau spoke about his addiction. He confessed that his countless hours of video gaming have caused discord with people around him. In his research, it was found that games were designed to be easy at first to draw gamers in, cyclically reward them after each achievement and becomes progressively harder to hook gamers in. Video games gave a false sense of control by rewarding you with a false sense of achievement by baiting gamers with a false sense of gratification.
TM Jordan Yau delivers his CC7 speech
In the third prepared speech, TM Gerald Goh delivered a CC8 presentation on “The power of waste”. Gerald made us aware of the issue of municipal solid waste that was first dumped in open landfill which caused environmental pollution. Then in recent decades, trash was buried but toxic elements contaminated soil and ground water. Hence, modern landfills were conceived where it drew gas from waste decomposition to fuel generator for electricity and fuel for heaters. It was also designed with clay lining to prevent toxic leakage.
TM Gerald Goh delivers his cc8 speech
After the break, TM Heidi Rahman took the floor as the Table Topic Master and entranced us with interesting questions based on professions and the reason we love it.
TM Heidi Rahman as Table topic master
At age 5, Stuart Lee ACB, CL professed his dream to be a taxi driver. He would act as the ambassador of Brunei and proudly introduce the ecological treasure of Temburong over the mediocre place like Gadong so that he could maximize his fare for round trips.
As a commercial pilot, our guest, Muiz love his job as not only he keeps his plane from falling meteorites, he also receives very good pay package and can meet people from around the world.
Our next guest Hazel, confessed that although she can’t be a plumber like Super Mario Brothers who battles evil reptiles, she can put a smile on an elderly lady when she found her wedding ring in the kitchen sink. Therefore she holds this profession in high esteem.
One of the guests delivers her table topic
TM Theodoric Chong would love to get paid as a Zumba Instructor to see his client sweat away. One of the perk of the Job is to inspire 40 year old housewives to be 20 year old ballerina.
Ted the Zumba instructor
When asked what he loves about being a Hotel Housekeeper, TM Hilman Omar said that it was rewarding to meeting travellers of all sorts. They would tell them about their adventures and Hilman would learn about places without visiting them himself.
Being the Minister of Communication, TM Farhan Jafar Ali loves to connect people through trade and infrastructure. Although he is in the position of authority, he would be cautious not to be consumed by power.
Congratulations, Stuart!
Overall, all the table topics speakers entertained us with humour that held us at the edge of our seats and congratulation to Stuart for winning the best table topic ribbon. The meeting’s jubilant energy would not have been possible without the help of TM Heidi Rahman as Table Topic Masters, TM Rano Iskandar as Table Topic Evaluator, TM Liyana Sidek as Grammarian, Chris Woo, CC as Ah Counter & Who Said What, Tm Adah Rani as Timer & Tip and lastly Brendan Ti, CC as General Evaluator.
Brendan Ti, CC as general evaluator
In his closing remark, our President Chris Woo, CC praised Heidi for coming up with such wonderful and relatable topics for impromptu speakers and he encourages evaluators to stick with their objectives so speakers can organically improve.
Chris Woo, our president
Written by:
TM Gerald Goh
Photograph and Captions by:
TM Saiful Zamhor