15th December 2015 – Sharing stories to help others climb their own mountains

As Toastmaster of the Evening, TM Rahmat Tarsat, graciously welcomed the audience. With her Thought of the Day, she encouraged people to share their stories to help others climb their own mountains.

The Grammarian of the day, Allen Ang, ACS, ALB, informed the audience that he would be paying particular attention to the use of metaphors. He also introduced the word of the day, ‘voracious’, which means wanting great quantities of food or having an energetic approach to an activity.

On preparing to be voracious public speakers, the Timer & Tip of the evening, Hazwan Kamarulzaman, ACB, ALB, advised speakers to visualise the audience before speaking up on stage so as to help with mental preparation.

The first speaker of the evening was TM Macalister Mak, attempting his CC3 project entitled ‘The Lost Star’. He started by speaking about the Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer and highlighted that the hero and protagonist Luke Skywalker was missing, later to theorise how Luke Skywalker could possibly be the new Sith Lord. He fed the audience background information on the Dark Side of the Force, which fuels power from darker emotions such as anger and jealousy, which Jedi Knights are capable of resisiting. He gave several examples from previous Star Wars episodes, drawing parallels between Luke Skywalker and Anakin Skywalker that hinted the possibility of Luke Skywalker falling into the Dark Side These include his late start in Jedi training, expressive display of fear and attachment when saving his friends Princess Leia and Han Solo, and his strong temptation to strike the Emperor during his final confrontation with the Emperor and Darth Vader. TM Macalister also thinks this plot twist is likely due to the director’s philosophy. TM McAlister ended convincingly by quoting Yoda: ‘Once you start on the dark path, it will forever control your destiny.’

TM AzimanNasir proceeded to sharing his research on non-communicable diseases (NCD) in Brunei and how we can be healthier with his CC7 project entitled ‘Healthy Nation’. He firstshared an alarming statistic from the World Health Organisation, in which Brunei had been ranked first in ASEAN for having the highest rate for deaths by NCD. In fact, the National Health Statistics in 2014 had identified NCD including cancer, stroke and diabetes as the main cause of death for the past 30 years. TM Aziman then expounded on preventive measures that we could take, including those suggested by his friend who was a health promoter office. The healthy daily practices include more deliberate and healthy proportioning of different food groups in meals, having healthier substitutes such as Teh O instead of TehTarik and healthy oral hygiene. He also shared about the recommended amount of exercise which is 10,000 steps a day or 150 minutes of exercise each week, TM Aziman believes that if we alter our lifestyles and share information on healthy living, we can change how much NCD will impacts our health.

The final prepared speech, ‘So-called Perfect’, came from TM Amran Jamaluddin, who was attempting his CC9 project. Having reached his 18 year anniversary with his so called ‘perfect job’. He communicated the grievance of having to faced the same person, same problem and same attitude everyday and facing the daily scenario of either doing a good job or getting scolded. However, he gave three suggestions on dealing with not having that elusive ‘perfect job’. First was to learn to love your own job, sharing a story of a friend who had hopped from one job to the next, only to end up returning to his original job.

The second advice was to create an interest to your job, which could be achieved by surrounding yourself with positive people. He also shared how he would spend half his working hours on his core tasks and the other half helping people out with non-routine tasks, making his job more interesting. The final tip was to be sincere to your job. TM Amran informed the audience that there is no concrete definition of a perfect job but if we can learn to love our job, create an interest to our work and be sincere, we have the power to experience more gratification from our job.

After the break, TM Dalton Lim as the Table Topics Master took control of the Table Topics session centred around idioms.

TM Tieng Chwei Peng explained the meaning of “apple of my eye” and gave a hypothetical future husband as someone who would be considered as one.

TM Farhan shared the story of his friendship with friend and Toastmaster guest Malik to answer his topic on “cock and bull story”.

The same friend then took on the challenge on stage, sharing how his sister had said that no relationships in school last forever and that it would only happen “when pigs fly”. Another guest of the evening, Amir, explained how “blood is thicker than water” such as in the movie The Godfather, where ultimately family trumps business and politics.

To wrap up Table Topics session was TM Jason Koo, who spoke of “a dime a dozen” and instead explained why nothing is easy to get.

Congratulations to the witty guest Malik for winning as the best Table Topics speaker!

The best evaluator of the night was jointly won by Ruey Chong-Narcis, ACB, ALS and Yong Shih Ching, CC. Congratulations to both for delivering excellent evaluations!

Before the end of meeting, TM Macallister Mak was announced as next week’s Toastmaster of the Evening. We look forward to seeing you and the Toastmaster crowd next week!

Many thanks to the role players of the evening for making the meeting run smoothly: TM Macallister Mak (Sergeant at Arms), TM RahmatTarsat (Toastmaster of the Evening), Hazwan Kamarulzaman, ACB, ALB (Timer), Allen Ang, ACS, ALB (Grammarian), TM Ada Rani (Ah Counter and ‘Who Said What?’), TM Dalton Lim (Table Topics Master), TM Heidi Rahman(Table Topics Evaluator), Brendan Ti, CC, CL (General Evaluator) and TM Theodoric Chong, Ruey Chong-Narcis, ACB, ALS and Yong Shih Ching, CC (Prepared Speech Evaluators).

Written By:
TM Tieng Chwei Peng

Photography & Captions By:
Chang Seng yee, CC