17th January 2016 – Without Borders

For the first time in many years Toastmasters from Brunei, Kota Kinabalu and Sandakan gathered at GC Wolley Hall, Sabah Museum. It is home venue for Heritage Toastmasters Club situated beside State’s Museum.

The evening’s joint meeting was called to order by TM Haffiszul followed by a Toast to the Yang Di Pertuan Agong, Yang Di Pertuan Negeri Sabah and lastly, Toastmasters International by our Invocator, Jennifer Lee, CC.

The Fantabulous Kamilia Kamarulzaman, CC, CL took the floor as the Toastmaster of the Evening to warm up the audience by having them introduced themselves with an adjective followed by name and their club. From Brunei, Julius mischievously introduced himself as “Loudspeaker Julius” while Ruey cheekily introduced herself as “Raunchy Ruey”.

The session proceeded with role introduction from Jason Koo, CC, ALB as Table Topic Master with the Theme of quotes who would be evaluated by Table Topics Evaluator, Nora Liew.

Next up was “the younger’’ TM Johan Ariff who introduced his role as Grammarian. Followed by Rano Iskandar, CC, CL who introduced his role as Ah Counter with an added flavor of “who said what” to test the audience’s listening skill.

Of course the meeting would have been conducted at a timely manner without TM Easter Lee as Timer.  As General Evaluator, Allen Ang ACS, ALB explained that he will evaluate the conduct of the meeting and lastly Georginni Labdin, ACB, ALB introduced her role as Hot Seat who will take up any office bearer role should any one of the original role player is unable to make it.

Through body language for her CC5 speech project, entitled “Wonder Woman”, TM Ani Osman portrayed her countless responsibilities to ensure the well-being of her children and to ensure the house is in order. As a nanny she cared for her children. When the boys fight, she had to be prosecutor and judge. For meals, she is the chef to prepare food. During sport activities, she is the couch to her kids. A teacher who helps with their homework. Plan finances when domestic budgeting is required. To scare away boogey man from her children. To groom her children, she is a hairdresser to her daughter and fashion consultant to her sons. Despite her tremendous duties, she finds it all worth it. She would not trade it for anything else as long as there’s determination she a wonder woman to her 4 sons and 1 daughter.

In TM Supatra Lee’s CC8 speech project, “Awakening a new path”, she gave us an account of her visit to Rema, Ethiopia during her university days. With her visual aids, Supatra showed us the lands that were barren of water and vegetation. The village she visited lacked basic utilities like water and electricity. For water villagers would trek down an hour down the mountain to the nearest stream to scoop water into a container. Seeing water as a scarce commodity, Supatra felt guilty about overly consuming water. During her time there, she was inspired by Samson from Solar Foundation who have selflessly helped with the village’s water woes. After the visit, Supatra felt a deeper appreciation for basic amnesties and had a self-realization that she would one day invent solutions to the village’s problems. She further implored us to see the world to gain fresh perspective.

“Deal with flaws”, was Brendan Ti CC, ALB speech project for ACB 2. He began to humorously entertaining us by stating women’s utmost desire to have fair skin which he already have. Brendan secret to fair skin was that her mom drank Soya Bean Milk while he was in her womb. One of his prominent flaw was his talkative nature would get him into trouble in class that ended him up in the principal’s office. Though he was the shortest and fairest grandson in the family he deemed his imperfection as his best friend. Because of his physique he consulted with Google and the doctors about height enhancement without avail. Brendan confessed that he is the shortest guy after his dad and after first 2 years of playing basketball and badminton he became the 3^rd shortest person. In attempt to get a tan, he tried sunbathing for hours under the sun only to turn red and back to his original complexion within an hour. Ultimately, he identified his flaws and accepted it. So much so that he made jokes about it during a standup comedy.

Shortly after the break Jason Koo took over as Table Topics master. Our first impromptu speaker, Fia Iskandar was given a topic, “rules are meant to be broken”. She said that in everything we do, there is a set of rules to follow like taking crayons from others or copying answer from a friend with permission during exams. But when situation calls it, she would go above and beyond to break it.

“When there is a will there is a way” was the topic given to Wynnie Tan. She began by telling us that everyone’s New Year’s resolution is universal. It could be to become a better mom, mentor etc. First desire is needed to succeed by first finding out the “why” then the “how” becomes easy.

The third impromptu speaker, Nina Kifrawi received “No news is good news” topic. Prior to her trip to Kota Kinabalu, she received a last minute request to attend to a work meeting at a distant venue but could not make it. Shortly after, she turned off her phone so there is no news which turns out to be great news.

To Jonathan Lee, “Good things comes to those who waits’’, because as a salesperson patience to wait is needed to wait for things to turn out the way you want it to be. His prospect usual takes time to consider his proposal as they would source for other quotes. At times his wait would be rewarded when his client responds.

After the evaluations, our organizing chair, TM Amran Jamaluddin came on to give thanks to Georginni, Kamilia and Vijay for helping make the joint meeting a success.

During the feedback session from members (moderated by Ruey Narcis, ALB, ACB), we found out from other Toastmasters that they learned a great deal on how speeches and evaluations conducted by different areas. In his closing remark, Division K Director Reuben Chin ACS, ALB shared his gratitude that the purpose of educational exchange was met and sincerely wishes to see more future joint meetings.

Written & Photography by;

TM Gerald Goh