Meeting Recap – 14th July 2020

It had been a good few months since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, and we were not able to host any physical meetings.

On 14th July 2020, it was the first day where we can finally host our physical meeting with invited guests at our old loft, Seameo Voctech.

The mood was invigorating to say the least.

As with any of our meetings, we had a team of excellent role players to take the helm of each individual tasks and they were excellent in each of their roles.

The roleplayers were:

Sergeant at Arms:	Wilson Kong, VC1
Toastmaster of the Evening:	TM Lim Chee Rong
Table Topic Master:	Lai Ling Ling, PM5, TC1
Table Topic Evaluator:	Heidi Rahman, CC
Grammarian:	TM Lawrence Pow
Ah-Counter & Who-Said-What:	TM Khai Metussin
Timer & Tips:	Syatrah Roslan, SR3
General Evaluator:	Shahu Abdulla, IP3

We started on time at 7:30pm, with the introduction by our Sergeant at Arms (SAA), Wilson. Usual business here where he gave a brief introduction on what a toastmaster club does, what we can get out of it, introduction to pathways, and thereafter guests introduction. We had 5 guests in total, which was a great turnout.

Thereafter, Toastmaster of the Evening (TME), Chee Rong took over as the host of the evening, and he started off by introducing the different roles needed in order to conduct a successful toastmaster meeting.

Lawrence as grammarian for the night, took the stage to share with us a word not so commonly used in our every day lives, showed us how to use it appropriately, and encouraged us to use it multiple times during the night.

Next, our Timer & Tip of the night, Syatrah Roslan, took to the floor to share with us the different allotted time, and how the lighting device will be lit up to help indicate the running down of allotted time. Syatrah also shared her “Tip of the day” which was: Be aware of time, wrap up at yellow and not be tongue-tied.

Before moving on to the main event of the meeting, Chee Rong shared his thought of the day, and it was a very meaningful thought to say the least, extolling the virtue of not being afraid to fail, and to keep trying until you get it.

With the conclusion of all the role players introduction, we started off the meeting with the Table Topics session, led by Lai Ling Ling.

First up to get invited to the stage was Rano Iskandar, our dear president. His table topic subject was: “Mistakes are proof that you are trying”. And Rano shared his experience of doing a backflip in swimming lessons during his time in a boarding school in Australia.

The second speaker being called to the stage was Supatra Lee, and her table topic subject was: “Great things, take time”, to which after careful thoughts, Supatra challenged us with a debate of whether talent is the crucial factor in success or hard work is the key. Supatra advocated hard work.

Next up, our third speaker was an invited guest, Andrew. His subject was: “Strive for progress, not perfection”. Andrew shared his life experience on his life passion which was jogging, hiking, and how a daily progression is the key to getting better.

Our fourth table topic speaker was Brendan, who’s also a guest, but was a veteran toastmaster a few years back. His topic was: “Big journey begins with small steps”, to which he shared his toastmaster journey in which he took small steps each time to get better and eventually becoming a prolific trainer today.

The last table topic speaker for the night was Jason Koo, another veteran visiting member from Brunei Advance Speaker Club. His subject was: “You only fail if you stop trying”. Jason shared his passion for cooking, and shared his experience of making his own pasta, and how his first few tries ended in failure, but his tenacity in not giving up, eventually got him to making good pastas today.

After the table topic session, we moved on to the only prepared speech for the night, by Wilson Kong. Wilson presented his Level 2, Project 1, “Understanding Your Leadership Style” in his pathway.

His speech was titled “Be The Change You Want To See”, in which he shared his experience of being the president during his 6th form in his school’s Peer Guidance club.

With the conclusion of Wilson’s speech, we then had a 20 minutes workshop segment, conducted by our resident speech evaluation champion, Hazwan Kamarulzaman, ACB, ALB; on how to conduct a good speech evaluation.

Hazwan is a proficient speech evaluator with many years of experience under his belt, and his most recent achievement was winning the following contest:
– BSC Speech Evaluation Contest 2020
– Area E3 Speech Evaluation Contest 2020, and,
– Division E Speech Evaluation Contest 2020

After a 5 minutes break, the next segment of the meeting started, which was the evaluation portion of the meeting, and was led by our General Evaluator, Shahu Abdulla, IP3.

Apart from leading the evaluation team, Shahu was also responsible for presenting her evaluation report on the speeches evaluator, and all the roles during the meeting in order for us to improve upon our next meeting.

First up to present the evaluation portion of the meeting was Heidi Rahman, who shared her evaluation on the 5 table topic speakers.

Upon conclusion of the table topics evaluation, we moved on to the announcement of the best table topic speakers, and the winner was……*drumroll*………

Supatra Lee

Who won with her speech advocating hard work over talent.

Next up, we had an evaluation by Ted Jee for the prepared speech evaluation from Wilson.

Moving on from the speeches evaluation, we had the Grammarian report, where Lawrence took his first role in toastmasters, and did extremely well for a first timer. He shared the number of usages for the word of the day, inappropriate uses of English and how to use them in a better way, followed by good usages of English.

We then had our Ah-Counter & Who-Said-What report by Khai Metussin. He shared a detailed reporting of how many crutch and filler words each of the speaker had. Thereafter, he moved on to arguably the most interactive segment of our meeting, Who-Said-What, where he quizzed the audience on the content of the speeches during the night, and the audience who knew the answer jumped in to give their responses.

The last evaluator report for the night came from Syatrah Roslan with her timer report, where she shared in detail the time taken by the different speakers and evaluators in presenting their respective segment of their presentation.

With the conclusion of the meeting, the floor was handed back to our president, Rano Iskandar, where Rano conducted other matters of the meeting such as gathering guests and members feedback, sharing other business matters, announcement of the best evaluators, announcement of next week’s TME.

The best evaluator ribbon goes to ……. *drumroll*….

Khai!

Three toastmaster members were also presented with their certificate of completion for each level of their pathways.

Contributed by:
Syatrah Roslan
Wilson Kong
Ted Jee