Meeting Recap: 18th Aug 2020, Night of Two Icebreakers, TME by Lai Ling Ling

Meeting Recap – 18th Aug 2020

 

Night of Two Icebreakers

What a night! We had not one but two icebreaker speeches, and it was such a wonderful experience to be able to listen to both toastmasters sharing a bit of their personal stories and allowing us to get to know them a bit better.

Kudos to TM* Lawrence Pow and TM Nazri Saman for taking the first step in their public speaking journey with their icebreaker speeches.

Both of them received standing ovations from the audience members as well as being awarded the coveted “Blue Ribbon” for this achievement.

 

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First Session of the Meeting

Our meeting on 18th August 2020, Tuesday, which was held at Seameo Voctech (our meetings are held at Seameo Voctech every Tuesday from 7:30 to 9:30pm), started on time at 7:30pm, and our Seargent-at-arms (SAA), Wilson Kong VC1*, kick it off with an introduction to what Toastmasters is, what our mission is, as well as introduction to pathways.

Pathways are Toastmasters’ educational system where members get to choose from 11 different pathways according to their needs. The official site from Toastmasters offered a very comprehensive breakdown on each of the paths and you can read more at their website here:

https://www.toastmasters.org/pathways-overview

 

 

We then had attending guests to make a short intro and what motivated them to attend the meeting. In total, we had 4 guests for the night; Chris, Fatin, Khairi and Muti.

 

 

 

With the completion of the SAA introduction, the floor was then passed on to the Toastmaster of the Evening (TME), Lai Ling Ling PM5, TC2*. Ling Ling started the meeting by firstly showing us the agenda for the evening, and thereafter asking her team of role players to introduce themselves.

Ling Ling also shared with us her thought of the day, which was “One finds limits by pushing them”, encouraging everyone in the audience to push beyond one’s limit and comfort zone to reach for greater heights.

 

 

 

First role player to introduce her role was our Table Topics Master (TTM), Sharon Lim PM2*, where Sharon explained her role as TTM was to facilitate, encourage and gather speakers to come up to the stage to present an impromptu 2 minutes speech based on a random topic that will be provided by the TTM. Table topics train speakers to think fast on their feet and to present a well-structured short speech to answer the topics given.

Theme for the night was “Limits”.

 

Toastmasters is a peer learning platform, and we learn by providing and receiving feedback.

Hence with a TTM, there will always be a Table Topics Evaluator (TTE), where the role of a TTE is to provide evaluation or feedback to the table topic speakers. And the role was further explained by Ted Jee PM4*.

The next role player to get introduced was the Grammarian, TM* Lim Chee Rong. Chee Rong explained that the role of a Grammarian is to firstly introduce the word of the day for fellow members to learn a new word or rarely used word and to use it repeatedly throughout the week. His other task was also to take note of good usages of the English language as well as areas of improvements as well.

The word of the day was “Surmount”, which means to get on top of or overcome.

 

Up next, was the Ah-Counter and Who-Said-What, by Wilson Kong VC1*. As per Wilson, the Ah-Counter keeps track of the crutch and filler words that will inhibit the speaking capability of the speakers. Examples of crutch and filler words are, erm, ar, eh, so, you know, I mean, definitely, positively, essentially etc. These are just a small sample of it.

Wilson’s other task was also to take note of interesting things that was said during the whole meeting and to quiz the audience during his delivery of the report.

 

The fifth role player was our Timer & Tip for the night, Syahnur Nizam PI4*. Syahnur explained the importance of keeping with the allocated time for all speakers as it is one of the skills that all toastmasters need to master, the management of time. Syahnur went into detail how much time were being allocated to each speaker, and how he will use the lighting device which comes in 3 colours (green, orange & red), to indicate the time remaining.

 

The last role player to get introduced was our General Evaluator (GE), DTM* Allen Ang. The role of a GE is to facilitate the third part of the meeting which is the evaluation session. And as a general evaluator, Allen will provide feedback to the evaluators and role players themselves. Allen will also provide the feedback and comments on the overall setting of the meeting, the conduct of it, as well as all the nitty-gritty that goes into making a meeting a success.

 

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Second Session of the Meeting

The second session of the meeting started off with the table topic sessions and was led by Sharon. A total of 5 speakers were being called up to the stage to partake in the table topic sessions.

 

First speaker was Khai, who’s topic was: Never limit yourself.

 

Second speaker was Philip, who’s topic was: Limit like fears are just illusion.

 

Third speaker was a guest, Khairi, who’s topic was: People should not drive past speed limit, agree or disagree.

 

Fourth speaker was Mei Ann, and her topic was: We must learn our limit, we are something but none of us are everything.

 

The last table topic speaker for the night was Afiq, who’s topic was: Ever have to limit your food intake?

 

Next up, we moved on to the prepared speeches, first up, we had the speech from TM* Lawrence Pow, with his ice-breaker speech titled “The Imperfections of a Perfectionist”.

Before we get to hear Lawrence’s speech, we first heard from his speech evaluator on the speech objective and how Lawrence will be evaluated on, by Suptra Lee CC, ALB*.

 

 

The second prepared speech for the night was by TM* Nazri Saman, with his ice-breaker speech as well and it was titled “How the Gym Led Me to Toastmasters”.

But first, we heard from his speech evaluator, Hazwan Kamarulzaman ACB, ALB*, on the speech objective and how Nazri will be evaluated on.

 

With the completion of all the speeches, we took a 10 minutes break.

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Third Session of the Meeting

Allen took over the 3rd session of the meeting which was the evaluation session, and the first evaluator was the Table Topics Evaluator by Ted Jee.

 

Next we presented the best table topic speakers and the winner is…..

*** drum roll ***

Philip!

 

The next evaluator was Supatra with her speech evaluation for Lawrence’s speech.

 

Up next was speech evaluation from Hazwan for Nazri’s speech.

 

The other role players were next and we had our Grammarian report by Chee Rong.

 

Next role player report came from Ah-Counter Wilson.

 

Last role player report came from our Timer, Syahnur.

 

With the conclusion of the evaluation session, the floor was passed to our president, Rano Iskandar ACB, ALB*, for his closing remarks. And also the presentation of the best evaluator award, which went to…..

*** drumroll ***

Ted Jee!

 

The meeting ended with group photo with everyone present, members and guests.

 

*
TM = Toastmaster
VC1 = Visionary Communicator Level 1
PM5 = Presentation Mastery Proficient
TC2 = Team Collaboration Level 2
PM2 = Presentation Mastery Level 2
PM4 = Presentation Mastery Level 4
PI4 = Persuasive Influence Level 4
DTM = Distinguished Toastmaster
CC, ALB = Competent Communicator, Advanced Leader Bronze
ACB, ALB = Advanced Communicator Bronze, Advanced Leader Bronze

Contributed by:
Writer – Ted Jee
Photographer – Wilson Kong, Lawrence Pow & Ted Jee