Meeting Recap: “Make Something of Your Life” by Megat Arif (28th July 2020)

BSC Meeting Recap – 28/7/20

 

“You can make something of your life. It Just depends on your drive.” By Eminem.

This was the thought of the day shared by our Toastmaster of the Evening, Megat Arif (Effective Coaching Level 2), during our meeting on Tuesday, 28th July 2020.

Such a beautiful quote as it reminded us that we have what it takes to elevate our lives to the next level, and the only limitation is the inner constraints that we placed on ourselves.

Thank you Megat for sharing this reminder.

————————–

Our meeting started on time at 7:30pm, with the formal introduction by our Sergeant at Arms (SAA), Wilson Kong (Visionary Communicator Level 1), who gave us a brief history of the origin of toastmasters, the mission statement, the available pathways, and thereafter, we had guests introducing themselves.

In case you are not familiar with Toastmasters mission statement, it is:
“To provide a supportive and positive learning experience in which members are empowered to develop communication and leadership skills, resulting in greater self-confidence and personal growth.”

 

We had a total of 4 guests tonight with some of them recurring guests who came to take part in the table topic sessions.

 

————————–

Upon the completion of introduction by our SAA, the floor was then passed on to our Toastmaster of Evening (TME), Megat, who immediately jump into action to give us an engaging meeting for the night by calling upon all the different role players to introduce their roles.

 

First up to introduce his role, is our Table Topics Master (TTM), Toastmaster Nazri Saman, who took up his role in Brunei Speakers’ Club for the very first time.

Table topics are short 1-2 mins speech session whereby speakers are invited to go onto the stage to give an impromptu speech on a random topic given on the spot. This is a great exercise to test the wit of the speaker to come up with a quick organized speech on the spot, and one which we strongly encourage our guests to volunteer to try it out.

 

With a table topic session, we will definitely need a Table Topics Evaluator to provide feedback to the speakers to let them know how well they did, and also areas of improvement, and we had, Siu Tzyy Wei (Visionary Communications Level 2) to introduce the role and what she will be looking for in the speeches.

 

The next role player to introduce her role was our Grammarian, Sharon Lim (Presentation Mastery Level 2), who took to the floor to firstly introduced her word of the day, which was ‘Enervate’.

Enervate can be used as a verb or an adjective and they mean:
(verb): make (someone) feel drained of energy or vitality
(adjective): lacking in energy or vitality

Sharon also shared her role as a Grammarian which was to pick up good usages and misuse of the English language.

 

Ah-Counter and Who-Said-What was the next role to get introduced by Rano Iskandar (Advanced Communicator Gold, Advanced Leader Bronze).

Rano shared with us his task which was to take note of crutch and filler words, such as “erm, ahh, so, you know” etc. These crutch and filler words inhibit the effectiveness of the speeches and being notified of how many of these we have in our speeches is crucial in assisting us in reducing it over time.

Rano also shared with us his other task which was to test our listening skills by quizzing us on what was being spoken or shared throughout the whole evening.

 

Up next was the explanation of the Timer and Tip role, by Ted Jee (Presentation Mastery Level 4).

Ted shared the different allotted time for the different participants during the meeting, and how the lighting device will light up with the run down of time.

The last role player to make an introduction was our General Evaluator for the evening, Jonathan Tan (Presentation Mastery Level 1). Jonathan shared that his role was as a quality control for the proceedings of the meeting for the whole evening.

 

————————–

With the conclusion of the role players introduction, we then moved on to the second part of the meeting which was the speeches component.

First up, we had the table topics session, and we had a total of 5 speakers for the night:
1. Chee Rong (member), his topic was “As kids, we don’t see our parents as individuals.”
2. Hajah Masna (guest), her topic was “Do friendships last?”
3. Lawrence (member), his topic was “Should we play hard to get?”
4. Sheng (guest), his topic was “How to get acquainted with your colleagues?”
5. Lastly Afiq (guest), and his topic was “What’s your ideal first date?”

 

 

We next moved on to the prepared speeches segment of the meeting, and the first speech was from our veteran toastmaster, Aziman Nasir (Dynamic Leadership Proficient), who’s taking a new pathway and did his ice-breaker speech during the night, as part of his new pathway project.

Aziman’s speech was titled: “Third time’s the Charm”

Before Aziman delivered his speech, we had his speech evaluator, Wilson Kong, introduced to us the project objective and what he will be looking for his Aziman’s speech.

 

 

The second prepared speech for the night was from Toastmaster Izati Abdullah, who was doing her Level 1 Part 3 Research and Presenting project as part of her Effective Coaching pathway, and her speech title was “Embracing Vulnerability”

But first up, we had Syahnur Nizam (Persuasive Influence Level 4), who gave us a glimpse of what this project was all about, and also what he will be looking for in the prepared speech from Izati.

 

 

With the completion of all the speeches, we took a 5 minutes break.

————————–

The third part of the meeting started on time at 8:40pm, and we immediately had our General Evaluator (GE), Jonathan Tan (Presentation Mastery Level 1) took over from our TME, and called upon his first evaluator to the stage to present her evaluation.

 

First evaluator was Table Topics Evaluator, Tzyy Wei, who gave a detailed commendation and rooms of improvement to all 5 table topic speakers for the night.

 

With the conclusion of the table topics evaluation, we then had the announcement of the best table topic speaker, and the coveted award went to………….

** drumroll**………

Lawrence!

 

The next evaluator to present was the speech evaluation from Wilson Kong for Aziman’s icebreaker speech.

 

Syahnur was up next to provide his evaluator report for Izati’s research and presentation project.

 

The next evaluator our GE called up was for the Grammarian report from Sharon.

 

Up next was the Ah-Counter report from Rano.

 

And the last evaluator to be called up was the Timer report from Ted.

With the conclusion of all the reporting, the very last report was from the GE himself and he provided a succinct reporting of each of the evaluators and also his comments of the overall meeting handling before passing the floor back to the TME.

And upon completion of the meeting for the night, the floor was then passed on to our president, Rano for other business matters and also his closing remarks.

A couple of the highlight was the presentation of the ice-breaker ribbon for Aziman, as well as the best evaluator ribbon which went to…..

** drumroll**………

Our Grammarian, Sharon!

 

 

 

The meeting ended on time for the night, and overall it was a very educational meeting for all involved and everyone benefitted greatly, and we looked forward to the next meeting for further learning.

 

Contributed by:
Writer: Ted Jee
Photographer: Wilson Kong