The first two weeks of May are the final exam weeks, which I have absolutely no intention of writing about.

So I’ll just fast forward until AFTER the exams! =D

On the very last day of our final exams, and after many exhausting, sleepless nights, nobody was going to care anymore what the Nyquist’s Frequency was or if they knew about the Shannon’s Sampling Theorem or whatever.

It was very difficult indeed to get this group of people (my classmates) out for any kind of outing. Eternally not free and eternally armed with excuses!

But when we were finally free from the satanic grasp of final exams, we had a day when everybody was present and undoubtedly free!

So we went for dinner and movie!

It was also Tee’s birthday this month! Poor Tee! It was very evil of us to celebrate with him only after the final exams! Kekeke…

Tee’s birthday very unfortunately fell on the Friday of our study week. We had actually made plans to celebrate it nonetheless, but in the end due to… Ah… Anyway IT’S ALL MMU’S FAULT!!

But we got him a very HUGE birthday card to compensate!

**********

As I’ve mentioned, I’ll be going to Penang next month to do my industrial training, so this month my Dear and I went to Penang for a pre-work holiday!

Another purpose of this trip is also to hunt for a place to stay during my four months in Penang.

I think our accommodation objective was completed in like the first 3 hours of our 3-day stay. And so the remaining of the 2-and-a-half day was all ours to enjoy!

To me, Penang has always been a holiday destination. The beach, the food, the breeze… everything! I simply cannot imagine anybody would have the mood the work on this island!

Take Batu Ferringhi for example. The beautiful blue sea, the long stretch of golden beach, the large number of ang-mohs, everything reminds me of the destinations my previous club – MMU Tourism Club – used to go every year!

And I happened to be wearing the Tourism Club T-shirt that day! Such memories!

Is it just my naivety or are there no other tourist beaches in Penang besides Batu Ferringhi? Whenever people talk about beaches in Penang they think of Batu Ferringhi… And whenever tourists come to Penang they’ll go straight there…

So concentrated!

If a tsunami hits Batu Ferringhi directly we’ll have a warehouse of corpses to feed the poor fishies and sharks which having suffered so long the invasion of the tourists in the area.

After the beach we had dinner at The Ship. And I thought that The Ship in Jln. Sultan Ismail or PJ was cool, look at this one in Batu Ferringhi!

The Ship is a friggin’ real ship!

Maybe it was a merchant ship that got washed onto the shore a long time ago and the sailors abandoned it for exotic pretty island girls…

Or maybe it was a ghost ship carrying deceased spirits to the underworld but got wrecked…

Or maybe it was a US navy ship mysteriously teleported here through the Philadelphia Experiment, with all its crew members brutally burned to death and their body infused into the ship’s hull by the unstable magnetic force field…

… And then some rich Malaysian Chinese entrepreneur came along and said to his pal: “Eh Ah Seng, see that? Let’s open restaurant on it! Can save restaurant construction cost somemore!”

And thus The Ship was created.

But who cares if it’s haunted? The steak was really nice and the waiters and waitresses were very polite!

And following a little tradition of ours, we always have a bottle of red wine whenever we go on a holiday by a beach together!

Steak + wine + ocean breeze + gal = loud sigh of satisfaction.

Apart from the beaches, this island is also home to the Penang Char Koay Teow. The most evil food in the world that is guilty of causing obesity to uncountable Malaysians due to its devilishly good taste!

I have been in some kind of Char Koay Teow craze for the past few months. I’d always go all the way from Cyberjaya to SS2 just to eat Char Koay Teow. But NOW – Haha… Nobody and nowhere can ever beat Penang on this:

LOL just look at the imba SIZE of the prawn enough said.

Also check out the Fried Oyster:

How much will I weigh when I come back from Penang four months later?

This month, May, played host to one of the larger events of MMU Toastmasters that I had the opportunity to be in-charge of – the first ever Ice-Breaking Speech Marathon.

As the Organizing Chair, the preparation works for this event consumed much of my time in April, which was also the month leading up to my final exams early this month!

Fortunately, I was able to juggle my time, albeit precariously, to make sure that both events received sufficient attention.

The event turned out to be a blast!

The Ice-Breaking Speech Marathon is an event where our club encourages six selected new members and special guests to take their glorious first step into the public speaking world of Toastmasters.

The participants had been given a month to prepare their speeches, which were basically stories that revolve around their respective own lives and experiences (hence the name ‘ice-breaking speech’).

To make this experience worthy of life-long memory for the first-time speakers, we managed to invite a very impressive panel of external speech evaluators:

From left to right: Francis Ng, DTM, District Lieutenant Governor of Marketing; Robert Ram, ACS, CL, President of IEM Toastmasters; JON TAN, ATM-G, Creative communicator and advertising consultant; Geoff Andrew, DTM, President of MIM Toastmasters; Sharifah Raudhah, CC, Founder and Managing Director of Face2Face Tech.; S.K. Walia, DTM, HRDC Certified International Corporate Trainer; Hoo Sze Ling, CC, Senior Student Exchange Advisor at Taylor’s University College.

These very experienced Toastmasters and professional speakers were really kind and encouraging to the first-timers!

How I wish my first speech was given in an occasion like this!

As a supremely biased organizer and shamelessly egoistic boyfriend, I shall now do a special mention of only one of the six participants of the marathon.

Participant #2 was none other than Teh Shu-Yi with her speech title “I’m not a girl, not yet a woman”. =D

Haha… It was her very first time giving a speech in Toastmasters. Although she kept telling me how terrified she was days before the event, but she turned out doing fantastic!

I daresay I totally understood her fears because after my first ever speech in public three years ago, I wrote this.

Her best friend Felicia from Ipoh was also present to support her, hand in hand!

After the participants made their speeches, the evaluation session kicked in and the evaluators did their job. One-by-one, the evaluators commented encouragingly on the participants speeches, focusing on excellent parts and those that can be improved.

In the end, participants were given a certificate for completing their first ever speech in a Toastmasters environment!

Here’s our President Megat Zahid presenting the certificate to one of the participants. =P Yup, a random one.

As per Toastmasters’ tradition, ballots slips were passed to the evaluators and audience after the speeches to vote for the winners of the Best Speaker of the Day and Best Evaluator of the Day awards.

Participant #2 Shobana won the Best Speaker of the Day Award!

And Robert Ram, ACS, CL won the Best Evaluator of the Day Award.

This is my final event in the 2009/2010 EXCO term. After this an election will be held during the next AGM and we will all have very different roles by then!

Cheers to MMU Toastmasters!