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!

Haha it is a despicable act, but I’m not gonna let my blog go blank for a few months!

You see, for the past three months I’ve not been posting anything, but now I’m gonna shamelessly repost an entry for each of the empty three months, highlighting the major events to ganti balik! Here we go!

Two major events, both Toastmasters related, happened in March.

First, the Area Level speech competition, which was held in SHELL IT International Sdn. Bhd., home to the Cyberjaya Toastmasters Club. This club is the OLDEST Toastmasters club in Cyberjaya, hence claiming the official name.

Remember back in February when I very miraculously won the club level competition? Now this is the next level, to represent the club and compete with the champions of the other Toastmasters Club in the area!

Another representative of our club is Taufeeq, a very respectable and experienced English Teacher.

As I have mentioned in my last post, the type of speech that we were participating in is called the Table Topic Speech, which is a kind of impromptu speech where you are given your speech topic only when you are standing on stage.

Perhaps due to the fact that most Toastmasters members are working adults, I was given a speech topic that I was most UNqualified to speak of.

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“What is the one advice that you would give to a newly married couple?”

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Since I was only allowed to offer ONE advice only, I would have blurted out “Mr. Bridegroom juz try not to embarrass us men tonite LOL”, if I had not (in time) looked down at the very serious faces of the Chief Judge, Area Governor and a number of important-looking VIPs and Club Presidents all peering up at me grimly expecting a very knowledgeable and enlightening speech something like that.

I shall not disclose the content of my speech that day but suffice to say I blabbered some utter nonsense (to me), as best as I could, and tried to be funny. The audience very accommodatingly laughed! LOL!

In the end, it appeared that I managed to impress the judges and I, very unbelievably, won FIRST RUNNER-UP!

To add to the pride of our MMU Toastmasters Club, Mr. English Teacher TAUFEEQ got first place and will represent the area to compete in the Division Level!

It was a truly a glorious day for our club as our dear Vice-President of Education, Alia, had also won in another speech competition and our club being a relatively new and the only student club in Cyberjaya, sapu-ing three trophies in an area competition is something that had never happened before!

Haha who said students are noob speakers?

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The second major event of the month was the EMCEE WORKSHOP!

After months of negotiations and arrangements, we managed to have prominent creative communicator and advertising consultant ATM-G JON TAN, with more than 25 years of experience as an EMCEE and public speaker, to grace our event as the principal speaker!

Now how great this guy is, is plainly beyond words. The few of us who had worked with him could simply feel the incredible professionalism radiating from his words and actions!

Ariff (Left-3rd above) was the Organizing Chair of this event. Being the Deputy Organizing Chair, I was already nearly suffocated under the intense pressure of Jon’s professional expectations, imagine poor Ariff. That’s just how crazy our speaker is!

In addition, the seminar was attended by delegates from huge corporations across four states in the peninsula like Sime Darby, Shell, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC), Bank Negara Malaysia, Petronas, and even the Prime Minister’s Department in Putrajaya! Imagine the stress!

A small delegation also came from the Corporate Comms. Department of MMU, showing support from our own university!

Apart from the ‘official’ goals of educating the public and elevating the public speaking standard of blah blah blah, the REAL reason behind this event is to raise funds for our club. Since Toastmasters is a non-profit organization, by-annually dues paid to our club are all eventually paid to Toastmasters International, therefore our club desperately needs MONEY!!

As the official club Treasurer, I was also charged of handling all the financial ins-and-outs of the event. Collecting workshop fees alone made my wallet fat fat happy happy that day… but unfortunately none of the stacks of money are mine. >.<

The event was a huge success and I think I’ve grown a few years older after going through it. =P

Why must Arthur Guinness choose September 25th, 1759 to sign the lease for his Dublin brewery?

As to cause, 250 years later, a poor guy names James to stop studying in the middle of a night, in the last few days of his crucial study week, to go out and have… beer!!

It was Arthur’s Day yesterday! And it’s gonna be my final exams the day after tomorrow! RAWR!

I had been anticipating September 25th for quite a long time ever since the ads of this incredible ‘worldwide celebration’ were flooding cinemas and TVs and websites everywhere…

Friends had been inviting me to join partying with them on Arthur’s day and everything was all hot and going… And then only to realize a month ago that it would be only a mere couple of days before my final exams!

3 days before exams… That’s so great, Arthur. 

But then suddenly, it was announced that the Black Eyed Peas were coming to Malaysia as KL was to be one of the five cities in the world to host this celebration!

And the greatest and most unbelievable surprise of all, our dearest government, who attempted to ban alcohol sales in certain parts of the country, who fined and caned a model and mother simply for drinking beer, and who had initially banned all Muslims from attending the concert, had suddenly gotten to their senses in the last minute and allowed anyone above 18, Muslim or non-Muslim, to see the concert!

(Although it was approved on the grounds of encouraging tourism LOL, but that’s beside the point…)

See that’s the power of the Black Eyed Peas and Arthur Guinness’ black beer combined!

So if a huge miracle like the government compromising and allowing beer concerts and not arresting Fergie for not wrapping herself up all the way from the neck to knee should happen, who the hell cares about exams??

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For two-hundred-and-fifty remarkable years… TO ARTHUURRR!!!

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*Drinks…*

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*knock*

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P.S. Whoever named Arthur should be very happy on Arthur’s Day. When do we get a James Bond 250th anniversary?