Among my favourite childhood cartoons are Disney’s The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast.

Born in 1988, I consider myself and my generation exceptionally lucky to have our childhood coincide precisely with the Disney Renaissance era, in which many of the most successful and most celebrated Disney animations were produced.

In addition to the two that I’ve mentioned, Aladdin, Tarzan, Mulan, The Little Mermaid and Pocahontas are also among the classics produced by Disney in the late 1980s to the late 1990s!

I wasn’t too aware of the creative industry all this while. As I grew up, I watched all these animation blockbusters without being conscious of the immense talent, effort and difficulty in producing these movies.

I just somehow assumed that these cartoons were made in pretty much the same way as how Hollywood action movies were made. You point your camera at Cinderella or Pinocchio, they act according to script, and you sell the film. (Oh wait where did Cinderella and Pinocchio come from?) o.0

This month a group of friends and I worked part-time at the Putrajaya International Convention Centre for a 3-day event called Kre8tif! 2010.

It’s a conference organized by MSC Malaysia to kinda promote and support the creative industry in Malaysia. They’ve got a super awesome line-up of speakers made up of the most prestigious people in the industry globally.

A ticket to the conference costs over 300 bucks but all we have to do it to handle the receptionist counter during registration, handle inquiries, help participants scan their tags during entry, and gain access to the conference for FREE!

Our friend, Pauline, works in the company that handles the registration and reception service of the event, and so for that simple job we get paid a hundred bucks per day, free meals and t-shirts and freebies, and we could literally attend any of the talks that we wanted – free!

… Of course, as long as we finish our job first! Registration starts at 8AM everyday and so usually by 9AM everything is done. And our routine job would be to be at the conference halls before a session starts and scan the RFID tags of whoever enters the hall, for attendance recording purposes. And then after that, we’re done!

During the registration, a number of speakers that we dealt with were actually super famous people in the industry and had specially flew in from the US that morning to give talks. But we, ignorant fools from an entirely different industry, could have just talked to the next great Hollywood producer but not even know it!

We treated everybody like commoners and nobodys! LOL!

One of the first talks that I attended was given by Shawn Kelly, who was lead animator and worked directly with Michael Bay on the Transformers series. He was also involved in animating other many blockbusters like Star Wars, Indiana Jones, War of the Worlds and The Day After Tomorrow!

Kelly was exceptionally audience-friendly and humble, and he even posed for photos with his ‘fans’ in the audience when requested! Not many speakers were willing to do that!

Next I slipped into a presentation by star screenwriter David Freeman, who has written scripts for Sony, Paramount, Columbia Pictures, MGM and more. Freeman’s talk was an extremely interesting tour on “The Secret Behind Pixar’s Magic”, where he analytically and technically points out the secrets behind what makes movies like Wall-E, Toy Story, and Finding Nemo stick to the back of your head for years.

Other speakers throughout the three days include Jason Manley, who artists and designers will immediately recognize as the founder of ConceptArt.org; Stephen Davis, President of Hasbro Studios, Silas Hickey, creative director of Cartoon Network; Patch Khan, director of digital media at Hewlett Packard, and many many more.

If I write any longer this would look more like a marketing brochure than a blog post, therefore I’ll stop.

One last speaker mention, here’s me with Din Altit, who was creative executive at Sony Columbia Pictures where he worked on films such as Ghost Rider, Casino Royale, and The Fog.

Our chat began with his little confusion over the local ‘nine-layers kuih’ served during tea time… I learned that now he owns his own production studio in LA and is producing an upcoming movie about Thai kickboxing! Haha since I am in kickboxing for over a year now, this is a movie that I would never miss!

Besides, I know the film producer FTW!

It was such a new experience being at an event such as this. After attending three days’ worth of talks, at least now I know a jargon or two in this industry! And not to mention the yummy free buffet meals~~~

On the final night there was an awards ceremony called the Kre8tif! 2010 Awards, which was organized and given out by MSC Malaysia to local talents in the creative industry. Now I’ve learnt more about the companies in Malaysia doing this kind of stuff and the importance of supporting them blah blah…

… and… OK but in the end the free dinner is still what mattered the most!

Honestly speaking, the standards of our local creative companies are nothing compared to what they’re doing in Los Angeles. But hey, we’re still new in this and I think we should all give them our full support. Who knows? Maybe one day our local studios will produce something more than just Cicakman!

Cheers to our very own Malaysian Creative Industry!

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