Guy domination day!

Dear All members of KPMG KL Toastmasters Club,

Last meeting on Wednesday, 13 April 2011,

our guys took over the stage!!

Yes, we had the privileged to witness 3 gentlemen from our ITS delivering their CC speeches.

This was indeed rare and a new milestone achieved for our club.

Tell me which club has 3 IT guys bravely giving their CC speeches together PLUS they are NOT talking about computers or programming :)

Coincidently, Jowy, Chee Sing & Gary are all talking about making changes, moving with time and technology and improve ourselves to keep up with the new age OR be phased out.

Jowy told us how he got his unique name “JOWY” and is indeed different from the norm à Be unique, be different and stand out from the rest.

Chee Sing inspires us to dream on and create our own future. He reminded us the dreams and stories of Thomas Edison and his light bulb, the Wright brothers and the airplane and even Tony Fernandes and Air Asia à Yes, don’t live in complacent and be ordinary. Be extraordinary and dream on.

 

Gary confirm with his experiences in IT that With Changes, Comes Resistance but he also assures us that the world is moving ahead with time and new technology. Are we in or out? He concluded by saying à Out with the Old and In with the New!

And our BEST Speaker award goes to Chee Sing. The best speech evaluator goes to Shirley Cheok.

We also have many guests in our meeting as listed below:

(1)    Francis Ng, DTM (District Club Extensive Chair) and one of KPMG TMC’s chartered mentor in June 2007.

(2)    Samantha Tai, CC (member of MAICSA TMC) and boss of Boardroom Corporate Services (KL) S/B leading her team of > 15 staff to visit our meeting

(3)    Our new colleague, How Wei Theng from RMD
(Hope I didn’t missed out any guest)

Come for our next few meetings and let’s have even more fun while we learn together! =)

KPMG International Speech & Table Topics Contest

It was a “fierce” competition between the 3 IS contestants.

 SURESH RAGAVAN, our International Speech (“IS”) contest champion reminded us to use our scarce commodity, the COMMON SENSE. He was hilarious relating to various common things we did or often seen when we didn’t engage our brains or simply inconvenience others with our careless behavior.

NIK JOANITA caught the Justin Bieber (“JB”) fever! She wore JB T-shirt, sang JB’s “Baby, baby,…..” and told us that she even queued for more than 4 hours to purchase JB concert tickets for her daughter and her! But all was worth it as she shared how she found the KEY TO OPEN A MILLION DOORS of her loved one.

GRACE LOH dished out the HARSH FACTS about what we threw away as rubbish eventually found its way back to us via the food chain and urged all to join in the 3Rs worldwide movement to Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.

The TT contest masters, Joanita unveiled the topic “Your Future depends on your dreams” to our team of brave ladies. It was a parade of 6 beauties taking their turn to share with all of us their dreams, ambitions and desires as well as how they plan

to achieve them or succeeded in attaining them.

One lady dreamed about being married and raising a football team!

Another dreamt of being a doctor and now dreams of opening her own company one day.

Yet another aspires to be a high profile and successful business woman with a secretary, driver and 2 assistants working for her.

We also had an “Angel” in our midst who dreamt of setting up her own charity organization.

An enthusiastic heart whose dreams came through when she joined KPMG.

The last was a dreamer who dared to dream big and work to achieve them as she aspires us to dream  with her and see our dreams come through too.

Table Topics (“TT”) winners: Shirley, Yi Hoong and Joo Lee with our Partner, Mr. Siew and Contest Chair, Joanita

Make a guess --- Who said what in the TT speeches above???? 

These ambitious young beauties demonstrated much wisdom as they were realistic, courageous and proactive to work at achieving their dreams. Bravo ladies and may all your dreams be fulfilled.

 We want to thank both our organizers and contest chairs, Michelle Yip (IS contest) and Joanita (TT contest), all our judges (Richard Hor, Lee Wah and Grace Chan all 3 from MIM TMC and our very own Mr. Siew Chin Kiang), roles players (Han Sern of TTDI TMC and our Ng Chee Sing) and all our participants who together, made our club’s dream of holding a highly entertaining, fun and quality contest a dream comes through.

It was definitely another proud record and milestone achievement by our club.

“Most agree that first love is the deepest. I’ll say my first participation in the TT contest is the most exhilarating experience I’ve ever had! Nerve wrecking at first but once taking on the floor, I truly enjoyed delivering the table topic. The level of enthusiasm heighten seeing positive responses from fellow audiences. I’ve done it once and am already looking forward to my next speech presentation. TM can be addictive!”

--->sharing by our newest member, Toh  Joo Lee

Next, watch out for more exciting meetings coming up. Dive in to hone your communication and leadership skills with us and contact us to grab your meeting roles and speaking slots now!!

                                                                                            

Next few interesting meetings:

2nd Wed 9-Mar-2011	Special joint meeting with WIM club 22-Mar-2011 (Tues)	4th Sat 26-Mar-2011	2nd Wed 13-Apr-2011	Special joint meeting with CIMA club 20-Apr-2011 (Wed)	4th Sat 23-Apr-2011	Special joint meeting with WIM club 26-Apr-2011 (Tues)
Room 9 (12-2pm)	Vision room (7-9pm)	Navigation Room (12-2:30pm)	Vision Room (12-2pm)	Inspire Room (7-9pm)	Inspire Room (12-2:30pm)	Inspire room (7-9pm)

Sign up for speech slots and meeting roles at level 8’s Toastmasters notice board now. It’s up!!

Saturday's Meeting

Our last Saturday meeting was a small group of 10 only but the response and energy was much higher than our earlier Wednesday meeting with close to 40 people! Emotions were running high and the atmosphere was filled with much love which bonded our friendship with each other closer. Want to know what happened? Read on……

 

We had 3 new guests and Joyce Hue, ACS of D’Utama Advanced Utama Club with us.

The balance 5 (excluding me) were a new member and 4 members/ex-members that I have not seen for more than 3 months!!

Kudos to both Aaron and Suresh for attending the meeting and delivering their speeches despite their hectic audit peak period.

They had sacrificed their precious sleeping hours to honor their commitment and didn’t pull out from the meeting.

Not only did they deliver their speeches, they also took up Ah Counter & Timer’s roles without having to request.

That alone is something to be regarded highly for and a demonstration of Toastmasters’ team spiritJ

Suresh was filled with anger and sadness when he unfolded his past 1 month’s audit life with us in his project speech #5 – Your Body speaks with the title “Chapter 1” – as in chapter 1 of year 2011 (I guess). He was able to arouse our emotion and had all the audience sympathized with him. I agree with his evaluator, Grace Lee (CC), that we definitely felt Suresh’s pain and tiredness. Grace Lee even proposed that Suresh sought hypnotherapy treatment from Joyce, a hypnotherapy consultant by profession after the meeting. Ha ha ha, with that, I managed to hold back my tears and refrain from throwing him a sisterly hug after he completed his pitiful speech. Thank God for Joyce & Grace Lee for injecting the humor to try easing Suresh’s sorrow. 

Aaron’s graduating speech with the title “Welcome To The Club” (Project speech #10) reminded us of his ups and downs in his Toastmasters’ journey for the past 1 ½ years. His spirit was dashed to the ground when he received a demoralizing / crude evaluation from an inconsiderate/unskilled guest evaluator. He also recapped and shared how he was comforted by our very own Joanita (CC)’s motherly, loving & encouraging evaluation when he finally picked up his crashed spirit to deliver another speech after few months. He was lifted up to cloud 9 when he was crown champ in humorous speech contest. He even shot to fame in KPMG when partners(bosses) recognized him along the walkway, chatted with him at his workstation and fans (KPMG girls) harassing him for pictures (in his superman outfit) etc.. while other colleagues were envious, some puzzled. He shared a lot and told us that Toastmasters’ journey is like achieving Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs that as one progress in his/her Toastmasters’ journey learning to hone his/her communication and leadership skills, he/she not only gain higher self esteem and confidence level, he/she is also embarking in his/her journey for self-actualization. It was a very good introduction and summary for us esp. guests and new members to know more about what a loving club and members we have in KPMG KL TMC. With that, he has inspired 2 guests to enquire more about membership procedure and terms and conditions after the meeting.

    

Source: http://ambrand.com/2007/07/19/maslows-hierarchy-of-needs

Ivo, our one and only beloved foreigner member (now, ex-member) had a wonderful time counting the most used words ever i.e. NEW / NEWNESS during the meeting and added much fun, joy and laugher to the meeting.
 

Contributed by Grace Loh, KPMG KL Toastmasters Club

My “Ice-breaker” Emcee role …

With much trepidation and excitement, Today, I completed my “first” “external assignment held by our company!!.

My assignment was to be the “Emcee”  for a function held by office.

Although it only lasted for about an hour, the experience learnt was simply “unquantifiable” !!.

Amongst the things I learnt was to “multi-task” – hence, to check the movements of the speakers on the stage and to try to match it with my script, to practice the names of the persons and their respective titles, in future, to make sure that my script has a larger font size so that I would not be squinting my eyes to decipher the words and to quickly inform the audience of any change of events.

All in all, for a First attempt (outside the safe and familiar “Toastmasters” settings), it was an enjoyable experience and I was happy to partake and be able to learn from the experience  !!.

Contributed by Nik Joanita, KPMG KL Toastmasters Club

New Day, New You

Dear Fellow Toastmasters & colleagues,

Thank you for joining us in our 1^st meeting in a New Year at a New Venue yesterday.

It was indeed a very encouraging beginning for the club to have close to 40 of us to start 2011.

 

Honestly, I was a bit overwhelmed with the numbers and the size of the room but it was exciting to know that the club has grown.

I’m pleased to announce and welcome our following 3 newest members to the club:

-          Shirley Cheok (Audit G)

-          Madihah (Audit M)

-          Tham Li Ping (Audit M)

See you in our next meeting. Michelle, our VPM will be in contact soon to assign a mentor to youJ

I’m also very happy to report that our young members have progressed satisfactory and took up the challenge to organize and host the session yesterday.

Thank you (each and every one of you) for all your great effort and I’m sure you will achieve your goal of becoming a competent communicators and a competent leader by end of 2011.

Let’s gear up for KPMG’s coming Table Topics and International Speech contest on 21 February 2011.

KPMG Table Topics Contest

Michelle Yip, the new Vice President of Membership of KPMG KL took up the challenge to be the organizing chair for a very fun and interesting Table Topics Contest - Round 1 on 11 December 2010.

We had 5 contestants competing to tell us their embarrassing moment with a 2 mins each.Our Chief Judge cum GE, Min On, gave us valuable advice and tips on how to improve further on our impromptu speeches.

Min On, our Chief Judge cum GE

It was hilarious and truly a very good experience as higher level has been set for KPMG Toastmasters Club.

Round 1 Winners:

Aaron(centre), Yi Hoong(second from left) and Grace(left)

 

Another round of very exciting and competitive Table Topics Contest was held on 15 December.

Fellow contestants and judge

Although there were 7 contestants, the atmosphere of the contest was so friendly yet nerve wrecking. Every contestant was sharing his or her story about "Slow and Steady Wins the Race" fluently. Grace Loh shared about her slow and steady journey in Toastmasters, which truly wins in this race.

Not only were some of the contestants being called upon to contest with short notice, even the topic for this round of contest was impromptu!

Bravo to our organizing chair, Joanita for successfully organizing this contest. Thank you to our judges, Dr Sharon (WIM Toastmasters) and Dr Abu Bakar Ngah (Money Mastery-KL Toastmasters).

Round 2 Winners :

Grace(forth from right), Nasruna(second from right) , Krystle(forth from left)

Contributed by Grace Loh, KPMG KL Toastmasters Club

A Trip To Perth

I was going to Perth for a holiday and wanted to check out how a Toastmasters meeting was conducted in a foreign country. From Toastmasters International website, I found that out Victoria Park Toastmasters Club is near where I would be staying. I decided to send an email requesting permission for a club visit on 15 November 2010. Within hours, Gerry Prewett replied with a warm invitation to visit his club.


Thanks to Gerry’s map, I managed to locate their venue easily. Not only was he helpful and efficient, he even waived my guest’s fees and proudly gave me a 5 minutes slot as the inspirational speaker, to talk about Malaysia and District 51.

Michelle at Victoria Park Toastmasters Club

The club meeting was held at The Homestead, a senior centre in Victoria Park. I learned that this was a senior centre hall where the public can rent and hold activities such as talks, games and functions.

The program agenda

I reached the place earlier to check it out and helped them set up the meeting room. The hall was very spacious and clean, and we were seated in a horse shoe style arrangement. The Victoria Park members were very punctual and the meeting started on time.

The meeting room

The Toastmaster of the day Robyn Lloyd introduced me as their special guest and after the Grammarian informed everybody the word of the day, I was invited to present my 5 minutes Inspirational talk. I introduced Malaysia and told them about our tourist attractions and what we are famous for, our diversified culture and our 3 main races. Then I shared a little about District 51, the history of how we started in 1985, how we went through our reformation in 2003 with a new District 80 born, and in 2009 how we saw a rapid growth in District 51 that made us undergo another reformation whereby District 87 was born.

Michelle presenting her inspirational speech

The meeting then continued with 2 speakers giving their project speeches. I was engrossed and was amazed on how well they presented their speeches with no speech crutches and managed to capture everyone’s full attention. I learnt a little trick from Sandra Morton’s CC speech no. 2 - Speaking Off the Cuff. She taught us that in Toastmasters, it is always easier to relate a project speech back to one’s personal surroundings and experiences. She quoted “I can talk about my supposedly billionaire uncle or grandma who witnessed the World War 2. Nobody would ever notice if I went a little off topic about the stories I tell, because it is all about me. No one can ever challenge topics relating to me because no one would know the truth better than me, myself and I.”


After the 2 project speeches, they had their Table Topics session followed by Table Topics evaluation. Another 2 speakers then proceeded to present their project speeches. After the project speeches and reporting from the role players, I was given 5 minutes to share my experience of attending this meeting. I took the opportunity to present gift and souvenirs I had bought from Malaysia, to the club and members attending this meeting. The meeting ended on time followed by a short tea session where I got to interact with fellow Toastmasters.

Michelle with members of Victoria Park

Overall I managed to bring home a wealth of knowledge gathered from the meeting, their presentation of speeches, their cheerful spirit and professional conduct throughout the meeting. On top of that, I even made some new friends. We exchanged name cards and Facebook contacts and we have kept in touch since then!


Contributed by Michelle Yip, KPMG KL Toastmasters Club