Meeting Report @ 21 June 2011

Susan Lim

LOOKING BACK, LOOKING AHEAD

Report by Susan Lim, Toastmaster of the Meeting

The theme for our 21 June meeting was “Looking Back, Looking Ahead”. The theme was definitely fitting as it was the last meeting with Zaiton as our President, and the rest of the outgoing Exco team.

Zaiton started the meeting with her final President's speech. Looking back, President Zaiton was full of heartwarming memories of what this term has meant to her in terms of her personal growth in the areas of leadership and communication. Looking ahead, we look forward to Angeline's leadership as President. We also look forward to our club achieving new heights of success. Zaiton's performance is a tough act to follow as she had guided our club to reach the President’s Distinguished Club status.

I (Susan Lim) played the TME role for the first time. I was determined to uplift the energy of the meeting so I had everyone in the audience doing hi-fives and saying “You are awesome!”, not only at the beginning but throughout the meeting. I also shared a memorable quote with the audience: “It is better to look ahead and prepare than to look back and regret”. This quote complements the theme very well. 

The word of the day is “Spirit”, chosen by Grammarian PP Lay Theng. Our high spirits had everyone looking back, looking ahead and looking around, especially at the pretty and handsome faces of Friendship Toastmasters members and guests.

We had two special guests from Exact ADC Toastmasters Club, Boby Auliaputra playing the Timer role and Andrew Ng as the General Evaluator.

Sivadas gave us an invocation speech to inspire us. Daphne, the Table Topics Master, repeated her successful performance in getting the table topics speakers to imagine or reminisce several poignant moments in their lives. The speakers were Jason Wee (guest), Ian Lai (guest), Ben, Vincent and Ian Tai.

We had two humorous and vibrant project speakers who talked about "Meditating Dog" - I mean "Meditation" and "Dog". Andy the superman talked about the Benefits of Meditation for his speech project #3 Get to the Point. He started by performing a meditation pose on a chair. Not only did he manage to balance himself well, but he also grabbed our attention. 

Ian Tai shared with us a few tricks on how to train the dog in his speech project #5: Your Body Speaks. Not only did his body speak to us, he also engaged Andy to be his disobedient dog which he trained to be obedient. We roared with laughter!

Our first-time guest, Jason Wee, was surprised when he was announced as the Best Table Topics Speaker.

Our GE, Andrew Ng, delivered a favourable report about the meeting proceedings and offered a few recommendations for improvement. Thanks, Andrew, for your kind and honest evaluation!

We received good feedback from all our guests. We certainly hope to see them more in our future meetings.

I hope everyone can look back and remember something special about this meeting!

When it hurts to look back
and you’re scared to look ahead.

At Friendship Toastmasters meetings

You can look beside you

And your best friend will be there.