17 September 2013 Meeting - Storms Make Trees Take Deeper Roots

Despite the theme of the meeting, there was no storm descending down upon Bukit Kiara Equestrian Club. Instead, there was only fun, food, friends, camaraderie and a learning experience to be had by all.

The meeting was helmed by the capable Joachim Yuen from Satu Hati TMC and yours truly launched into a slightly long-winded but humorous Invocation session.

Then Zion Choo took control as Table Topic Master and delivered several interesting (and at times, perplexing) Table Topics to the brave souls who stepped forward.

There was still no storm outside but the roots were getting deeper as 4 intrepid speakers took the stage, confident that they can only grow and take deeper roots by challenging themselves to do their speeches.

Newbie Ali Reza took on some swashbuckling derring-do when he delivered his ice-breaker speech, The Prince of Persia. 

Vice-President of Membership Eri Tang taught us an important lesson with her wise speech, Don't Forget One's Origins.

Our Madam President, the ever-smiling Sylvia Tan took the stage with an Advanced Speech from the Specialty Speeches Advanced Manual. It was the "Uplifting the Spirit" speech and she launched into a rousing speech in Journey to Succeed.

Stalwart member Chee Hoe then made a very smart move, delivering one of his Advanced Speeches in the form of a club-members-EGM meeting, which he fully qualified for by reaching a consensus on choosing a new meeting venue for Friendship Toastmasters Club - and the consensus reached was: Let's go try out 2 places first, and see which one we like. Simplicity rules the night.

After the break, bushy-eyed Lee Tong Fong, from Puchong Mandarin TMC, took the stage as the eagle-eyed and very humorous  General Evaluator.

Table Topics Evaluation was done by Teresa Choong, while Speech Evaluators were Geok Ean, Sylvia Tan, Timothy Nakayama and Alexandra Lau (in that order).

Our VPE Geok Ean did her duty as Grammarian, followed by Wong Mi Shan from Mid Valley Toastmasters Club who told us all how we did with our speech crutches, followed lastly (but not least-ly) by long-time member Sivadas as the Time Master.

The physical storm never came... but if the storm was the challenges of the meeting itself, then the roots in the form of the members and guests certainly dug in a little deeper, a little stronger.

The Roots Against the Storm