Photos @ 07 September 2010

Enriching Your Life
Report by Angeline Lee

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Our Enriching Your Life (meeting theme) TME Tony Lim, started the evening with an apt reminder that many of us have become better leaders, managers, salesman, entrepreneurs and CEOs because of one man – Dr. Ralph C. Smedley. Our lives have been enriched (Word of the Day) because of our Toastmasters training programs and the benefits we have gained from it.

Tony Lim the TME

Our Invocation speaker flung a paper starfish at us and narrated a story of how a simple act of picking a starfish and throwing it back into the ocean makes a difference. We may not be able to save all the starfish on the beach, but to the one starfish that we have helped, it has made a difference to that starfish.

Lim Kien Chai @ KC Lim who is the Invocation Speaker as well as Table Topics Evaluator

Table Topics Master Sivadas cleverly came up with a few topics centered on the meeting theme:
What are the different ways to enrich your life?
How to enrich your life after retirement?
Does the present educational system enrich our children?
How does the CL manual enrich our lives?
Material things can enrich our lives

IPP Ben Fong is one of the Table Topics speakers

The five table topics speakers were Chee Hoe, Ben, James, Grace and Lay Theng. Our Best Table Topics Speaker had a simple and meaningful message for us. Material things are not important. It is more important to enrich our lives by spending more time with our loved ones. Instead of wishing that we could get more, we should ask ourselves how we can give more.

The award winning project speech was an Ice-Breaker speech about “The Middle Man”. As a middle child, the speaker plays the role of mediator, peace-maker and messenger. She is still playing these roles today, and her two sisters are grateful and acknowledged that she is a key member of the family.

In her working life, she is also the middle man, as she works with her boss and colleagues. Although she works hard in her middle management role, she also takes the middle path by leading a balanced life. To balance her 12 hours working days, she goes on holidays and has a variety of activities such as Toastmasters and Qigong. She is enjoying her life as a middle child, a middle man living a middle path.

In the Evaluation Session, for the first time, we tried out “Open Evaluation”, a practice that we have observed from MAICSA Toastmasters meetings. Chee Hoe, Tony and Sivadas provided their feedback during the open evaluation session, which is intended to provide everyone with the opportunity to practice providing effective and constructive feedback.

During the awards presentation, TME Tony Lim commented once again, the awards were dominated by the Tans of Friendship!

Best Table Topics Speaker Tan Lay Theng
Best Project Speaker Tan Lay Theng
Best Evaluator Grace Tan

In another first for Friendship, we presented Half-CC and Ice Breaker ribbons ordered from Toastmasters International. The first Friendship recipients for the Half-CC Ribbons are Chee Hoe, Vincent and Alex who has completed more than 5 speeches in the Competent Communication manual. Lay Theng was also awarded an Ice Breaker ribbon. Well done to our hard-working members who are diligently working on their CC manuals!

Chee Hoe, Vincent & Alex with their Half-CC Ribbon, Lay Theng with her Ice Breaker Ribbon

Thank you General Evaluator Son Lee, who told us she fell in love with our Friendship meeting, in particular our great food, our talented speakers and the impressive evaluations by Grace Tan and KC Lim.



GE Son Lee, Project Speaker Lay Theng & Speech Evaluator Sook Ping. Son Lee & Sook Ping are both from MAICSA Toastmasters Club

Our next meeting is on 21 September 2010 with the meeting theme Good Plans Shape Good Decisions. Please make plans to join us on 21 September at Bukit Kiara, and it will be the right decision for you!