8th Chapter Meeting

8th Chapter meeting at Paragon Hotel , Johor Bahru, Theme: Deepavali. 22nd October 2009

After I took a long vacation from attending the Toastmaster chapter meetings, I went to the meeting on 22/10/2009. Only 16 people including 3guests attended the meeting. Even though the turn out were quite disappointing, I still felt some positive ambiance.




I saw a different atmosphere in the meeting unlike usual and I was pleased with it. I realized that the Deepavali ambiances were created. This was possible due to the committed Toastmasters whom had put so much efforts in order create this atmosphere. I would like to express my gratitude to our president J. Kannan and SK Shegar for developing the Deepavali feeling in the air by decorating the meeting room. In addition, I would also like to thank all to J. Kannan, SK Shegar, Shankaree, and Praba whom brought the Indian delicacies to be enjoyed by all the fellow Toastmasters.



Moreover, Deepavali mood would not be created if there were decorations and delicacies only. TME Abiramy is also one the factor to boost the Deepavali festive mood during the meeting by her being the Toastmaster of the evening and gave brief explanations about what is Deepavali is all about. Moreover, The Language Evaluator CC Lee had also took all of in a Deepavali mood by choosing the best possible word accordingly which is “CELEBRATE”.



The meeting took place with three Toastmasters presenting their speeches. Toastmaster Rusmariani was the first to give the speech. She did her Project 2 and her topic was “Just Do It”. The second speaker was Toastmaster Saravanan with his topic “Body Is Crying For Water”. Whereas our own Toastmaster President, Toastmaster J. Kannan did the Advanced Project named “Me And My Mr.Ego”. It was indeed hilarious as he started his speech with babies and ended with Mr. Carlsberg along with Mrs. Murukku.



All in all, every speech made an impact or at least made the fellow Toastmasters to learn new speech techniques and improve our speech techniques. As we depart our concentration from the speaker to the other events held in the meetings such as table topics, evaluator’s evaluation etc, I also felt that there is a need to give appraisal to those people involved.



For an instance, I found that the Table Topics that were conducted by Toastmaster

Marc Anthony was indeed in conjunction with the Deepavali ambiance. In addition, I would like to acknowledge his efforts of printing several pictures for the Table Topics even though to some extent, they confused some of the fellow Toastmasters and guests. Some of the confusions that had been experienced by them were “Oil Lamp” was mistakenly seen as “Aladdin lamp”, “Open House” was mistakenly seen as “Night Market”, and a woman wearing “saree” was mistakenly interpreted and got into men traditional costumes. In my opinion, despite all the confusions, everyone had learnt something new about the Indian tradition. For that, on behalf of the club, I thank Marc Anthony for his ideas and efforts.



Moreover, all Indians Toastmasters attempted wearing traditional clothes should be appraised. Nevertheless, another mystification took into place when Toastmaster Andrew Tan wore the traditional Chinese shirt on the day. Haha.. Everyone started to take a hiding glimpse on him and wondering whether it wast Chinese New Year or Deepavali, I guess. Some other Toastmasters including guests came with a Western outlook for the meeting. Another secrete glimpse were on them, I presume. Maybe they thought it’s a New Year or Christmas celebration. Haha…Subsequently, someone just said it out loud, after all we are One Malaysia no matter what we wear for the celebration. I believe the person is the extreme supporter of One Malaysia acronym.



Last but not least, the Toastmasters loved to thank J. Kannan, SK Shegar, Saravanan, Shankaree, Prada and Abiramy for bringing Indian cookies for all to enjoy. As the cookies were so delicious, some of the Toastmasters even kidnapped the cookies with permission from the cookies owners. Haha..



I think some of the Toastmasters want more meetings as SK Shegar, Andrew Tan, John Foo, ET Lee and Lee Chee Shen continued their own table topics while having dinner together outside after the official Toastmaster meeting. To summarize, the meeting were well organized but we must still look for more improvements for the coming Toastmasters meetings.

Photo by E T Lee, DTM
Text by TM Shegar