Friday, April 17, 2009

Meeting Held on 14th April, 09

I don’t have the faintest idea why I was asked by Master Leong aka Mr. President to take charge of MII BlogSpot. I doubt it’s because of my writing skills or because of my proficiency in English but when I asked my master, he said “it’s because you are capable and no one wants to do it!.” Will someone out there attest to my Master’s claim?

Whatever the reason may be, I have to oblige my Master because he is my Master and I am his ever obliging new servant.

(Kindly take note that some of the information shared with you here might be factually true or they were simply being made up to fill up the space.)

14th April, 09 was a first to everything for me in MII Toastmasters Club. As a new member, it was my first meeting; I was also assigned the Sergeant-at-Arms as my first role play. CTM Masdiana, the Toastmaster of the evening announced my role as “Rozi’s virgin role in MII Toastmasters Club”.

The theme for the evening was “Multi-Faith Holy Days”. Like I said earlier as it was my first meeting, my brain was overloaded with information that was toasted. I am unable to explain here precisely what the theme was about as I was busy switching on and off my hearing aid when my Master did the elaboration. The only thing I could recall was that April is a month where some religion/races in Malaysia have their holy day celebrations. To those who don’t believe in holy days, April is considered as the Fools Day for them.

We were honoured with the presence of two honourably young guests, possibly being dragged or arm twisted by the father, Mr. Wong. Mr. Wong was inducted to the club with a simple induction ceremony. I guess it must be a memorable evening for Mr. Wong because during dinner my Master has brought out a birthday cake to celebrate his birthday. Mr. Wong deserved to be mentioned in this BlogSpot because he had taken the efforts and initiative to join the MII Toastmasters club without being lured or harassed to the Club. According to him, he was hunting cum window shopping for an ideal club to join and after numerous disheartening queries, MII TMC was the only club that responded immediately to his request. Three cheers to Mr. Wong and to MII TMC, they are destined for each other.

I got to meet Monsieur Tilaka who has no resemblance of a Frenchman at all. The members gave him warm welcome back hugs after his holiday retreat in the hospital.

Interesting enough I need to highlight here that the word of the day was the interesting word of the day and that was “interesting”. The most appropriate word of the day because we had 3 interesting speakers who had interesting topics to entertain us such as ‘Cold Calls’ from En. Mohamad Abdullah, ‘the Demonstration Talk’ by Anna Hue and ‘Joint Management Bodies’ by F.C. Ho.

The ‘no-no’ word for the evening was ‘should’. Mike the General Evaluator for the evening brought to members’ attention that, that word was a very strong word, in fact too strong to be used during evaluation moments. No one has the right to tell the other person that they should or should not, therefore the word should, should not be used.

In the midst of sharing our enthusiasm among members during the handing over of roles on stage, we were reminded by our mother hen, the Toastmaster of the evening to observe the stage protocol. The rule is, nobody is to leave the rostrum until the next speaker goes forward to take over the rostrum. There must be change of guard, that’s how I would put it.

Ok lah Master, I have given this work way ahead of the deadline which is this weekend. My weekend is for my golf and there is no way I am going to sacrifice my golf to attend to my Master!!!!

Rozina Harun
Your New Blog Master