Kuching 2009 Toastmaster Convention

The Kuching convention was definitely a big success!

Myself (Suhana Sidik) and Azlan Mohaideen (the beloved President) were the only two representatives from DDYPC to the District 51 Annual Convention which officially ended today in Kuching. The three days convention starting from 17 August were held in Riverside Majestic Kuching with about 500 toastmasters from all over Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia attending the glorious event.

The annual event which was hosted by Azam Toastmaster is held with the theme ‘Act to Inspire and Motivate’. The event line up includes the International Speech and Table Topic contest for all the Divisional winners, as well as the anticipated inspirational session by the MAS CEO, Datuk Seri Idris Jala.

The event kicked off on Friday for the District Council meeting with the ultimate objective of choosing the 2009/10 District Council members. There was a tough fight for the Lieutenant General of Marketing (LGM) post which was conquered by Francis Ng, DTM who undoubtedly delivered the most forceful 2 minutes speech for the election. Our Division P also saw the contest of two strong candidates, Dr Carren Lee from Premier Advanced TMC and Ron Low Chye Seng from the Ukay TMC. Ron, who was nominated by the floor did not managed to surpass the enormous votes already received by Dr Carren Lee who has executed an excellent election campaign leading up to the District Council meeting. The line up for the top District posts are as follows:

• District Governor (DG) – Richard R Chong (Mas Mawar TMC)
• Lieutenant General of Education & Training (LGET) – Thannimalai Letchuman (YMCA TMC)
• Lieutenant General of Education & Training (LGET) D51 Rest – Mohamad Ariff Irwani (Azam TMC)
• Lieutenant General of Marketing (LGM) – Francis Ng (Money Mastery TMC)
• Lieutenant General of Marketing (LGM) D51 Rest – Mien Soenari (The Catalyst TMC)

But you must also be wondering who the new lineups are for the Division Area Governors, right! Let’s congratulate these toastmasters:

• Area Governor P1 – Hakim Hamzah
• Area Governor P2 - Sabariah
• Area Governor P3 – Choi San
• Area Governor P4 – Suhana Sidik (yes, yours truly)

For your info, DDYPC is under Area P4. So yes, we can expect wonderful result after this :D).

Later on that night, we were then entertained by the Convention Welcoming Dinner with the presence of Azam CEO, Datuk Aloysous, which also included the welcoming dance by the local dances from Petra, who were dressed in a cat(@Kucing) suit. The participants were then pulled to join them to dance to the tune of Pocho-Pocho at the end of the dinner.

The next day (Saturday) was the Run Off for both the table topic and speech contest. With the large no of divisions in the district (District 51 is currently the largest district in the world!), the contest were broken into 2 groups of semi finals. The Division P representative, Ahmad Fakhri Hamzah who was competing in both the Table Topic and Speech Contest had delivered exceptional quality of speeches, but lost out to even better speakers from other division! These were the quality that had both myself and Azlan at awe.

The afternoon did not just end there. Three Educational Sessions were organized with topics on the Aristotle famous ‘Three Musketeer’ in Public Speaking delivered by Prof Zaharom Naim from USM, followed by the ‘The Four Lesson for Success’ by Past D-51 District Governer, Datuk Adeleen DTM.

The Installation Dinner held that night was also an excellent Education Session by itself, with the inclusion of a 70 minutes sharing session given by Datuk Seri Idris Jala, a name who has made headlines over the past 2 years. He has managed to overturn MAS from the brink of a USD400 Million debt to generating profit of over USD 200 Million in less than one year! The Sarawakian felt at ease speaking at his hometown, that he was willing to share 6 of his successful business transformation which formulated the MAS success. The secret that he shared was:

1. Game of the Impossible
2. P&L Anchorage
3. Discipline of Action
4. Situational Leadership
5. Winning Coalition (Does this VERY sound familiar to the PETRONAS folks?)
6. Divine Intervention

Interested to know more? Come and talk to either myself or Azlan to find out more :D

The dinner ended with the installation of the new District Officers, and the presentation of the 24 clubs who managed to achieve President Distinguished Club as at 10 April. Indeed, this will be DDYPC’s ultimate goal to achieve!

The next day (Sunday aka today) was the highlight of the whole conference itself. The participants were entertained with wonderful speeches given by the top three winners emerging from the Run Off held the day before. The quality had indeed improved with the speakers seemed rather more confident than the day before, and it was even tougher to narrow down our selections for our Top picks of the day.

However, the winners were as follows:

D51 TABLE TOPIC WINNERS

• Champion: Palaniappa Subramanian (Silterra TMC, Division N)
• 1st Runner-up: Mary Barton (WIM TMC, Division W)
• 2nd Runner-up: Jeremy Teo (Nilai University Club, Division C)

D51 INTERNATIONAL SPEECH WINNERS

• Champion: Ong Swee Keat (Bayan Baru TMC, Division N)
• 1st Runner-up: Stephen Fernando (Hilton Petaling Jaya TMC, Division C)
• 2nd Runner-up: Saw Chin Bin (Penang Advanced TMC, Division S)

Some of the speakers had us laughing all the way throughout their speech while there are those who had us at tears with their story. One particular speaker, Saw Chin Bin started off with lots of humor injected to his speech before revealing to the participants about the recent death of his wife. In the end when asked about how he copes with the losing, his answer was simply the very last word that his wife uttered, ‘Move On …. I have’. Overall, district 51 is blessed with wonderful spakers indeed!

I am sure you would want to see all the speeches given by the speakers, so no worries! We will bring Kuching to you. A DVD copy of the 3 days event will be made available to participants who want to bring it back as souvenir and yes indeed, we have purchased one for that very reason. There’s a lot that we want to share with all of you, and you can indeed relate more when you watch the videos.

Right now, we are on the way back to Kuala Lumpur on a delayed Air Asia flight (I wonder whether Idris Jala is sending us a message here) with a bunch of other toastmasters who are taking the same flight with us. We made new friends, and have learn a lot from this very first Toastmaster conference. Indeed we are looking forward for the next Semi-Annual Convention which will be held in Genting Highland, and to be hosted by MAS Mawar TMC. Probably a good opportunity for you guys to come and join us, and start preparing yourself to contest for a humor speech! Yes, the Genting convention will host both the Humor Speech Contest as well as the Evaluation Contest. Probably this time, we will fly the DDYPC flag high …

Until later…10.59 pm, 1 more hour to destination.

(Picture of the Lutong TMC who will be holding their 2010 convention next year in Miri. Hurry, come and book your slot and it's a guaranteed to change your life)