Division P Humorous Speech & Evaluation Contest - 5 September 2009

The Div P Humorous Speech & Evaluation contest ended with a blast. I must say that the Organising Chair, Sabariah with the help from ExxonMobil did a fantastic job organising the event. The room was packed and there weren't just enough chairs to accomodate the overflowing attendees.

The Division contest last Saturday saw 5 contestants for the Humorous contest, and another 7 for the Evaluation contest. They were Ahmad Salahuddin (MIM KL/Area P1), Mark Pui (PWC/Area P3), Mas Rizal A Rahim (TMIKL/Area P4), Kumar Tharumalingam (Tiger/Area P2) and Shazi Sultan who was actually the only female Humorous contestant this time around.

For the Evaluation contest, again we had Ahmad Salahuddin (MIM KL/Area P1), K Gobinath (Telekom/Area P1), Sirajudeen Abu Haniffa (CPA KL/Area P2), Vanitha Rangganathan (Ambank/Area P2), Terrence Stanley Dass (Melia/Area P3), Ivan Cheng (ITC Bintang/Area P4) and my very own club member, Mardhiyah M Bakir (DDYPC/Area P4).

The result were as follows:

Humorous Contest

WINNER - Kumar Tharumalingam (Tiger TMC/Area P2)

1^st Runner Up – Mas Rizal A Rahim (TMIKL/Area P4)

2^nd Runner Up - Ahmad Salahuddin Ahmad Fakhri (MIM KL/Area P1)

Evaluation Contest

WINNER - Sirajudeen Abu Haniffa (CPA KL/Area P2)

1^st Runner Up - Ahmad Salahuddin Ahmad Fakhri (MIM KL/Area P1)

2^nd Runner Up – Ivan Cheng (ITC Bintang/Area P4)

We even had a lovely surprise from the District

Governor himself, who managed to come to the contest with the TLI chair, Sandra. THank you!

Congratulations winners, and all contestants!

The audiences eager to hear the result of the contest.

And drum roll please.........

Eagerly awaiting the result of the Evaluation contest are our District Governor and the lovely Division Governor.

Contest Chair, Hakim Hamzah announcing the result. Gulp..

The 2nd Runner Up - Ivan Cheng!

Congratulations from members of Area P4!

Ahmad Salahuddin was our double winner. His POWER evaluation won him second on the

Evaluation contest, and his long title speech may have

well earn him points from the judges :D. He was third in the Humorous Speech Contest.

Our very own Div P winner - Sirajudeen. Besides getting the trophy and certificates all the way

from US (which our lovely Div Gov had to pick up all the way from KLIA), he also earn himself a free RM430 Annual convention ticket to Genting! Do us proud.

Wait, there's more. Odyssey Bus Line is sponsoring 2 return ticket to Singapore. How great is that!

AND THE RESULT FOR THE HUMOROUS SPEECH CONTEST WERE:

Our sole representative at the Humorous Speech contest - Mas Rizal of TMIKL was first RUnner Up. If only Daniel was around to see his dad's speech, I'm sure he would be equally proud as we were!

ANd yes, our winner! Kumar Tharumalingam from Exxon Mobil (caution: just because Exxon sponsore the venue, there was no such biasness!). This guy had us laughing from the very start. Indeed a great speaker. Congratulations, and fly the flag high!

And yes, as the winner, he will also get the convention ticket and the BUS TICKET to Singapore courtesy of Odyssey!

If you missed the fun, don't worry. We will bring the contest to your home, by providing you the dvd of the whole contest! Its up for grab for only RM15!

Organising Chair, Sabariah wrapping up. A job well done!

The Area Governors, Choi San and Hakim Hamzah

Message from our beloved District Governor, Ritchie. 2 minutes on the clock, and he did quite well considering its an impromptu speech. I was quite impressed with the statistics that he produced on Division P.

Ritchie, you should be an Engineer instead!

The much-awaited dialogue session, where some members did have some very good ideas for us to execute.

ANd yes, THE wrap up picture. Area P4 members capturing the winning moment with our very own winners for the Humorous Speech & Evaluation Contest. Congratulations!

(btw, this post is so haywired in the blog. Not sure whether I can fix this!)

suhanasidik@ toastmistrez.blogspot.com

Maxis Toastmaster Club Humor & Speech Evaluation Contest - 4 Aug 09

I was first introduced to toastmaster when I had dinner with a close friend, Wong@Aiman and a colleague of his, Azlan Supian. His enthusiasm about Tony Robbins and active involvement with Maxis Toastmaster caught my attention. I planned to further expose myself and visit Maxis Toastmaster, as at that time, Maxis meeting was held right next door, in the Maxis Tower.

Well, that was two years ago. A year later, I was re-introduced to Toastmaster by the MCOBA clan, which led to the setup of our very own PETRONAS DDYPC Toastmaster Club.

Now after two or so years, I was invited again to the roots of all beginning: Maxis TMC for the Humor & Speech Evaluation Contest. So obviously, it brought great memories to me about my so-called ‘discovery’ into toastmaster.

There wasn’t many that I know, but I do recognize a good friend, Maxis TMC Past President, Benny Tan. The Organising Chair, Peter Loh was also warm enough for meet and greet. But there were of course some other very good friend: Hakim Hamzah, Sabariah Jusoh, Almunirah Anuar, Ganesh Sangaran, and my very own club member, Muaz Azman.

What turn out to be more interesting was the fact that Maxis TMC is also one of those targeted clubs for the PETRONAS scholars to reside and complete their so-called KPI to PETRONAS. You see, ALL PETRONAS scholars are required to sign up for a toastmaster club and complete a certain no of speech requirement as part of their scholarship deal. A great way to ensure that the scholars are not just smart, but can speak confidently as well.

I particularly liked Munirah, a scholar who was brave enough to take part in the humor contest and went on to tell us jokes during the break… Extremely like her confidence!

Benny who talked about losing his luggage during a trip to Bangkok was crowned champion, while the very easy-going Wan won the Speech Evaluation contest. Indeed a great challenger for the coming contest.

The complete listing of all the winners are as follows:

The winners of Maxis TMC Humorous Speech Contest
Champion: Benny Tan
1st runner-up : Nurul Asyiqin
2nd runner-up: Nurmunirah

The winners of Speech Evaluation Contest
Champion: Wan Chee Weng
1st runner-up : Benny Tan

Congratulations all. Will definitely visit again :D.

suhanasidik @ toastmistrez.blogspot.com

Some pictures:


Some very impressive awards.


Some very eager audience.


Benny, myself and Almunirah.

Congrats Benny. Not bad eh. Winner for the Humor Contest, and the 1st Runner Up for Evaluation.

Chief Judge, Hakim Hamzah receiving certs from Org Chair, Peter Loh

Myself taking photo op with the PETRONAS scholars. Munira on the left side.

Winners. Congrats!

Some other role players

Maxis TMC members and guests

Great job guys!

IEM TMC Contest

I’ve always wanted to attend the IEM Toastmaster meeting, highly driven by the fact that two of the members (Ismail Omar, Nik Zaki) are close friends whom have always been supporting me as the Area Governor and the compelling need to return the favor, and most importantly, my background as Engineer (though not registered) has somewhat been the driver for me to ‘return to the root’.

So on Thursday, I decided to finally set the GPS to Bangunan Ingenieur (its French for Engineer) in PJ. Took me a whole 63 mintes trying to secure the building which is located above the big Pizza Hut on Jalan Timur, but hey, being me, getting somewhat lost is nothing new. So, I kept humming to the Westlife CD I had on the player while listening to the GPS repeatedly telling me that I am already here when I made the full circle of nowhere (oh, the building was a bit covered la.. Not my fault). Grr…
When I arrived, the Organising Chair Robert Ram and the Contest Chair, Intan were already there to welcome guests. I am lucky to get to know these 2 from the Area P4 Installation the other day, cause over the past few weeks, they have been a great toastmaster buddy and friend in need :D.

The line up for the contest were as follows:
3R Speakers – Ridzwan, Robert, R Ken
Evaluation Speakers – Ridzwan, Ismail Omar, Robert

Interestingly, the 3 Humor Speakers had the 3-R factor since their names started with R. Pretty much a big coincidence there (or planted :p).

Ken who has only been with the club for 1 month is only doing his second speech, but he did well. He managed to crack some very good jokes which I thought was both original and humorous. Ridzwan, who talked from his past experience was spontaneous and funny just being himself. The eventual winner, Robert was the confident type and he delivered his speech elaborately which worked well with his content.

For evaluation, the club’s President, Ismail Omar took the stage filling in the third empty seat though he has not recovered well from illness. That’s the toastmaster spirit there Mr President. In the end, Robert was again crowned as the champion for the speech evaluation contest.

In the end, I made a number of new acquaintances, and reconnect with old friends. Got plenty of exercise from big laugh big jokes as well.

Looking forward to see these guys advance to the next level.

Till then. Suhana Sidik @ http://toastmistrez.blogspot.com

Chief Judge

TM Intan Masayu with their Area Governor, TM Suresh

Ken with his cert for 1st Runner Up (bring Barbie next time yeah. hehe)

Robert - the proud winner of BOTH the Humor Speech AND Speech Evaluation Contest

TMIKL Humor & Evaluation Contest (Area P4)

I missed competing in a speech contest, but I guess that’s just one of the only apparent disadvantages of being an Area Governor.

I attended the TMIKL contest tonight, feeling quite nervous with my first assignment as the Chief Judge.

I competed in the Humor Contest last year, and came out 2nd in the Area P4 contest. The one thing I learned from competing is that for a Humor Contest, you need to speak from experiences cause that is the very thing that would tickle the audiences with. I was single last year, so it was obvious that my choice of topic was in the selection of man. The two contestants that we have from TMIKL, Mas Rizal and Ismail Omar did just that as well. They spoke from their experience in life and we could easily relate well to some of their stories.

I was seated at the corner of the room observing these two speakers from afar, feeling overwhelmed. Contesting as a speaker, and judging another speaker are two separate tasks that complement each other very well. I learnt instantaneously that to be a good speaker, you need to learn how to observe others and study the criteria that good speakers are judge upon. It’s about gaining enough knowledge on speaking skills, some what like cracking the mystery of how to become a better speaker! In the end, with the judges notes that I held from the studying I did the night before, I learnt a lot more observing the contestants spoke about their topic.

The second part of the session, the Evaluation Contest saw the participation of 5 eager contestants: Mas Rizal, Elizabeth Xavier, Emily Tan, Richard Toh and Ismail Omar. The very warm Elizabeth Xavier, a very experienced toastmaster and longtime member of TMIKL emerges champion. 1st Runner up goes to Mas Rizal and newbie Emily came out 3rd.

We may only have 2 contestants for the Speech Contest, but it was a tough fight nevertheless. Mas Rizal was crowned Champion of the Humor Contest.

To all the contestants, again as I mentioned in my closing speech, at the end of the day, there is no such thing as losers. Everyone is a winner! They won their very own battle of courage in which they came out bold in front of some 30 other audiences and spoke confidently. Indeed toastmaster gave that confidence and knowledge to better themselves.

But you know what, audiences were winners as well! They chose to come to the event and learn from these good speakers. Isn’t that just great?

As Area Governor, I was definitely happy with the fact that TMIKL took the initiative to organize the contest earlier. Both winners, Mas Rizal and Elizabeth now have longer time to prepare themselves for the 13th August Area Contest. So perhaps, we could very much have a very high expectation for these two. All the best guys!

My only regret was that i had my camera with me, but i didnt snap any pictures of the event (but not when the contestants are competing of course). Argh.. my bad. Maybe i'll do a better job next time.

To the rest of you, don’t forget.

13th August Area Contest is coming up real soon ~~~ See you there!

suhanasidik @ toastmistrez.blogspot.com