KL Convention Training with DTM Dunstan

The Genting Convention is coming up pretty soon, and I signed myself up as part of the Organising Committee. I feel like I’m too free nowadays, that all my free hours are spent mostly on either attending toastmaster meeting or doing my planning work for toastmasters.

So, yes, I dreaded the fact that I had to wake up real early on a Saturday afternoon, and that is to attend a training session with 50 other strangers. But hey, in the spirit of toastmasters, the time spent would surely be categorized as time enriching.

Besides, the opportunity to meet countless great speakers as well as some of the very legend of District 51 is indeed investment worth making. And then again, DTM Dunstan is one of those you’d be glad you spent the Saturday afternoon with indeed.

This would definitely be start to a wonderful team effort for the Genting Convention.

And hey, if you haven’t got a ticket yet, grab it quick!

Meeting #25 Best Speech - 'Seringgit'

Speech Title: Seringgit

Speaker: Suhana Sidik, CC

Any of these sights looks familiar? What about the certificate bearing the Jabatan Kebajikan masyarakat logo? Have anyone approached you with these certs as a supporting document?

What I like most about my country Malaysia and what I must be proud the most about being Malaysian is the fact that we may be skimpy on paying the tolls, parking ticket, that extra tips to the waitresses or some (ehem) even resort to stealing the papers and magazines from the office, but we always have the extra seringgit to give away (show money).

But why do we do it?

If you ask any girls in the room, our answer may be too simple. It is what we call ‘Right at Your Face’ syndrome. We are just a fragile creature with a generous soul. We can’t bear the sight of a blind pakcik, or kids in shabby clothing or those poor souls who lost an arm or leg. It just melts our heart away. Besides, we spend more than 1 ringgit to buy chocolates anyway, so why not do something good with it?

But what’s the excuse with guys?
Wait. Have you noticed that beggars don’t normally go and approach a group of boys, especially the smokers type. These people would rather save that 1 ringgit on 2 more cigarettes than actually give you any money. But that is not the case if you approach a group of guys with a pretty lady in the group. Ok, beggar alert from 50 m away. You know boys tend to be competitive right? Out they compete to see who can reach out fastest to their wallet in the hope that she would go ahh at the sight of your kind generosity to help the disadvantage. Ladies trust me, some boys are just a show off!

And there are just tonnes of reason why I think Malaysian is a generous bunch!

So yes, we are trying hard to eliminate the so called ‘Poor-Index’. In our heart, everyone wants to try and be a super hero. So yeah, if we don’t have Hiro Nakamura’s power, let’s reach into the wallet and be our very own modern Robin Hood. We steal from our very own pocket in order to give other people what we think they deserve.

But let me tell you here that it doesn’t work that way.

The beggars that you see here in Malaysia is no ordinary beggar. Instead, they are intelligent beggars or what I would call ‘intgar’. These ‘intgar’ would offer you tissues, stickers and tonnes of other things in exchange for your seringgit. And why do you have to give in to their demand at all times?

Do you notice that the more you give, the list of ‘intgar’ multiplies rapidly. Have you noticed that if you have lunch in Wisma Central for example, within that 1 hour, there would be 2 ‘intgars’ coming to your group screaming for seringgit. Sometime, you would ease your way reaching into your wallet and at times, you would nod and shooh them away. And here I am, recommending that ALL of you present here to do the latter.

Nowadays with the many ‘intgar’ in Malaysia, how do you differentiate between an ordinary beggar with disadvantage, with another intelligent beggar?
And if you are really a generous bunch, why don’t you go through the proper channel? That would probably be a more tax effective way of donating your money away.

Have you ever imagine the irony of these ‘intgar’ and their guide. Their so-called job of an ‘intgar’ is to beg for money, and the guide is to bring these ‘intgar’ around from tables to tables. Look at the condition of the guide. These guides are those perfectly normal human being much like you, with two perfectly working eyes, hands, legs and at times, they look more healthy than you are. Yet, they are working for another lesser capable human being, the pakcik buta as the boss. Just imagine how much the blind pakcik or makcik is earning to be able to pay for the guide, and still make enough money to support his/her own lifestyle.

And for lifestyle, I do mean A LIFESTYLE. Some is capable enough to earn thousand of ringgit to even afford a Honda Civic to drive home everyday. Some would walk with a limp using their cane to Hartamas, and leave away with a brand new Honda Civic everynight with their leg suddenly perfectly healed (yes, true story seen with this very own eyes). Well, that’s how seringgit help improve their lifestyle ... by a mountain.

Imagine this. Seringgit in 2 minutes per table equal to thirty ringgit in one hour. You beg for five hours a day and you get 150 ringgit per day. Multiply that with 20 working days and you get 3K per month, and that is just the basic so called ‘salary’. And you’ve never accounted for the extra overtime, and multiple seringgit per table and etc2. It does sound tempting actually, a probable business venture.

But let’s inject common sense into it.

Please don’t fall into the seringgit scheme, which is much like a Ponzi scheme. Use the legal channel to donate away your money. Seringgit, though maybe small to you may accumulate to a lot more if there are even 10% of the people in this room are guilty of donating their money away. Do not support this seringgit business. Say No to these Intgar.

So L&G, now, what do you do if the ‘intgar’ come and approach you? :p

District Officer Training (DOT) – June 12, 2009

What a better way to spend Friday night than with fellow toastmasters.
And what better gift to compliment that than looking at your perfectly spelt name tag lying on the table, awaiting for us to claim possession.
It was a great start to our toastmaster journey of as we take office cum 1 July 2009.

The District Officer’s Training concluded last Friday was a great success with about 50 Area Governors, Division Governors and Senior District Officers attending the session which was held in MAS Training Centre in Kelana Jaya.

The training kicked off with the opening speech given by DG Joseph Gomez, DTM. Joe, as some calls him, was the epitome of the typical modest leader. He started off his speech asking the governors to begin the journey strong and maintaining that momentum to make an impact up until the end of the tenure. Governors were also asked to enjoy the fantastic next 12 months journey and assist the current team to finish strong towards the end.

The DG-elect, Ritchie Chong, ACG, ALS then briefly talked about the incoming President, Gary Schmidt, DTM and the new motto for the year, ‘Confidence, Leadership, Service’. He then continues on to present the topic of ‘Achieving Success Standard’. Sharing from his previous personal experience as an Area Governor, he mentioned how the experience was a challenging but very fulfilling moment for him, and ensured us that it will be a journey that we will enjoy.

The LGET-elect was up next presenting the topic of ‘Building a Successful Team’. He went to explain that a super team must be mission-focused, service-oriented, know the goals, dedicated to quality, committed to overcoming barriers to success, visible and accessible and most importantly, have the quality to exudes energy, excitement and commitment. He even shared his personal experience of failing in his bid for the position of Area Governor, but determined to try again and successfully securing the job a year after. To him, the right determination complimented with a strong steam will indeed make the challenges ahead be a great journey all together.

Francis, DTM who gave one of the most powerful speech during the last convention to eventually earn his post as the LGM was the next speaker; sharing his passion in ensuring every club is a great club. In his presentation of ‘Maintaining Strong Clubs’, he shared the 4 key factors also as known as CARE (C-CCs, A –ACs, R-Retention of members, E-Extension of clubs) for toastmasters, and with his previous credentials of Area Governor of the Year and Division Governor of the Year, he was indeed one of the most committed toastmaster around.

We were swept away with the next presentation given by Leann, DTM with the topic ‘Building New Clubs’. She even gave away tips on the quest of prospecting new clubs. She mentioned that one must be able to do their very own research on current clubs, target a community with more than 10’000 people, pursue a major corporation with more than 150’000 employees and even use up any possible leads that they could gain. It was indeed a great inspiration to all of us listening to this very first TLI chair, who even shared with us her passion of speaking when she said, ‘Each time I speak, I learn something’. I think it was mutual.

Ramdas, DTM may have taken 10 years to complete his CTM, but the years were all well spent. We were all ears when he took us through the last topic of the evening, ‘Conducting Quality Contest’. With his vast years of experience serving as Chief Judge in many contests before, he shared his many encounters with problem contestants and even provided the many scenarios to test us (which we ace!). He even sound like one of the ones who actually memorize the Contest Rule Book from cover to cover! Well done!

The event may have well wrapped up at about 11 pm, but it was indeed a commendable session organized by the Senior District Council.

What’s more interesting was the fact that all the presenters talked about the Toastmasters mission, which is to enhance the performance AND extend the network of clubs. Even DTM Leann relates it to the story of Alice in The Wonderland. When Alice was lost and asked the white rabbit for direction, the only reply she got was ‘Any road is fine if you don’t have a direction to go’. See, how true it is coming from a ‘white rabbit’? So, start memorizing your mission and make it your toastmaster statement!

15 Division Governors.
79 Area Governors.
‘Confidence, Leadership, Service’.
Together we make it happen!

P Div & Area Governors (From left: Hakim, Sabariah, Suhana, Choi San, Dr Caren)

Reported by:
Suhana Sidik
AG P4 Elect 2009/2010
13/6/09

Installation Event - DDYPC/ITC Bintang/TMIKL/MID/TTDI/IEM

Come and join our exciting event!!!

Date: 28 June 09

Time: 12 pm - 3 pm

Venue: Restoran Nelayan, Tasik Titiwangsa

Cost: ONLY RM40/person

RSVP your attendance today

2009/2010 CLUB OFFICERS

Dear all,
I am proud to announce the line-up for our Area P4 office bearers for the respective clubs as follows:

ITC BINTANG
Meeting days : 7:00 pm, 1st & 3rd Wednesday
Meeting Venue : Federal Hotel, 2nd floor, Jalan Bukit Bintang, Kuala Lumpur, WP, 55300, Malaysia

PRES: Victor Lee, CC, CL
VPE: Penny Chin, TM
VPM: Robin Yap, CC
VPPR: Jeffrey Teh, CC, CL
SEC: Christina Lim, TM
TRS: TBA
SAA: Evonne Chong, TM
IPP: Melvin Tham, CC, CL


TMIKL TOASTMASTERS CLUB
Meeting days :7:30 p.m., 2nd & 4th Tuesday
Meeting Venue : 21st Floor Amoda Building Jalan Imbi, Kuala Lumpur, WP, 55100, Malaysia

PRES: Mas Rizal bin Abd Rahim
VPE: Elizabeth Xavier
VPM: Nik Mohamed Zaki

VPPR: Sidney Leong Sheng Ng
SEC: Emily Tan
TRS: Tan Teong Boon
SAA: Teng Louis Gan
IPP: Cyril Jonas


DDYPC TOASTMASTERS CLUB
Meeting days : 12:00 pm, 1st & 3rd Thursday
Meeting Venue: Level 40 Tower 1 Petronas Twin TowersKuala Lumpur City Centre, Kuala Lumpur, WP, 50088, Malaysia

PRES: Stefanie Khaw

VPE: Tunku Indra B. Tunku A. Muthalib

VPM: Ivan Lai Hung Pei

VPPR: Azlan B. Mohaideen
SEC: M. Muaz B. Azman
TRS: Khairul Fadhli Kassim
SAA: Mardhiyah Mohd Bakir
IPP: Azlan B. Mohaideen


MID TOASTMASTERS CLUB
Meeting days : 2:00 pm, 1st & 3rd Thursday
Meeting Venue : 12th Floor, Wisma Sime Darby, Jalan Raja Laut, Kuala Lumpur

PRES: Izaitul Farah Ibrahim
VPE: Wan Hakimah bt Abd Rahim
VPM: Normaizatul Akmal bt Tujad
VPPR: Farizah Inting
SEC: Norhazlinawati Mat
TRS: Leelakumari Vennayagam
SAA: Mohd Fadzil Azma b Mat Saad
IPP: Selvarani Siniah

Congratulations all. Looking forward to work with all of you!

DDYPC TMC Election - Office Bearers 2009/10

They say leaders are not born overnight, but I beg to differ. Election does just that!

DDYPC TMC held its election on 21st May to choose the 7 officers to take up the stewardship of DDYPC cum this 1 July 2009. It was a tough contest as all the seats had at least 3 nominations to the post, and at times, the members were asked to re-vote as they could not reach a majority consensus.

It gets more interesting as the members also had the opportunity to listen to the nominees’ quick 2-minutes speech, and their eagerness to serve the members.

Alas, we are proud to bring you the new club officers, as follows:

President: Stefanie Khaw Sui Lynn (PED/ PEC)
VP of Education: Tunku Indra b Tunku A Mutalib (PMU/ PRD)
VP of Membership: Ivan Pei Lai Hung (XD/XPG)
VP of Public Relations: Azlan Mohaideen (DD/ DPG)
Treasurer: Khairul Fadhli b A Kassim (PMU/ POM)
Secretary M Muaz Azman (DD/DFE)
Sargeant-At-Arms Mardhiyah bt M Bakir (R&T)

Congratulations all.

We can all expect a great year ahead of us with these credible people to lead! Our big THANK YOU to the outgoing committee for your effort and hard work to ensure the club’s success. It was not easy to become a charter committee, but all of the officers have done well in building up the momentum of the club.

But all the hard work would not have paid off without the support from the members. YOU can make it happen! Let’s strive towards achieving a SELECT Distinguished Club this year, and a PRESIDENT Distinguished Club the year ahead!

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)