Unexpected....

....but well deserved! Things always happen, even though you may or may not expect it to come your way.

Well, yesterday I went for Toastmasters meeting at YMCA Ipoh. I have been attending such meetings for quite a few times to improve on my public speaking skills. This time, I attended the meeting alone as my parents had something on.

Yesterday's meeting was the first one of the year and it started at 8.03 pm. It started off with Sergeant At Arms (SAA) Pak Peter calling the meeting to order. Then the President of YMCA Ipoh Toastmasters Club CG Huan delivered his opening speech and made several announcement before Toastmater of the Evening (TME) Jacky Chong took over the rostrum.

Jacky first called upon the inspirer Pradeep to give the members and guests some inspiration messages. The inspiration that Pradeep gave the audience was "In order to change the world, one must first change him/herself before changing others". I totally agreed with this!

Then, it's back to Jacky and he asked the guests to introduce themselves one by one. There were a total of 8 guests, including me. Many of the guests were new faces and the number has broken the record of the club. Up next on the agenda was the introduction of role players where Jacky introduced the role players (including himself) and their respective roles.

Later, Jacky called upon the Word Master Singarair to provide the word for the evening - pre-dominant. The Word Master explained the meaning of the word and encouraged everyone in the hall to use the word in their speech if possible.

After that, Puan Nur Aida, the Table Topic Master, took over from the TME and began the Table Topic session. Since there were no theme available, the topics that she has prepared were of everyone's interest, starting from new year's resolution to Facebook. There were total 12 topics and 12 people iccluding 3 guests were given the privilege to voice their opinions. As each speaker were speaking, their time taken were being recorded by Pak Peter who was the timekeeper. Some of them spoke very well, such as May Foo, Dr Ngiam, Peter Ng etc but it was no surprise to me as they were experienced speaker. One Indian girl, Kani, caught my attention as she was able express herself well despite speaking for the first time.

It's time for manual projects presentations and there were supposed to have 2 speakers for the night. But one of them was unable to make it or the TME said he has chickened out, leaving Dore Rajah as the sole presenter of the night. And May Foo will be evaluating his presentation. Dore Rajah spoke on growing dragon fruit and presentation slides was very detailed but too wordy and he has to rush his speech towards the end as he realised that there isn't much time left. Anyway, there's always room for improvement.

When Dore Rajah was dome with his speech, it's time to take a short break. During this time, it's refreshment and fellowship time as members and guests mingled with one another. I had a question in my mind: whether guests are allowed to take part in the humour session. So I decided to ask CG Huan's opinion. CG said ususally it's for members only but he referred me to Dr Ngiam who was teh Humour Master of the night. Heeding his advice, I conslted Dr Ngiam who gave me the same reply but he said I can take part if there were no other people who were interested. I'm satisfied with his response, at least I asked.

Break time over, back to the show. Jacky introduced Dr Ngiam as the Humour Master. Dr Ngiam shared a number of jokes. Then, he paused for a while and mentioned there's one guest who would like to share his joke with everyone, That person is none other tham ME!! So I stepped forward and went ahead to share my joke. Here's the joke that I told:

One day, a small boy was not feeling well and was brought to a nearby clinic by his parents. While waiting for his his turn, he sat down on the bench in the clinic. The little boy noticed a pregnant woman sitting beside him and wondered why she has a big stomach.
So the boy asked the woman, "Excuse me, ma'am, may I know why is your stomach so big?"
"Oh, there's a baby inside my stomach." the woman replied.
"Is the baby good one or bad one?" the boy asked.
The woman asnwered, "Oh you silly boy, of course it's a good baby."
The little boy asked a third question but the question he asked really surprised the woman. The quiestion was: "If the baby is good, why did you eat it?"
(I hope you'll get the joke!!)

It's back to Dr Ngiam again and he wrapped up the session after sharing a few jokes. Then it's evaluation time and the General Evaluator, CG Huan, gave his review on the whole meeting. During his evaluation, he called upon Grammarian Pradeep, Ah Counter Chin Kok Wai and Timekeeper Pak Peter to report their findings. After the general evaluation was done, it's for some Golden Moment in which all members and guests voiced out their comments about the flow of the entire meeting.

Last but not least, the announcements of winners. Actually this was suppossingly be done before the Golden Moment but it doesn't matter. CG Huan announced the winners: first, the Champion for the Table Topc Session was Dr Ngiam (my guess was May Foo to be 1st, Kani 2nd & Dr Ngiam 3rd); second, the best Humourist gies to..... "drums roll* ME!!! I was totally surprised. I thought Dr Ngiam was going to make a clean sweep, I thought. There's no way I beat him as his jokes were better than mine. But it wasn't my joke that has won me the award, it's my courage. As a recognition for my efforts, CG Huan rewarded me with a token of appreciation. Then he drew the curtains of the meeting down. I walked out of the meeting room with heads held high as I made another breakthrough, having spoken in the Table Topic session in the previous meeting (which was on 18 Dec).