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Special unit of Sandakan Toastmasters had it easy on their Recruiting Members Mission as two more convicts decided to surrender to the alluring and promising club that aims to enhance communication and leadership skills by becoming a member themselves.

1st Convict: Mr. David Chong (ACB)

2nd Convict: Mr Noor Azmi

I reckon for a convict, they look mighty jolly. P.S. David, you remind me of a song "For he's a jolly good fellow...." :)

Training Meeting on the 27th September 2007 led by Toastmaster of the Evening, TM Melissa was very fruitful as usual. Started off with the Invocator's Thought of the Day on how one must learn to be thankful both in good and bad circumstances. In short, be positive people..!

After Madam President's address, we were challenged to give a 2 minutes impromtu speech led by Table Topic Master, CL Norman Chin. The theme for the table topic session was "How to Sell'. So here's what I realized. Everyone can sell. We had a mixture of accountants, engineers, housewives, contractors and also business people in the club. Yet, despite their profession, they can still sell. "Wicked"

During tea break, everyone was enjoying their roti jala as most proceed for their second helping.


During the second session of the training meeting, two members embarked on their speech project; ACG Datuk Hassan and TM Ling How Kee. Both speakers did well. :)

Next training meeting on 11th October 2007 will be adopting the Raya Theme. Toastmasters of the Evening will be ATG Datuk Hassan. So, members, I look forward to see all of you in your Kebaya, Songket, Baju Melayu etc.

This is TM Melissa signing off.

Be Thankful

Be thankful that you don't already have everything you desire. If you did, what would there be to look forward to?

Be thankful when you don't know something, for it gives you the opportunity to learn.

Be thankful for the difficult times. During those times you grow.

Be thankful for your limitations, because they give you opportunities for improvement.

Be thankful for your mistakes. They will teach you valuable lessons.

Be thankful when you're tired and weary, because it means you've made a difference.

It's easy to be thankful for the good things.

A life of rich fulfillment comes to those who are also thankful for the setbacks.

Find a way to be thankful for your troubles, and they can become your blessings.

Does it make sense?

If I were to say 'Bee' and Toastmasters' exclusively, can you relate between those two?

Just to share with you a conversation script between the president and yours truly in skype just a couple of minutes ago...

Get it? No? Well, who said all things have to make sense? Humor it aight!..:)

On a different note, I just got word from Datin Grace that David Chong of Tawau Toastmasters will be visiting our club this coming Thursday Meeting on the 27th September 2007. Yay...another visitor... I did mention somewhere that we just love visitors.. It's like adding the 8th Colour to the already 7 colours rainbow.

Another brief update. Now, if you may, take out a pencil and a paper of something to jot this down. The Evaluation and Humor Speech Contest will be held on the 6th October 2007, 7pm at Grace Inn, Tawau. All are welcome and admission is free. P.S. I wonder if there's food. Geez....:)

Last but not least, members, please pay your T.I. Dues. by 1st October to our Treasurer TM Wong Kah Yun. You may contact/sms her at 019-813 1618

Cheers everyone.

Have a nice week !

"They said for every minute you laugh, you'll live 7 minutes longer.." :D

Training Meeting on 13th September 2007.

The beauty of Toastmasters is being around positive people... So last Thursday Training Meeting was rather small in quantity. Did that dampen our spirit? Heck no. It further challenged members to take up more role as one puts it "Toastmasters wear many hats"

We had the honour of ATMS John Liew, Treasurer for KKTMC and CC Ivy Fung, President for Api Toastmasters, KK, to visit our club. We just love visitors from other club. Their presence always make a difference to our meeting. The Toastmasters of the evening was TM Alice Kok and I reckoned she did a good job. Well done!

By the way, word of the day was "Cozen" Go figure the meaning out. Although I did put an image showing the meaning below. I have a rhyme in fact for the word cozen.

The was a boy named Tarzan

who likes to cozen a dozen..

: )

The September babes (Alice and Melissa) enjoyed the super sweet chocolate cake. Everyone was praising the noodles served during break.

Here's a collage of all the beautiful people who made a difference during the meeting.


Next Training meeting on 27th September 2007 (Thursday). Toastmasters of the evening is TM Melissa.

Cheers!

The place to be..

for today of course is Private Room, Ming Court Restaurant, Sabah Hotel, Sandakan Sabah Malaysia. :)

Sandakan Toastmasters Training Meeting for 1st Thursday of the Month of September.

Gosh, even as I'm typing S-e-p-t-e-m-b-e-r , I realized how time flies. It's like August was just yesterday and October will come soon. Then November, then December then it will be 2008. So members, time to do some reality check. You know how when we ushered into 2007 months back, most of us must have had made some resolutions for this year whether we want to travel more, or lose more weight or in the pretext of Toastmasters, complete a set of speech project or leadership project.

Question is, have you or have you not achieve your resolutions, your aims or maybe some of it? If you find yourself having achieve none, well, there is still time. It's never too late. But don't wait for your dreams or your aims materialize itself. You've got to work for it.

"As you sow, so you shall reap"

Anyway, see you in training meeting. We will have two visitors from KKTMC this evening; ATMC John Liew and CC Ivy Fung. Buckle up. Let's be a dear host, shall we?

Cheers,

TM Melissa

VPPR 2007/2008

Let's do something different...

Friends...

To be able to deliver a good speech, you have to do a well preparation. The work. From choosing a topic, researching the topic, to constructing a speech out of it and lastly to practice it over and over again as the saying goes, "Practise makes perfect." This is a fact well understood and known to all. Yet, I'm saying this again as a reminder to all who will be delivering a speech in the near future, that is including myself.

I will be embarking on my 7th speech project: Research your topic next Thursday. I feel the need to do good in the next speech because frankly speaking, from speech project 1 to 6th, I've always lacked the initiative to prepare prior to my speech. As a result, there's nervousness knowing the fact that I'm about to deliver a speech when I don't actually feel prepared, the time factor, I think the first 3 speeches, I talked way over the time limit, etc. and the many flaws you might notice in a speech when a speaker is not prepared. In several time, I only chose my topic the day before or even the day I was supposed to deliver one. Reason being, busy. Someone told me once "No, its because you're a procastinator". As much as I want to kick that person out of the planet for saying I'm a procastinator, I find some truth in it and just bit my lip.

So, for your next speech, make sure that you are well prepared. Invest some time to practice it over and over again. So, when you finish delivering your speech , at least you will feel more satisfied knowing the fact that you have done your speech project well enough.

P.S. And hey, I've got my topic ready more than a week prior to coming next Thursday. :)

"One important key to success is self-confidence. An important key to self-confidence is preparation."

Cheers,

Yours in Toastmasters,
TM Melissa.

More on Merdeka BBQ...

Okay, so as mentioned in previous posts (mind you, that's plural. See, when it comes to food, one cannot NOT talk about it), yeah, so we had our Merdeka BBQ get together.

Three Musketeers (For the lack of description :P)

BBQ, 31st August at Datin Grace's Residence

Food and fellowship

Chicken wings and squids

There were plenty of food and some of the food in the wish lists were granted. Chicken wing and sausages, a definite, sea food e.g. squids, Alice and Marc kept raving about how good it was, garlic bread, limited, should have more!, grilled banana, I reckoned it was unusual but delicious nevertheless, chicken pie by Eleanor, I'm sure it was good considering I was only an hour late, but everyone 'sapu until clean' it already, sheesh! :P, marshmallow, nice when you know just the exact heat to make the inside melt but outside still a little crisp, and I could just go on, could I?

Of course, what's a BBQ without the casts, huh? All those who were there, you people are just lovely, you know that? From President, Datin Grace (of course what, it was held at her place), ol' members Amy, Eleanor, Kenny etc, to new members, Lam and Bee Ling. Of course not forgetting a few lovely guests who made the BBQ merrier.

Norman and Lam

Marc, Alice, Janet and Datin Grace

Kenny must have talked about something funny until Alice was laughing her head off..

Fairy love the bones!

So, I'd say, we should have this more often. It does not have to be all about eating. What I mean is the fellowship. Let's go watch movie or something.

Well, I'll sign off here.

Cheers

TM Melissa. *Peace!*

Humorous Speech and Speech Evaluation Contest

Message from Contest Chair, CL Norman Chin:-

My heartiest congratulation to CL, Dusun Chong for winning both the Humorous Speech & Evaluation Speech Contest. Cheers!

Also, congratulation to ATMG Datuk Hassan for being the first runner up in the Evaluation Speech Contest.

For the past 2 years, I have been a regular contestant to our club level’s speech contest and I always took for granted the hard work by the organizing team until this year, I was the contest chairperson (by default). It was not as easy as I first thought. Luckily, the contest went smoothly with only minor hitches.

I would especially like to thank ATMB Dora for her guidance & help to make this humorous speech and speech evaluation contest a successful one. I learned a lot from her!

For those who missed the speech contest, I would like to tell you that Dusun’s humorous speech title was “Sleep with Some one”. I thought it was really superb and everybody laughed hysterically especially Amy and Alice, both seated at the timer’s corner. Well done Dusun!

I would also like to thank JR Chia for being the Test Speaker for the evaluation speech contest. For your information, JR brought his wife as an encouragement and support. P.S. JR, When is your wife joining? J

Last but not least, I would like to thank all contestants for both contests, as my “Sifu” Anthony Robbin once said and I quote “the moment you step up to take the challenge, you are already a better person.”

All and all, I really enjoy this “Toastmasters journey” very much and hope all of you can be apart of it in the near future.

Yours in Toastmasters,
CL Norman Chin.

And it was all good and fun...

BBQ Post coming up..Waiting for pictures... All in all, it was fun...food was great, fellowship was great, everyone was enjoying themselves..and we are already planning for the next get together. Moon cake festival!..Let's have pot luck this time?

Cheerios!