No Sparks?

9 June 2009

Word of the Evening: SPARKLING (ebullient, effervescent, scintillating, smart, witty, bright, brilliant, gleaming, glowing, radiant, shimmering, shining)

Did you just say no sparks? Absolutely wrong. Read the word of the evening again. Sparkling. A simple word isn't it? (don't know if you noticed, but sparkling is synonymous to ebullient! oops..there we go again!) And what better way to have a sparkling meeting than to have Lucas Ng as the TME! (haha..yes, some of you may know...we had a really good, sparkling time..Lucas can be heard "sparkling away" every time he speaks!!!) XD

The evening's SAA was Ong Siew Ming, calling the meeting to order at 6.45 pm. Bushra takes seat as Timer, Allan Ma handling the Ah Counter, Samuel Fo responsible for Table Topics, Muthu Kumar as Table Topics Evaluator, Vithiya taking Grammarian notes, and Grace Chong as the General Evaluator.

Fast forward.. Table Topics! Sam lived up to expectation and had another interesting twist to the session. Instead of drawing out papers, volunteers were to draw out items from a box! Hmm.. First to rise to the challenge was Wang De Xin who spoke on Online Games. Then it was Stephen Fernando whose lucky hands picked a packet of campbell soup. Of course, he has to talk about Campbell Soup! And it gets better from here... Amy Li then found herself a packet of Colgate plax staring at her.. Haha..yap, she had two minutes to share her story ... "Colgate plax is one item that you ought to have..it freshens your breath...etc etc" XD. The fourth participant, a first-timer Tan Boon Chuan from the Law School picked an item in green. A popular and one of the essential nutritious drink, 3-in-1 Milo!! We found out that the guy here doesn't really like Milo though.. :D Great job, Boon Chuan! Lastly, we had another first-timer, Gan Siaw Ching from the Secretarial Studies braving herself to the front, confidently until ... she saw the item in her hand. Her jaws dropped. Daia washing powder!! Ouch..even for me, this is gonna be tough but she did well, at moments flipping the tiny packet up and down seeking for more to speak on! Smart!!

Looking eager on the other end from my table was Muthu Kumar waiting impatiently for Lucas to finish his "sparkling" introduction of the Table Topics Evaluator. Then he rose and stepped up to the lectern. With a fierce look, he suddenly ... smiled, a big one.. =D and began sharing his opinion on the participants' performance earlier. Well done! A quality evaluation from the incoming VPPR of SCTMC.

Humour time! Open to the floor, Sam was "cheered" his way to the floor with a simple joke. Sze Yue (hehe..that's me..XD) then went out and shared another one. Stephen Fernando decided not to miss out on the fun and hurriedly churned out his famous KFC joke. Haha...heard that for like the tenth time already.. but the point is..ITS STILL FUNNY WHEN HE SAYS IT!! Gosh.. :P

And off we went for a short break...to savour 'the curry that was spilled' Hee... Delicious AND Sparkling!!

We continued to sparkle the night with an assignment speech by LIM SZE YUE with his 4th project from the Specialty Speeches manual. Objective - Read Out Loud. He delivered his speech extracted from a book entitled Drinking Coffee, Telling Stories and Making Money by Sim Quan Seng and Stephanie Sta Maria.

GRACE CHONG then took the stage with a short talk on The Education Program, briefing the audience on the basics of Toastmasters journey. It was timely as we had a few newcomers who I'm sure benefited and understood better on the achievements that they can look forward to. Grace conducted the session in a two-way communication style, throwing questions to the audience and receiving answers. This is when we had so much fun...almost everyone trying their best to "sparkle" in every sentence we used. First, it was Grace, then of course.. (kiasu XDXD) Lucas, then Sze Yue, Allan, Sam, Kumar, Vithiya... DANGER, Laughters everywhere!! Hahahha.. SAMUEL FO was then invited to give a demo Icebreaker speech and did a brilliant 4-minute speech, full of wit, vocal variety and appropriate body gestures. Whenever he stands in front of the audience, he seems to have the sparkle in his eyes. Cool, huh? :D

General Evaluator, Ms GRACE CHONG continued the ebullient mood with the General Evaluation session. ACB Joshua George was called upon to deliver his evaluation on Sze Yue's speech. To sum his evaluation, it wasn't one of the speaker's best performance. :( All roleplayers then delivered their report for the night, followed by the general evaluation of the meeting by Grace Chong. And oh by the way, Lucas' eyes were sparkling when Vithiya delivered her report. She lost count of the number of "sparkling" the energetic TME used. Sooo expected.

President wraps up the meeting, with a quick airtime slot by Sze Yue, as usual, reminding the audience of the meeting's report and the blog. "Those who are still not on my mailing list, please stay back for a moment. I need your sparkling email address" :D

That's it for 9 June 2009 meeting! What a spark it has been!! :D

Next meeting: 23 June 2009. Same time, save venue.

See you there!

Have a Cheerful and Lucky week ahead! Cheers!!


Prepared by,
LIM SZE YUE
VPPR