"A New Beginning" on a "A Special Day"

080808, a special day for many people around the world; many couples chose that date to walk down the aisle, and many chose to stay home waiting for China Olympic Opening. And, most importantly 080808 also marked a special beginning for Vistana Toastmasters Club. Besides having the meeting on this special day, the meeting started at 8.08pm, we have 8 attendee (many stayed at home for Olympic Opening Ceremony), and 8 table topic speakers.

Although there were only 8 persons attending the meeting, but 'SIZE DID NOT MATTER', the number of attendee did not weaken the 'chemistry' of the meeting. It started with our Madam President, Toastmaster Sarimah sharing her 'Secret', a book that she read recently, Table Topic Master, Ainul turned all of us into Sportsmen and Sportswomen in Olympic by her topics all related to Olympic games. It ended with wonderful evaluation session conducted by our honourable guest from KL, CTM Parasakti.

So? What's so special about the meeting? First of all, we had all our exco members dressed formally that evening for our second purpose; that was to launch our new implementations to improve club performance and enhance learning curve of members and guest.

After all the effort from the team of Vistana Toastmasters Club and guidance from Klang Valley members, we are glad that we see positive results in membership strength and meeting quality. On 8 August 2008, 8.08pm, we officially announced few changes that we would like to implement in Vistana Toastmasters Club, it might be common things that other strong clubs doing all the time, but over here we could not due to our membership strength in the past.

The new implementations including the launching of:

No. 1: Mentoring Program,

No. 2: in order to improve meeting quality, we formalized of Role Players' duties and responsibilities, meeting roster for members to pre-plan speaking slots and roles; and theme for every meeting to add varieties to spice up meeting ambient.

No. 3: club website as a place for Vistana Toastmasters to share our Toastmaster-ing experience and nametag to increase the sense of belonging.

080808, a brand new beginning to Vistana Toastmasters Club, and this new beginning will mark new challenges for us here to make Vistana Toastmasters Club a better club. A place we learn, we share, we enjoy and we proud of.



Pohlin
TME for 080808
Vice President of Education

A New Beginning

The Chinese believes that the number 8 will bring you luck, lots of luck. Well, we at Vistana believe that too, that's why we had our 08.08.08 meeting themed as 'A new beginning'.

And yes, what a new beginning it was. But i'll let the pictures speak for themselves first... more report after the break guys!... Stay tune to this blog aite!

Vistana's Record Breaking Event

Vistana Toastmasters Club had its meeting on 25 Jul 2008. The meeting was made more merrier and lively with the participation of 10 guests from the Hong Leong Group of Companies as well as our Distinguished Toastmasters (DTMs), Zaharah and Sue Ding.

Madam President, Sarimah, touched on the subject of Kaizen or continuous improvement, which all of us need to inculcate in our minds and make it a way of life, in order to improve our communication and leadership skills.
TME Kula spoke about how famous personalities had passion in their hearts to improve themselves in public speaking.

Table Topics and Humour sessions were handled by Gunendran, and there was a mix of topics which everyone had an interest in. Some of our guests, although shy, gave it a try and showed that they can stand in front of an audience and deliver their thoughts. Gunendran's jokes had everyone laughing their hearts out.

Assignment speakers, Tee and Sabrina showed our guests that they are capable of delivering their speeches with confidence, and with practice, anyone can speak so as to inspire and captivate their audience.

DTM Zaharah gave an impressive briefing on history of TM to our guests who were convinced that Vistana TM is the place where they can sharpen and enhance their speaking and leadership skills.
DTM Sue Ding talked about mentoring and how this could be of great help to new members who may initially face difficulty in preparing their speeches, etc..

In relation to role playing, there was always some members volunteering their service to make the meeting a successful event.

The meeting ended at about 11 pm.


TME of the nite,
Kula

Toastmasters Leadership Institute

Unforgettable

11 July 2008, a date which is unforgettable for most of Vistana Toastmasters club members especially me. On this day we embark our new term for Toastmasters journey as we are having the first Toastmasters meeting for the term. It was a scintillating start for us as we continue our aspiration to become the leading Toastmasters club in Kuantan and East Coast. Our club President Sarimah’s opening speech share with us her an inspirational notion about not to procrastinate things that can be done today.



The opening speech truly an invocation speech for all of the twelve members and guest that night. The speech also reminds me to complete this newsletter as soon as possible. This is the first Vistana Toastmasters newsletter to be put in our blogspot which is www.divisionb.blogspot.com. What a pressure for me! Anyhow it is really was an honour for me and I must thanks our Area B4 Governor ACS, ALB Johnson Yike for that. He is the one who come out this brilliant idea to put our newsletter in the blogspot.



Table Topic session by Toastmasters Poh Lin is an unforgettable session for me as I share a deeply personal “secret” in that session. What deeply personal “secret”? You may ask! I guest you have to be there on that night to know my “secret”. Hahaha! It was a fruitful session for all the Table Topic speakers especially we have a guest Miss Karti from BASF Petronas sharing her first Table Topic experience. It good to know that the level of English has substantial improve as it was point out by Table Topic Evaluator Kula and Grammarian Poh Lin.



It really an excellent start from the term as we have 3 assignment speakers pursuing their Competent Communicator award on that night. This means we are one step closer to achieve 4 CC for this tem and at the same time achieve 2 DCP point. We have Sabrina with her Project 5 entitle “Unforgettable moment”, Kula’s Project 7 entitle “Threat to planet Earth” and our president Sarimah’s Project 6 entitle “Anecdotes is my life”. Wow! What can I say? Kudos to all the three assignment speakers for a job well done. I truly enjoy all the speech especially Sabrina’s Project 5 as I was her assignment evaluator that night. For me it was Sabrina best speech so far as she demonstrates her speech with articulate body movement, facial expressions and eye contact to enhance her speech.



To sum up I must say it was an unforgettable Toastmasters evening for me as it was my first TME role for a long time. The meeting starts at 8.02pm and end on 10.15pm respectively which was a good sign but still got room for improvement. It the mid of excitement I forgot to ask the members and guests to vote the best assignment speaker and best evaluator. A truly “unforgettable” night for me. Many thanks to all the role players and speakers that make the meeting a success. Special thanks to Area B4 Governor as his role as General evaluator and his constructive feedback. Hope to have another outstanding meeting on 25 July 2008.



Courage to Make a Difference



Your TME
Vince Lim
11-07-2008

Greetings...

Greetings earthlings...Welcome to planet earth.. ( shoot this is not some extraterrestrial movie duh)! Its the Vistana Toasmasters blogs la! How could I greet people like that?
Ok let's start again...
Hello everybody! Welcome to the Vistana Toastmasters Club blogsite!
This is a giant step for us in Vistana TMC, starting our own online journal. Oh well, the world has evolved, people are more into that online thingy now. Thus, it is high time that we take the next step into this so called blogging world.
Oh, don't worry, we will not become like those prolific political blogger, this would solely be a diary for us in Vistana Toastmasters Club, sharing the members journey into becoming Toastmasters; becoming a better speaker, a better leader and most importantly becoming a better person.

Oh I've lot more to say, but didn't have the time yet. Perhaps when time permitted, we'll share with the rest of the world how we started of. Till the, cheerios!