Gurney-Hydro Toastmasters Club

There is a tradition in every Toastmasters club to have mentors for new members. Mentors are usually senior members who will help show the ropes to new members or member show need extra help in their Toastmasters journey.   At times, not so senior members can also become mentors if they are keen.   All they have to do is volunteer. There are a number of benefits mentors have to the new member (mentee), club and mentor themselves. For the Mentee 1) Mentees have someone to guide them.   Every new Toastmaster can tell you that the first few times they walk into a meeting, they have no idea what is going in.   They don’t know how far they can go, the many terms that are used and they don’t know the hierarchy of clubs, area, division and district.   The mentor’s role is to explain to them the big world that is Toastmasters. 2) Mentees have someone to help them prepare for their assignments.   New members may take forever to do their f...

We're days to the end of the year and it's time to take stock of the year so far. We all know that most people don't keep the resolutions they set for themselves anyway - but if you do, good for you! - nevertheless, it's still good to take a look at how this year has shaped your life and led you to where you are right now. So rather than look at goals and the percentage of what you have achieved (your boss makes you do enough of that already), let's take a look at things from another angle. 1) What Are You Grateful For? Counting your blessings is always a good way to start the process.  It will put you in a positive frame of mind.  Make a list and don't just limit yourself to the big things.  Small things can have a big impact as well. Here are some examples: - the lessons (both good and bad) that this year had taught you - the new people (both good and bad) that have come in and out of your life - the people who gave you the opportunity to touch...

Many people have the misconception that toasting is an art form that only the most eloquent   are qualified to lead.   Naturally one will be hard pressed to find willing volunteers for this seemingly monumental task. However giving a good toast is not that hard, as long as you adhere to some simple common sense and logic. There are quite a few misconceptions about performing a toast such as: It is for formal occasions only.   This couldn’t be further from the truth.  You can offer a toast on any occasion for any reason.  It can be as simple as the rare moments when a few friends can spend some time together over coffee, for instance is good enough. You need to use very big and formal words for a toast.   Again, this is not necessarily true.  It all depends on the occasion.  If like above, it’s just a casual get together amongst friends, then there is no need for any formality or pretentious big words.  You may need to use a ...

How innovative are you?  As shared by our VPE during the recent meeting, with Industry 4.0 in full swing, being innovative and doing things outside the norm is very important to ensure you stay competitive. Otherwise, you could one day potentially, find yourself being replaced by robots. Going round the table during introductions, it was clear that our participants for the night have very creative ways to think outside the box in their daily lives. And with only one speaker attempting the prepared speech for the night, we had to think outside the box to give value to our participants by asking or own professional speaker, Hayley James to conduct a mini seminar. Hayley conducting her seminar on "How to Enhance your Stage Presence" Hayley's seminar was all about enhancing your stage presence.  She started off by walking the audience through her process of getting everyone's attention to focus on her.  Then once she has everyone's undivided attenti...

We see it all the time in new speakers especially.   They stress themselves so much over the content of their speech that they forget the other equally important part – the delivery. We get it, presenting a speech for the first, second or even third time is very intimidating.   You’ll have all eyes on you for that 7 minute period of time that seems to stretch to forever.   The worst thing that can happen to you is that you forget what you want to say. WRONG! The worst thing that can happen is that you remember everything you want to say but still deliver a below average speech because you’re so caught up on the content that you neglect how you’re going to deliver the content. So you end up rooted to the same position, using very little hand gesture and body language, you speak in a monotonous voice and you avoid looking at the audience because you’re afraid that they might throw you off track. A lot of people often forget that it doesn’t matter ho...

If you study any great leader, you will find they have many characteristics that contribute to their success.  Below are four that are the most fundamental.  Start with these first and build upon them. Leadership Characteristic #1: Compelling Desire When you take on a leadership role in any project or organization, you must have a goal, a vision of the end game that you want to achieve.  That goal must be driven by a compelling desire for it to happen.  Why do you want to achieve this?  For everyone, it’s the pain/pleasure factor – to get away from a pain or to gain pleasure.  Simple as that.  What is yours? For example, you take on a leadership role in your Toastmasters club because you want to see the club membership grow.  Why?  So that it will be easier to fill roles?  So that your club can achieve the DCP goals? Ask yourself the reason until it becomes so compelling that nothing will stop you from achieving it. Leadersh...

You read that right! Toastmasters is the place where it’s alright to fail.  In fact, it is the safest place for you to fail. As quoted by Robert Kiyosaki above, you don’t achieve success without failing first.  And you need to fail fast and hard as early as possible, learn from your mistakes and come back strong. Statistics have shown that only 8% of people achieve success on the first try without failing first.  And it is an even smaller percentage of these people who manage to retain their success. The reason is simple – if you don’t fail, you don’t learn anything.  The people who get lucky and achieve their goals on the first try will normally not be able to sustain that success for the long term.  It is the people who have failed time and again who are the ones who go all the way. Failure teaches us a number of things. It tells us where we went wrong, the areas that we need to improve upon to be better.  Thomas Edison failed to invent the...

Prost!   Lift up your mug and toast to life, food, friends and beer! Our members and guests got introduced to Oktoberfest during our meeting.   We decided to have some fun and celebrate the most famous beer festival with – what else – but beer and sausages courtesy of our Datin Joanne Tan. We also had girls in dirndls.   Hey, we’re not called the most happening club for nothing *wink* We only had one speaker for the night, our guests, Kitsh.   His ice breaker sang praises to his mother and all the people who have shone a light in his life.  He also encouraged his listeners to embrace their true self even though people may disagree with them. This was followed by a very informative sharing session by our VPE, Sheryl on Oktoberfest.   She delved into the history of the festival, the customs and traditions and how it went from a celebration of a royal wedding (bet you didn’t know that) into the world’s biggest beer festival. O...

"Nothing is certain in life except death and taxes," so says the quote. So what can you do to make sure you live your life in a way you would be proud of so that in the end, you can say you've really lived and not existed? One of the ways is a bucket list, a list of things that you want to do like travel to far off and exotic places, a skill that you've always wanted to learn or doing something so big that it seemed like an impossible feat to accomplish. Here are some of the things that are in our attendees' bucket list: Go to Disneyland Travel around the world Move to New York Go on an adventure once a year Go to a third world country to do charity work Own their first home These are all worthwhile dreams to aspire to and we really hope you guys achieve them. We had two speakers for the night. Speaker #1: Preezzilla Tan Finally, this very successful real estate agent did her speech on something that she is very passionate about - investin...

Is that person going up on stage to give a speech the same person as the one hanging out with your friends? Often times we create different personas or masks that we put on to suit each occasion as we see fit.   But how well do we carry each of that persona? Many people feel that if they are going to put themselves out there, be seen in public, getting all that attention focused on them for 7 minutes, then they need to become someone very different from the person who is just hanging out with friends eating roti canai at the local makak. There are people who feel they have to ramp up the drama to get attention.   Some feel they need to scale back a little of their personality so that people can take them seriously.   Others try to be a little silly or cute because they think it will make them more likeable. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. In fact, go for it!   Good speakers will bring out different sides of their personality ...

We held our club level of the Humorous Speech & Evaluation Contests on 29 August. Here are the winners. Winners of the Evaluation Contest Champion: Joanne Tan 1st Runner Up: Dennis De Vosse 2nd Runner Up: Hayley James Winners of the Humorous Speech Contest Champion: Dennis De Vosse 1st Runner Up: Joanne Tan 2nd Runner Up: Darren Saw Finally, we crowned a new champion in our club contest! A big thank you to our organizing team who worked really hard to put the contest together and our friends from Farlim Toastmasters Club for being our role players, not to mention our guests who came to support the contestants. Shout out to the very talented Miss Fish for the beautiful pictures!  Click here to see the rest. Group photo for the album that truly represents the fun we had that night

Most of us practically grew up with the television as our best friend.  In effect, we many many "best friends" through the shows that have entertained us throughout the years. Young or old there is definitely a TV show that has remained fondly in our memories, characters that have inspired us and stories that made us say to ourselves, "One day, this will be me." What is yours? Speeches for the night: Speaker #1: Cheong Xin Ni Xin Ni's speech gave us a reminder to treat our loved ones better.  It's amazing how we treat people outside our families with courtesy and respect yet treat those who should be closest to us like a second thought.  Very good effort for her CC6. Speaker #2: Hayley James Welcome back Hayley!  Our resident professional speaker gave a very insightful speech about the way our brains work.  We can see why she is such a sought after trainer. Speaker #3: Aw Win Chan Our guest for the third meeting in a row, Win Chan's spe...

Imagine this:   You’re on stage about to start your speech and suddenly, your mind just became a void of emptiness.   You can’t for the life of you remember what you were going to say or for that matter, what your speech is about. Sounds familiar? Don’t worry, it happens to the best of us, even seasoned professional.   We’re all human, after all.   The nerves, stage fright and the pressure to perform well are the biggest contributors to speakers getting thrown off track all of a sudden. But fear not, we’re here to help =) Here are some things that you can do to prevent that brain freeze. 1) Organize Your Speech in Point Form When you flesh out your speech, get your points together first.   What are the things that you want to convey to your audience?   Then pick out the most important ones depending on the length of your speech.   Looking at your speech as points instead of a collection of about a thousand words will mak...

What an inspiring meeting we had!   Even though the group was considerably smaller than normal, nevertheless everyone contributed positively to discussions and we learned from each other. We all have voices in our heads.   This is our inner voice, our gut instinct or in other words, our inner guidance system, if you will.   But sometimes that voice gets drowned out by all the noise in the world like peer pressure, work stress or our own feeling like inadequacies.   Imagine how powerful we can become if we listen to that voice. We had three speakers for the night. Speaker #1: Michelle Lalitha Michelle did her ice breaker speech and what a refreshing take on this assignment it was.   Rather than doing a speech about herself, she told a story about hope and strength of bamboo that is stronger than steel. Speaker #2: Angelov Tan Angelov did the third assignment of his Pathways Level 1 which is the research project.   His speech about co...

There is no denying the connection between music and our moods.   There will be times when we need a little pick me up to go that extra mile and the first thing that we reach for, is that piece of music that reminds us of our worth, that we have what it takes to reach our goals. That is our fight song. Marathon runners certainly understand this concept.   Listening to empowering music helps them shut off the world and their pain as they push to finish their race. We had 3 speakers for the night. Speaker #1: Angelov Tan Angelov did his speech from the previous meeting on languages for the second time as part of his Pathway Project 2.   He certainly blew the crowd away with the revised version which was better.   This is the benefit of a good Toastmasters evaluation.   If the speaker takes advantage of a good evaluation, he can improve by leaps and bounds. Speaker #2: Win Chan Our guest speaker for the night talked about the different ...

Persuasive speaking is considered one of the most challenging in the art of public speaking.   Many people find themselves unable to speak in a way that is convincing enough to influence their listeners. Perhaps they think that persuasive speaking is “selling” because this is something that sales people need to master in order to sell their product. However, bear in mind that in every conversation that you have with someone, you are actually “selling” something.   Even if you are asking your friends to go for drinks after work, you are in effect, selling them the idea that it will be wonderful to get together and chill over beer after a long day. No doubt they don’t need much convincing in this scenario but you still need to put the idea in their head in order for them to make an effort to show up at your little gathering. But if you need to convince a tougher crowd like when you're making a pitch for your proposal to investors or a sales event, here are s...

It's football season with the FIFA World Cup being telecast live all over the world.  Even non football fans catch the fever and enjoyed a game or two, at home or at the local pubs and mamak. Therefore it is not surprising that we had a very enjoyable football themed meeting with our President and VPE coming in football jerseys. Our speakers for the nights: Speaker #1: Angelov Tan Angelov did Project 2 of his Pathways Level 1 on the topic f languages.  Not only was his speech interesting, his animated hand gestures made it come alive. Speaker #2: Sheryl Lee Sheryl also did Project 2 of her Pathways Level 1 speech on the struggles she faces as a banana Chinese living in Malaysia. For Table Topics, our President took up the challenge and put forward questions that are just as suspenseful as a juicy football game.  Even then, the participants gamely took up the challenge and provided their own creative spin in their answers. Thank you everyone who attended, ...

Before you even start thinking about what your speech is going to be about, there is one crucial factor that you have to take into consideration: Who are your audience? You see, it doesn’t matter if you have the best speech in the world.   If it is not relevant to your audience, if they have no interest or knowledge about your topic, then you have no speech.   Period. If you are presenting your speech at your own club, then it is safe to say you probably know your audience.   However, be mindful that you may have guests visiting and they could be sensitive to your topic. Therefore, to be safe, always treat your topic and your audience with respect. In the event that you are expected to speak in front of an audience that you are not familiar with, here are how you can get intel on them so that you can tailor your speech accordingly. 1. Ask the Organizer The organizer of the event is the best source for this kind of information.   ...

There is always a reason to celebrate, according to the attendees to our meeting. Most people only celebrate the big milestones in life like a decade older, new job, new house, new car…but what about the little milestones?   Those are also reasons to celebrate, are they not? Life can be so much more fun if we give ourselves permission to make every little moment an occasion to commemorate. With that in mind, our three speakers for the night celebrated another notch of progress in their Toastmasters journey. Speaker #1: Cheong Xin Ni Xin Ni weaved a riveting tale of her journey to become a licensed driver.   She had the audience transfixed from beginning till end with her energetic delivery and animated facial expressions.   Well done, Xin Ni! Speaker #2: Darren Saw Darren presented his revised speech on Tinder that is part of Project 2 of Pathways, Level 1.   He managed to retain the humor from his first version while incorporating all ...

After a year of helming the club, the Excos of 2017/2018 have passed the torch over to a new committee.  We are confident this new team will do their best to keep the club going strong. The new Excos for 2018/2019 are (from left to right): Vice President Membership: Ms Preezilla Ng Treasurer: Michelle Lalitha SAA: Jeremy Soh President: Darren Saw Vice President Public Relations: Dennis DeVosse Vice President Education: Sheryl Lee Secretary: Cheong Xin Ni We would also like to congratulate both Jeremy and Sheryl, who have been appointed Area Director of Area S5 and Assistant Division S Public Relations respectively. If you would like the opportunity to hone your public speaking skills as well as learn leadership skills, join us for our bi-monthly meetings on every 1st and 3rd Wednesdays of the month.  Our meetings start at 8pm.  For further information please contact us at  gurneyhydrotoastmastersclub@gmail.com  or refer to our  Next Meeting...