UM Toastees @ Edmat 33

3 evaluators for 40 speakers.
I have done even harder evaluation before.
But the number of evaluation is a new record for me.
Just imagine sitting down to listen and observe 40 people speaking in one night.
And you have only one minute to prepare for each evaluation.
It was so fortunate that three of us are used to multitask
performing not only evaluation but other roles such as ah-counter, grammarian and time keeper.

Multitasking...you learn it without knowing and you will know it when you need it.
We have done our best and it's great to give positive and encouraging feedback from the organizers and participants.
I think that they didn't expect much for us.
After all, we are still students and of the same age as them.

Vincent and Dr Devi have trained us well.
And not to forget Kimmy and Debbie (The best speakers ever from UM Toastmasters Club)
Not to say that they are our club instructor because there is no such role as instructor in Toastmasters.
I often take them as my source of motivation and inspiration.
I have learned a lot from them and lots more to learn in the future.

It's time to bring the club to President's Distinguished Club again.
I know it's tough but I want my name printed in the Hall of Fame.

Focus

Strongly focus on what I need and what I want

Believe in it and it will eventually come to me

This happens sometimes

Although it may come to me

Unpredictably

Unexpectedly

Sometimes I forget about it

But the subconsciousness will slowly awake

And I am back in the game again

3 out of 4

3 years

I need to focus for one more week and it's done!

I'm heading towards my final year soon.

I need to polish myself for my future

and at the same time

I want to go back to some of my favorite activities.

And the journey continues...

with more challenges ahead,

you can choose to be a leader or a follower,

you can choose to be a good and responsible leader or a lousy one,

you can choose to be a loyal and dedicated follower or a bad follower.

and I choose to be myself.

The freedom-lover, positive and well-focused in everything she has targeted to achieve.

Positive (2)

I am curious. Why some people always speak negative and demotivating words to themselves. It affects not only themselves but others as well. When someone does that I would turn away from that person.

You are pulling yourself down. Why do you want to involve me? They think I’m annoyed by their complaints but just think about it, whose fault is that?

It happens all the time.

Sometimes I wonder...

Are they playing psychology? Or it is just about the time management?

Maybe I can just self pretend as deaf and life goes on. I WON’T DEMOTIVATE OTHERS even I’m totally stressed out. At least I’m positive to myself when I find no positive energy around. Self-generated positive energy to keep things moving.

And it turns out that, I’m ahead of them. Psychologically and emotionally.

Positive

When you can run with your eyes close, you are not exercising, you are meditating. Of course, you have to be very familiar with the route.

It feels so calm when you hear nothing else but your footsteps and breathing. You won't feel tired during that time although it's just 3 seconds. I always do that especially when I feel stress. I seldom express stress to people, I prefer to lose it somewhere deep in my thought.

Life is a long distance run. You have a long journey ahead and you have to take it step by step. You can slow down but don't ever stop because you need extra energy to start all over again.

Whenever you feel tired, slow down and feel the energy around you. Take the positive energy and leave those negative ones. You will get something unexpected.

One good journey deserves another

This little girl was a shy one. When it got crowded, she backed off from the crowd. The incident in her primary education years gave her stage freight even until now. She thought she has no cure for her stage freight.

She found herself a platform, and wonder what the platform can offer to her. After all, it’s just a simple meeting and all you have to do is to attend. Soon, she was pushed to give her ice breaker speech.

After two years, the girl who almost cried in her first speech delivered her president’s speech, right in front of lecturer and corporate trainer, with no fear in her eyes.

She tries to inspire others with her story, about how she has gained confidence. One of her mentor, Dr. D told her, “your speech is inspiring, but you inspire us even more, it’s the transformation that we have seen from you.” Indeed, she knows how much I have grown up in my Toastmasters journey.

A quote from myself, “talent is not born naturally, it comes from your everyday training. The more you train, the more talented you are.”

I had a presentation two days ago. And the lecturer was very happy with my presentation. Dr. F said “Thank you, it’s a very good presentation,” followed by a round of applause from the floor. I survived the Q&A session from Dr. F. In fact, he didn’t even ask any question.

I was satisfied with myself too. After all, it’s my own hard work throughout these few years.

From a ‘silent stump’ (the title of my first speech) to a presentation that receives such a pleasing recognition wasn’t an easy journey. And talent is not the word to describe it. How about all the hard work, fear combat and brainstorm that I’ve gone through in every speech? I have put a lot of effort in this journey and I think that I deserved the recognition because one good journey deserves another. Who knows if I might be able to make money with my mouth one day, just like some of the great speakers that I’ve met during my Toastmasters journey.

And yet, I am still very shy and back of from the crowd unless being pushed to the stage.

Seeing is believing?

Sometimes, I sit down and start thinking of all the happenings. The earthquake and the people around me. I realized that our thinking is often affected by others.

Take the Japanese nuclear plant incident for example. People posted all over facebook, trying to spread the news about the radiation that was about to hit Malaysia and to stay away from the rain. I got myself soaking wet that day and started to worry if the news was true. It was a fraud and I started asking, 'Hey people, do you ever verify the facts posted on facebook? Don't just simply copy and post what ever you read. You may end up creating rumors of fake news among your friends.'

I blame no one except myself. "Seeing is believing" but sometimes it's wrong even if you see it for yourself.

Hmmm...then I believe there is something to do with our education system. Malaysians especially students are taught to accept whatever that is given by teachers, even if you don't understand. We never learn to analyse facts and just simply swallow everything without digesting.