Saturday, November 14, 2009

A Valuable Workshop about Time Management

Great2bToastmasters have organized another ‘great’ event on 3rd November 2009 (Tuesday), at 7.30pm, which was the Time-Management Workshop conducted by the ever-prominent speaker, Christopher Choong. Christ is a rather experienced speaker who always sugarcoats his speech with convincing facts and matters as well as humorous elements that intrigue his audience.
He is such a responsible person whereby he daintily dressed and reached the venue much earlier to prepare and set up whatever gadgets needed during the presentation. Most importantly, he brought along cakes from E&O to ‘bribe’ us. In fact, there is no necessity for him to bribe us. We should be ‘bribing’ him to hold this workshop.
Christopher Choong, our main character of the show

Everyone paid their undivided attention to the speaker

At the outset of his sharing, Christ inspired us with a very precise fact. According to him, we do not manage time because time cannot be managed, but we manage ourselves to ensure we have sufficient time to get things done. Christ has made the workshop so vivacious by letting us to mentally ‘work’ throughout the session. He passed a questionnaire with 15 questions to us. We were asked to complete the questionnaire within 10 minutes. As usual, different questions will carry different scores that represent certain qualities in us. This practice seemed to be boring at first, but the interesting part took place later on. He imparted the idea on how these questions portray the different time-management abilities in us. For instance, those who scored high in question 6, 10, 14 & 15 are people who are more well-versed in goal setting (as shown)



At the end of the session, all of us got to realize our own abilities and weaknesses in different aspects of time-management, such as goal setting ability, capability of prioritizing works, skills of managing interruptions, level of procrastination as well as the ability of making schedules.
Of course, Christ didn’t only help us to decipher our weaknesses only, he did provide us with effective solutions to overcome those ‘flaws’. For example, I told him I am deficient in prioritizing works even though I did adopt a to-do-list in my own job management. After sharing with him my actual situation, he suggested me to use a more effective to-do-list. (as shown)
Here is the Priority Setting Tool that shows you how to create your own to-do-list more effectively without interrupting by the less important jobs.

From what we can observe from the chart, we are encouraged to pay more attention to zone A, as whatever very important and urgent tasks will be listed here. So we need to complete the tasks occupying zone A first. Then most of us were wondering whether we shall go for important or urgent tasks for the next step, B or D? According to Christ, we shall prioritize the more important tasks first, which is zone B. Nowadays, lots of people has abused the word ‘urgent’. A lot of people tend to use words like ‘super-urgent’, ‘extremely urgent’ to urge you to get things done earlier and faster for them. So the word ‘urgent’ basically has not much value in it. So it totally depends on you to recognize its urgency. I do agree with Christ in such situation. So he advised us to settle the tasks that we think are more important first because those tasks may cause some negative impacts to you if you do it late. After Zone B, then you may steer to Zone D for the urgent one, and lastly only go to Zone C to finish the less important and less urgent jobs when we are free. This chart was another beneficial message brought to us that night.
the IPP, Khai Yuen was asking for Christ's help to 'crack a tough nut' related to time-management during the Q&A session

Christ granted all the attendees another bonus too. He sent us the softcopy of his presentation materials and some research few days after the workshop. Guess what? What he gave us is a 52-page time-management e-book with the compilation and preparation of all time-management related information. We didn’t pay a single cent for the workshop, except for the guests who only paid RM5 for admission. But what we obtain from this workshop is much more than we can expect. Thanks, Christ!

We did have guests who promise to join our club after this workshop, because they have benefited a lot from this workshop and strongly believe they can gain more knowledge and communication skills by joining us too.
a passionate guest of the workshop, Fennie

We will have another big shot coming to our next meeting on 17th November 2009 (Tuesday), 8pm, at Northam Tower, Wing B, 22nd Flr, Suite 5, at Jalan Sultan Ahmad Shah. This big shot is none other than our Distinguished Toastmaster, Charles Tan Chia Lih. He is going to conduct a session on "Handling Q&A Session ". I personally think it is the most challenging session of a presentation. If you would like to know how to confront the Q&A session more steadily and confidently, this is a session you can’t afford to miss.

Come and join us on 17th November! Admission is absolutely free!

Friday, October 9, 2009

A Visit to Tzu Ji Charity Food Fair

27th September 09 (Sunday) was another significant day for Great2b Toastmasters. This time our destination was Pesta Penang, where the Tzu Ji Charity Food Fair was located.

The objective of this outing was to further enhance the relationship between club members and may be to obtain GOOD KARMA. Karma is the law of moral causation. In Eastern beliefs, the karmic effects of all deeds are viewed as actively shaping past, present, and future experiences. Well, Toastmasters are mostly kind-hearted people.

This was the 2nd time I had been to Tzu Ji Charity Food Fair. My experience had steered me to be smarter. This time I had prepared food containers and recyclable bags to pack my food. In case you never pay a visit to Tzu Ji Charity Food Fair, just to highlight to you, Tzu Ji (a non-profit organization which promotes humanitarian works) is advocating environmental movement. You are encouraged to either have your meal at the food fair, or get your own ‘tupperware’ to store your food if you prefer to take away. You will be charged a higher price on the food and beverage sold here if you choose to pack your food and beverage using their packaging. Prudent people like me will definitely bring along whatever‘weapon’which is necessary to avoid myself from spending extra money. Haha….Anyway, it’s a charitable activity, it’s still okay to‘donate’more to them.

1st time visitors like the twin sisters, Khai Yuen and Khai Shing, as well as Tony came to the food fair empty-handed. No choice they just have to‘donate’more to Tzu Ji. Kwek, is another‘aunty’who also brought along quite some numbers of containers like me to ensure this was a‘rewarding journey’. We had our lunch there.

The lovely twin sisters, Khai Shing & Khai Yuen and our ever-cute member, Tony.

The esurient Kwek and her body guard, Jong Hui were concentrating on eating and didn't even bother about the camera shot.

It's me (Khew) and Tony at the side.

Everybody was back with something; I and Kwek had managed to grab few containers of food. The twin sisters had bought some daily used items and souvenirs. Tony had bought himself a packet of raw roti canai.
It was rather congested and hot at the food fair, but we did enjoy the fellowship. Anyway, this was our ultimate reason of organizing this outing. We did have our club committee meeting prior to this activity. Initially, we planned to hold our exco meeting after the Tzu Ji Food Fair visit. Luckily, the president had switched the meeting time at the very last minute. Otherwise, it would be too exhausted for us to have meeting after the food fair visit . Some more, our IPP (Immediate Past President), Khai Yuen was not feeling well. It was our pleasure to have her with us despite her ‘less ideal’ health condition on that day.

It was another enjoyable outing for Great2b Toastmasters! Cheers! Hopefully more members will be available to join us next time!

From left to right: Tony, Khew, Khai Shing, Khai Yuen & Kwek.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Area S4 Humorous Speech and Evaluaton Contest 06/09/09

Area S4 Humorous Speech Contest and Evaluation Contest were successfully held on 6th September 2009. Khew is the champion for Evaluation Contest and Kwek is the first runner up for Hunorous speech Contest.



Area S4 Evaluation Contest.
Here are our area's winners..Congratulation!






Area S4 champion for Evaluation Contest.
Khew, you are the best !!

Gambate !!!






We are happy registra!!!

Simmone and Khai Shing provided their helping hands...











Toastmasters provide a mutually supportive environment.

Khai Yuen was there to prove it!

Saturday, August 22, 2009

EM Mud Ball Throwing Activity (08/08/09)

EM Mud Balls Throwing - GREAT2B Toastmasters Club very first outing.
TEAMWORK!!!





Group photo :


From the left - Kean Fatt, Kwek, Khai Yuen, Tai
Kit, Si Keong








Kwek was so excited,

slight drizzle didn't affect her beautiful mood...











These are EM Mud balls (Effective Microorganism mud balls).
Looks like mouldy oranges but it do help us to clean sea.






Agree! We should apologize to our mother earth.









Meeting on 4 September 2009.

Toastmaster Tai Kit, grammarian for the night.


Toastmaster Charles Tan was giving an
evaluation, impressive...






Happy Birthday
to Pei Yin !






Joint Installation Dinner 2009/2010


Immediate past AG Lee Boon Chien and GREAT2B Toastmasters Club's buddies.

A joyful beginning !








An amazing event to officially recognized people who are ready to contribute.
Our president, Toastmaster Khai Shing was being installed.

Yummy food at Hydro Majestic Hotel !
Candle light dinner :)