IEM Toastmasters International Speech & Table Topics Contest

Last Thursday, 8 January 2015 saw IEM Toastmasters Club holding its International Speech and Table Topics contest.

The evening started off with the organizing chair, Mok Zhen Yick welcoming all the guests present and thanking the organizing team.

The first contest to be held was the International Speech contest. There were 8 contestants and the contest was a very closely fought battle.

First up was the Sim Bock San, the 2012/2013 District International Speech and Humorous Speech Champion, with his speech “inside out”. Sim’s take home message was that sometimes, merely saying sorry was all that was needed, but doing so from the “inside out”, from the heart.

Anthony was next with his story of an accident he was involved in. Anthony taught the audience that if we face difficult situations with a positive outlook, we will triumph.

Anita Wong was next with her speech “Plan B”. The lesson she imparted to the audience that night was that chasing paper qualifications was not really important, but rather what was important was doing was one wanted in life.

Meng Tze, the fourth contestant inspired the audience with her speech “Bounce Back” recounting her experience exactly 2 years prior to the contest date when she suffered a stroke at such a young age, but managed to bounce back to life.

The next contestant was IEM President, Mac Chanachayai, whose speech was titled “No one can touch you unless you allow them”. In this speech, Mac, recalling incidents of bullying in school and on the road, spoke of his father’s advice that no one can make a person feel any less or inferior unless they allow others to do so.

The audience was chilled to the bone with the speech of the next contestant, Kanagaraj Pillay, who stood out with a horror story of a Joke Gone Wrong, ending the speech with suspense and the audience wondering what was the conclusion of the story.

Alex Lu, Immediate Past President of IEM Toastmasters spoke about his grandfather and his contributions to the town of Sandakan, inspiring the audience with the values that he was brought up with.

The youngest contestant Ho Aaron impressed the audience with his story of getting fit, ending with a call to action to stop and smell the roses, quoting a poem by William Henry Davies.

After a short interval, the evening progressed further with the following table topic contestants taking part in the table topic contest: Anita Wong, Ng Yee Chia, Ismail Omar, Chi Je-Mein, Lee Meng Tze, Andrew Nathan, Ho Aaron and Tengku Noreena.

Championship for the International Speech went to Sim Bock San, with the first runner-up to Alex Lu and the second runner up to Mac Chanachayai. The Table Topics Contest was won by Anita Wong, with the first runner-up to Lee Meng Tze and the second runner up to Andrew Nathan.

(This post was written by Meera Shanmughanathan, Area E3 Governor, ACS, ALB)