President's Column
By President Joyce Mak
You Can Do It!
After a long Chinese New Year holiday, I gathered my mind and energy to continue with the next stage of my journey as the President. As I said before, I felt that there is still a lot of areas for improvement, such as how to run an effective and interesting meeting? When I was in high school, I used to participate in Speech Festivals and chose prose reading as my competing area. I was only capable to obtain merit each time and envied my classmates who could win the awards. I was content and did not push myself harder in improving my reading skills. I have not been very good at delivering speeches especially when I am not prepared and I still recall I was pretty scared during meetings when the President asked me to do 'vote of thanks' for speakers a few years ago. On the one hand, I didn't know what to talk about apart from 'thank you', and on the other hand, I didn't want members to see me shaking at the podium.
I believe most of the members agree with me that being President could be one of the good ways to improve one's public speaking skills. It doesn't mean though that once you have been a President, you would turn into a professional public speaker, but it definitely helps you to build up the confidence in speaking to a large group of people. I think I generally manage and being confident in this area and I have a strong desire to further cultivate my public speaking skills. Like how CP John is able to do on any occasion. Is content important? Yes, but to a certain extent, there is an art of 'rambling' on a topic where your audience may not able to identify what is your main purpose.
At our luncheon yesterday, we had the pleasure of inviting a speaker, Mr. Sean Lin, who was one of the awardees amongst the Ten Outstanding Young Persons in 2006 and with more than 7 titles next to his name. A very interesting background - he is a full time Senior Inspector of HK Police Force and is now President of the Centraler Toastmasters Club. I previously knew him when both of us worked for a non-profit organization as volunteers back in a few years ago. He has always given me an impression of being an energetic, passionate, outspoken and a motivated individual. Definitely, he proved himself given the above personal traits and achieved the Ten Outstanding Young Person Award. I was embarrassed when he asked me to deliver a speech about "Why do we have to play mah jong?", a weird topic right? Thanks to AG Peter for the suggestion. My mind was totally blank and I disappointed my audience by telling something which is out of the topic. The worst thing was that I only realized by the time I finished my speech. But Sean was kind enough to give compliments on my public speaking skills and not to point out my disastrous mistake, may be because I am a President and by embarrassing me in front of my members and guests might not be the most appropriate thing to do. He brought out the essence of good public speaking - 'Practise' does not always makes 'Perfect', but having an effective evaluation on your skills that matters. That's how Toastmaster Club has come into place, where they provide a platform for members to learn and to be accredited as a professional public speaker. I find Sean's presentation interesting and encouraging as I do have a very strong incentive to further improve my public speaking skills and I believe I can do it!
What's coming up
1. GSE team reception on 3 March - an evening meeting. We will hold the reception dinner at Q Club on Knutsford Terrace in TST. Let's come and welcome the GSE team from South Africa!
2. PP Dominic, Herbert & Lambda, PP Patrick and Michael Au will be representing Kingspark to attend Huayua's 10th celebration party and the opening of the matching grant project from 28 Feb - 1 March.
3. Sister Club visit - 5 - 8 March. 10 members will be going to join the yearly Sister Club gathering in Bangkok this year. We will spend on 5 March for Sathorn's 15th celebration and depart Bangkok to Chiangmai on 6 March for witnessing the matching grant project. We all look forward to this wonderful event! May the rest of the members wish us luck!
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