So I just came back from Malacca, attending the Semi Annual Convention for Toastmaster District 51. It was fun, educational and great networking session meeting some new friends and reconnect with some old friends, whom you’d only meet twice a year in occasion like this. Funny thing is, though most of us live in KL, we are too busy with our own lives to even get this chance to socialize (ok, I’m no toastmaster junkie anymore so I don’t go out much nowadays).
I should start with perhaps stating that the main reason why I went for the convention is because of my support to the Organising Chair, a strong iron lady and the fact that she has asked that I emceed the Saturday session, from the Opening Ceremony up until the conclusion of 4 Plenary sessions.
Ever since Darren Lacroix’s speech in KL about a year ago, that in order to be good at something you need to always grab stage time, stage time, stage time, I took a great deal of effort to never let go of opportunities. So I will enter speech contests, accept emceeing gigs, etc because I believe that I need to be good at what I do.
And I started that by emceeing the Young Corporate Malaysia 2nd annual summit last year after being persuaded by a certain man-who-then-became-my-fiance.
It was scary, and I’ve done emceeing. But to do it in front of 1000 crowd and multiple CEOs was something else. I’m not the best there is, but I intend to become the very best one day, so I said yes when WMF, YCM founder tweeted me one day. Well, that shows how great social networking is right.
It wasn’t that bad I think, even though I get some congratulatory hand shake and perhaps hear some other not so great review about how casual I was when the topics are about the very serious World Economics.
Did I get demotivated? Not at all, when I have two things that really lifted me up.
Firstly when the keynote speaker, Tok Pa actually went down the stage as he was about to leave the hall and walked towards me at the rostrum and shake my hand. I guess it’s the fact that I made some Petronas jokes with him during Q&A.
And secondly, when Datuk Johan Raslan actually messaged me on twitter (waddup!) and said “You did a brilliant job as MC. Well done and thank you” I was overjoyed. I can’t believe he took the effort, to say that to me.
Well, no one can take those two things away from me.
So when I emceed the Toastmaster convention with hundreds of other great toastmasters who speaks very very well and one particular toastmaster who happen to be the Past President of Toastmaster International (the number 1 man in toastmaster worldwide), I was super nervous. I had to ask my co-emcee, Andrew to hype me up and end up jumping up and down just to get myself ready.
So in the end, it was not that bad. I had a lot of great feedback actually, even from those whom I’ve never met. Even one would say, “Even when I close my eyes I would know who is speaking. That is how unique your voice is”. I of course do feel quite skeptical.
Not until Distinguished Toastmaster Sivanangam came up to me and said that I did a good job, did I believe that I really did. And when Gary Schmidt said the same thing, I felt relief. So there is hope after all for me, so I can be good at this.
So as I reflect back on my school days when I was always the second option, because I don’t sound good enough on mic, I say it has shaped me to become who I am today. And my special thanks to Darren Lacroix for giving the best 3 tips ever – stage time, stage time, stage time.
As Papa Gerald Green put it,.”I don’t need to be first anymore. I just need to be available”
I’d say, ”I’m always available. I need more stage time!”
