The Coincidental IT Professional

Here's the winning speech for this week. An ice-breaker from our very own IT professional, Mr. Teh KL.
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The Coincidental IT Professional

Toastmaster of the Evening and my fellow toastmasters. Good evening.

Introduction

From the title, you should already know that I will be talking about my ambition. Well, what most of you see in me today is a consummate IT professional but I am using the term coincidental here to highlight the fact it was not by design.

I was born into a large traditional family of 5 girls followed by 3 boys. My 5 elder sisters didn’t have a lot of opportunity for education as my parents basically pinned their hopes on the boys.

As a result, we were all imbued with the thoughts that we should study hard and be a “somebody” when we grow up. From a very young age, I have always wanted to be a doctor.

Why am I not a doctor?

Body

Let me take you back 27 years to 1982 when I was doing my South Australian Matriculation in Taylor’s College. Yeah, I know, that’s how long it has been!

In my application for university admission, I duly put medicine as my 1st and 2nd choices and IT as my 3rd and 4th choices. Why IT? I am not sure but I remembered being told that IT is the job for the future.

To do medicine in Australia, you need an aggregate score of at least 430 out of 500. You see, I have always done well academically and 430 was certainly not beyond me.

However, I didn’t account for the fact that I was doing English Literature rather than English as a 2nd Language in my matriculation program. That means we were learning about Shakespeare rather than grammar, vocabulary and essay writing.

To cut the story short, I failed my English paper and only managed 49 out of 100 giving me a total aggregate score of 394.

I spent 7 years in Australia to learn all I need about IT.

When I came back to Malaysia, my first job was not in IT but to be a banker in Citibank. As a management trainee, I was going through training in various parts of the bank including corporate banking, treasury and consumer banking.
Six months later, I decided that a career in banking is not for me and quit Citibank to venture into business at the age of 26.

Even in business, my 1st venture was not in IT but in education due to influence from my sister who were (and still are) running very successful education institutions.

I did that for 4 years before I exited the education business and made a decent profit. More importantly, this is also where and when I landed the most important catch in my life – my wife!

From the education business, I went on to join the IT subsidiary of INTI to develop the IT business for the education market. Finally, I am going to back my roots in IT. As I was offered a stake in the company, I viewed this as a hybrid of doing business and developing my career.

It was during my tenure here that I first came into contact with ING as a vendor. I also had the privilege to meet the person who eventually played an instrumental role in my career development and personal growth.

My involvement with INTI lasted 4 years before I left and joined ING at the age of 34. So, you can see that I started my career late in life due to my misadventures in the business world.

I have been working here in ING for 10 years and my career progression has been good so far.



Conclusion

If you are a strong believer in karma, you will accept that everything happens for a predestined reason. Like when I failed my English paper, maybe it was because I was not meant to be a doctor. Or when I joined INTI and did the project for ING, maybe it was because I was meant to be in ING!

Well, my title says coincidental which means I am not into karma. I believe that life is often littered with events that require us to make choices along the way. The events and the choices that we make shape the life we live today and in the future.

Whether its karma or coincidental, I can have no regrets.

To Ah is human

Yours truly was the “ ’ah!’ counter” for the day. Ah counter is one of the roles played in the Toastmasters International Club and it’s purpose is mainly for personal growth, i.e. to practise the listening skills. The Ah Counter also helps the speakers get off their crutches and their dependencies on “Pause Fillers” during their presentation.

The role of an Ah Counters is exactly what the Title depicts. I count the number of Ahs that is used in a presenter’s speech. Actually I count other words or sounds such as “Ummm”, “Err”, “La”, “You know”, “So”, “Ok” etc. These are what the people in the public presentation world call “Pause Fillers”. Pause fillers are considered crutches that a speaker use to sustain their speech. In other words, pause fillers are, y’know, the time when you stand out in front of the crowd and you forgot what you wanna say and you start saying,” Ummm”, to break the silence while you try to remember the next line of your speech. Opps… I am also a sinner in this area. I use “Ah”,”Lah”, “Ok”, “Ummm”, ever so often that it has become second nature to me while talking and even while writing. Everyone does it, afterall, to “ah” is human, I mean, to err is human… :) We all do it but with the feedback from the ah counter, we hope that the dependencies on these Pause fillers are reduced if not eliminated.

Incidentally, today we found that even the most experienced speakers uses pause fillers in their speech, subconsciously… So to those new in public speaking don’t despair. Help is on the way. With more practise, we can all get rid of these crutches and stand on our own two feet.

To "ah" is human,
To forgive divine,
Lessons learnt are for a lifetime...

To learn is to change,
To change is to grow,
To grow is to a better tomorrow.

Toast to a better you and me. Cheers.

Blue ribbon for the girl with the most names

"Good Evening Ladies and Gentlemen, Fellow Toastmasters and Guests..."

That's the opening line for my Toastmasters IceBreaker Speech that I keep practising for the pass 3 days in front of a few of my closer colleagues, so much so, that they run away from me each time I go near them. And thus each time I only get to practise this opening line. Nobody seems interested in my toastmasters ice breaker speech. Yes, ice breaker speech can be boring for some....

So, I tried to practise in front of little b and he thought I was playing a game with him and started acting out the Sam Witwicky Classroom scene in Transformers 2, whereby Sam had a mental breakdown and started talking gibberish.

And Mr. Big B, not to pleased with me laughing at his name in my speech, also avoided me whenever I tried to practise in front of him, and gave me weird advice, like doing the Michael Jackson moonwalk while doing my speech or doing the human boom-box to catch people's attention like those who auditioned for the American Idol.

Anyway, all my "hard work" of practising inside my car while driving to work these 2 mornings have paid off well because tonight I won the Blue Ribbon for the Best Speaker for Prepared Speech. I guess I won because I was the only one who didn't use any notes and my speech was presented in an interesting "storytelling" mode instead of the usual "chronological introduction to my life" kind of presentation. (*Note: The icebreaker speech is a 4-6 minute speech to introduce the speaker to the rest of the club members.)

What makes winning this award all the more special is, I was up against 6 other more "seasoned" speakers as they hold positions in the office which required them to give presentations on a daily basis while I seldom (if ever) talk in the office. (Boss, if you are reading this, please do not start assigning me with presentation work, ok?).

Actually, you cannot imagine how estatic I am now with my achievements tonight. Yes, it feels great having so many people congratulating you and clapping for you. Kinda motivating in a way, especially for the other newbies seeing a nobody like me can actually be 1 up against all the other giants or "hot favourites".

I just reviewed my video, and I found that my speech wasn't that great but I feel it was still one of the best among those who spoke tonight. (Actually, I think my boss's speech was very good too and I probably won due to popularity vote, but hey, isn't this world about popularity nowadays - just look at all the reality shows they dish out to us on the idiot box which we call TV). Whichever way it is, the bottomline is I still won the ribbon, and tonight was MY NIGHT. Wooo Hooo!! Yeeee Haaaa!!! AHAHHAHAHAHA (Allow me to gloat for just once, ok? This doesn't happen to me very often... :)

So I guess I will bask in this euphoria for another 2 weeks before they crown another Blue Ribbon winner for the next meeting. But right now, having the best speech for the night is ....... priceless.

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Here's the speech I delivered earlier tonight...

A rose, by any other name, is just as beautiful.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, fellow toastmasters and guests.

It is very intimidating for me to stand up here to talk in front of all of you after all those superb speeches given by my colleagues. Everyone knows that I am a shy person, and it took me a lot of courage to stand up here and open up myself. Even as I speak now, my heart is beating like [thud thud thud] 100 times a minute and my brain is working 1000 harder to control myself from having a heart attack. In fact, I think that there should be another role introduced into the Toastmasters Club, which is the Paramedic Role, to save people when they actually have a heart attack and collapse right here at the lectern.

Ok, now that I didn’t collapse, I have no choice but to continue with my speech. The title of my speech is “A rose by any other names is just as beautiful”. What better way to introduce myself than with my name. Once upon a time, not so very long ago, (I won’t tell you how long ago because it will reveal my age), my half-Japanese grandmother wanted to name me, Keiko Kawashima, meaning “the adored one on the river islands”. But the name on my IC, the last I checked, is XXX *(Censored to protect the writer's identity). My Chinese father, insisted on my Chinese roots and named me XXX instead. What does it mean? I don’t really know actually because I don’t read Chinese. My parents tell me that they got the name from the fortune teller when I was born.

The told me that my name was carefully and painstakingly chosen and they had to go through so much hassle to book the famous fortune teller in town just to get me my name. But I don’t believe them, because much later, I found out that my name is similar to the Taiwanese singer, Teressa Teng and she was very famous around the time I was born, thus I think they just conveniently took her name and gave it to me.

So all through my childhood, and teenage life, my friends call me by my Chinese name. Then I went to college and suddenly there was a fad in having an English name. I resisted the temptations of having one until later I went over to UK to further my studies. And then Oh My God!!! Most of my foreign classmates could not remember my Chinese name and had difficulty pronouncing it, and it sounded so horrifying that I don’t even want to mention it. In order not to allow them to further degrade my beautiful name, I chose to be called Kelly. And that is how I am better known as in the REAL world… as Kelly Kong.

REAL world? Yes, you heard me right. Because I live in another world too - the cyber world. I am very active online. I participate in forums, and online chats and have facebook, friendster and twitter accounts to keep in touch with my friends and family. Naturally, being a cyber citizen, I also keep a blog to log all the happenings in my life. One of the main reasons why I kept a blog was because I have very bad memory, thus I like to write down all the good things that has happened into the blog. Yes, it’s a little like keeping an online diary, so if you would like to get to know me better, you can just go to my blog and read all about me. Incidentally, it was my blog that landed me the task as the editor for ING Leadership Toastmaster’s Club newsletter. You can comment on my writings when you read the newsletter when it is published later. If it’s good, let me know. I’d try to pretend to be humble when you praise me. If you don’t think it’s good, you can just keep quiet. Haha, kidding, constructive criticism is welcome as I am always looking for ways to improve myself.

Back to my name. In the cyberworld, I go by the pseudonym Kelly Rivers. Why Rivers? My surname Kong means Rivers in Chinese.

And then there is one name that I seldom use or try to avoid using. I went on to marry my husband and automatically I inherited his name and guess what? His surname is Bean. Mr. Bean. So I become Mrs. Bean. I don’t think I need to explain why I don’t use this name.

So as you can see, I have many names, but essentially there’s only one me. I am the same nice person irregardless of all the names you call me, just like the saying goes, a rose by any other names, is just as beautiful.