Youth Leadership Program

By De Ming

The air-conditioner blew against my face as I sat on my bed writing about the experience in the Youth Leadership Program which ended yesterday. The room was filled with the music from the radio by my bed and the quick scribbling of my pencil.

Stop! Cut! Rewind! Too early!

I sat in that cold room, I was not nervous! I was not! Then why did I feel like vomiting? Finally, the one minute silence was up, I shook hands with the people around me and the chairman looked at us and said, “Now, we have Gan De Ming to present his speech!”

Rewind some more! Back, back, back!

The car drove in the parking slot and stopped short, I opened the door and caught sight of several men standing and talking in a business-like manner. They wore a white collared shirt and their blazer and long pants were black. But what made them stand out was that very bright yellow tie of theirs. I looked at them and asked if this was the right place. No answer. I waited for a few seconds then I walked into the room, maybe they were too deep in conversation.

I pulled out a chair from the table furthest from the stage and after a few moments, Pei Qi arrived, she sat beside me and we started to talk about the class party, I began writing down the names of those that owed the class money and we ended up being the ones talking the loudest. A guy saw this and decided to come over to our table. His name was Hetish and we soon got to know more about him.

The event began with a simple introduction about you by your neighbour. The speaker then begin selecting presidents for the event, (there were suppose to be 4). The process was simple they would have a team A and a team B. Three people would be selected for each team, the president, the secretary, the sergeant at arms and the people would vote if they wanted team A or team B. At last after all the votings, our table ended up with three presidents (Pei Qi, Gan Wai Su and me) and a secretary (Hetish), meaning that all who sat at this table had posts!

We were then separated into two groups and were given random topics to speak on, (they called it Table Topics). Mine was on my dream holiday and I told them honestly, I do not actually dream about holidays, but I really enjoyed my holidays for this year. After every 5 people, Ee Ping would come out and comment on our speech, I was told that I was good but had to stop starting the sentence with a, “Ya, so…”

Our lunch was scheduled right after the Table Topics and we walked from the Extol shop lot to a restaurant nearby that had a plain A4 paper with the writing ‘Punjabi Food’. That really caught me off guard; I have never known that Punjabis had any food. Well it would be a unique experience I guess. I stepped into the restaurant and began scooping food onto my plate. When we finally sat down to eat, I found that I had to force the food to go down my throat. The taste was so strong! No offence, just personal opinion.

The workshop continued with a self introductory speech and I decided to add a little taste of creativity to mine. Instead of the basic “Hello, I am… My age is…” I went up there and said, “Hello I am Mr.Gan from De Ming Corporation and I would like to share with you a product, Gan De Ming. This product here…” So I ended up telling them about how I was a neutral and that I came with three wives. I ended my speech by saying that I cost only RM999.99 (which gave me my speech title). I thought I did okay although I felt it was lacking a little on content, but when it was time for the comments it was a totally different story.

“I have a confession to make, for the speaker Gan De Ming-” I raised my hand. “-, his speech was so out of the world that I could not understand one bit of it. At first it seems that he was talking about himself, then I think he went on to talk about a gadget.” I stared at her, “I was advertising myself!” I looked around me and asked everyone else, “You guys understand my speech right?” Max nodded and said that it was quite obvious that the product was me. All in all, it was a huge disappointment, although she said that my voice was loud enough, my posture was confident, the important part was still the speech and I totally flunked it!

After that, we went back for some tea and were separated again for another Table Topic, but this time Pei Qi and Samantha were with me. I believed that they did quite well in this Table Topic, but they had quite doable topics. When I was finally dragged up, I asked everyone what number I should take, (they had 100 topics and we were to choose them randomly by number) and this Pei Qi shouted 44. Me being me, decided to take it and guess what it was?

‘If you were married, would you have kids? Why?’ This time I stood there speechless, I had no idea whether I wanted to get married or not, what more about having kids?

We were assigned to prepare a speech the next day and I had prepared some notes on some basic emotions, naming anger, love and loneliness. I went up slightly unprepared but since it was something I was interested in, it came out smoothly. This time, I felt that I did a rather good job and I felt rather proud for myself. This pride expanded a little when I got selected as the best speaker for that session.

It was three in the evening, we had already done many speeches by then, I sat by the table beside the stage. One of the toastmasters stood beside me, he was to speak on voice and vocabulary. He called all of us to get closer to him and after a few minutes of the noisy shifting of chairs, we formed a semicircle around him. He then explained to us the effects and the use of intonations. After that he called Pei Qi out and sat her on a chair, Hetish was called out too. As both of them stared at each other in confusion, he instructed Hetish to confess to Pei Qi and to speak with proper intonation and variation of speech. He then said, “Hetish has had a crush on Pei Qi for the past 10 years. Ever since he saw her in kindergarten, he has fallen in love with Pei Qi, but has never got the opportunity to tell her how she feels. Today he is finally given this opportunity.” It was hilarious as Hetish struggled to say those words and finally the toastmaster called out another person. Hetish happily withdrew. The replacement was more sporting (in a way, or maybe he just likes the attention or Pei Qi!) and he went down on the one knee kneeling post. He stared into Pei Qi’s eyes and said to her, “Your eyes are like the moon on a starless night. Pei Qi I want to tell you something… Pei Qi, I love you!” At that moment the whole room burst with laughter and all those who were recording held their camera pr hand phones tighter. “I’m sorry I don’t love you,” said Pei Qi. The toastmaster was not satisfied and at last Pei Qi said to him, “Okay! I love you too!” (It was something like that at least). The day was made more interesting when during our Table Topic, she got a topic on the meaning of love. All in all, it was an interesting day.

The next day, I had prepared a speech for the competition, it was called 100 years. It was about pollution and its effects if left to be continued. I was rather confident in my speech and I thought that I stand a chance to win something, but when I told the title to the toastmaster, he insisted that we do something on family. I knew that if I were to do anything regarding my family, it meant that I was not going to get the prize. But then I thought to myself that however much I wanted the prize, getting a chance to let my parents know that I really appreciated them was more important.

So that was how I ended up sitting on that chair that day as I rehearsed mentally the words that I was going to say to my family. I was number fourteen in line and although I mentally denied it, but I was really nervous, I felt like vomiting in fact. As one by one the people went out, the feeling just got worse and worse until, “Gan De Ming with his title, Unsung Heroes!”

I sat there for 2 seconds to calm myself and slowly made my way to the stage, I shook the toastmaster’s hand in false confidence and stood on that stage staring down into the mass below me. “Good afternoon everybody!” I was answered by everyone of the audience; it had become a procedure. “How many of you have heard about Superman?” Hands were raised. “Who has watched the show?” Some were lowered but others remained up. “What about Spiderman or Batman?” It was the same case. “But today I am not here to talk about all this man-man; I am here to talk about the Unsung Heroes, my parents.”

*****

At least an hour had passed since I ended my speech and within me I felt calmer. After receiving my certificate, it was now time to announce the winner. I knew I was not going to get anything, and I was right. The Most Improved Award went to Cherish, The Most Creative to Hetish and the third placing to Jetish (Hetish’s brother), second placing went to Pei Qi and the winner of that day was Alex with Cooking and Me. I believed they all deserved the prizes for they all were great!

To be honest, I expected my parents to be proud or thankful for my speech, instead, they asked me why I had to talk about them, it was too common. They told me to stick to the previous topic and that it was rather one leveled and was without depth. I was really disappointed and definitely hurt, but as I recounted the events back in my mind later that day, I realized that what they said were true and I learned that day that I should never change the topic especially when I did not have much time to prepare and make it more meaningful. It was a valuable lesson though.

The three days spent in the course was definitely well spent, although I had already known many things on public speaking, I picked up many tips and was now more confident in speaking because of all the times we had to speak in a crowd. In fact, I realized that I actually liked going on stage!