I Am a Pussycat

I located this club by chance, and I was lucky I was given the opportunity to speak at the CIMA Malaysia Toastmasters Club as the third speaker for this evening. I was narrating “I Am a Pussycat” for the “Let’s Get Personal” topic from the Storytelling manual. My evaluator was CC CL Stephanie Lim from Singapore’s SIM 1 Toastmasters Club. She gave me a good but brief evaluation, but I thought I was just average. I was a wee bit stiff, in part because I was conscious of the need to not move my hands about too much, and the fact that I was somewhat conscious of the need to inject humor into my speech – so much so that I wasn’t as natural as I would like to be. Also the General Evaluator, CTM ALB Irene Lee Yoke Leng pointed out my powerpoint slides fought for the audience’s attention too. Other than this project speech, I participated in the Table Topics session. I was adjudged the Best Table Topics Speaker – it had a Christmasy theme – for this evening. Oh yes, one other thing. This club also practised rubber time! We were thirty minutes late in starting the meeting. Still, thank you, DTM Sharmini for this speaking slot!

It was a very close call for the government when Budget 2010 was narrowly passed 66-63 on Monday. If only Pakatan could muster another 4 votes, BN would be defeated. It is understood that this is the first time that the national budget was approved with such a narrow margin, where a rejection would have a negative implication for the Barisan Nasional. government. Parliamentary democracy practices consider a rejected budget as a no-confidence move towards a sitting government and indirectly opens the way for the formation of a new government. In fact, The Sun reported that Najib and his deputy, Muhyiddin had to leave their respective functions to be present and cast their vote (December 16, 2009, p 7). As The Sun’s editorial lamented, “It was a shame indeed for Budget 2010 to be important only to 129 MPs when the people elected 222 of them in all to represent them in the Dewan Rakyat, the powerful national legislature” (p 18).

Najib should be worried. This same editorial admonished, “It is his government’s first budget and he had been working very hard to restore the people’s confidence in the ruling group ever since he was sworn in as prime minister in April. He must be disappointed that his RM191.5 billion proposed budget themed ‘1Malaysia, Prosperity for All’ managed to just scrape through by a mere three votes. It seems there is much more that he has to do” (ibid).