As a one-year old Toastmaster, I'm addicted to go 'clubbing'. Why? Because of the hot girls in the club? Or free flow of beer? Maybe due to the high-spirited, loud music? Oops... Sorry, the club I mentioned is not any night club but Toastmasters Club. I have been addicted to visiting other Toastmasters Clubs, simply because of one reason: the continuous learning opportunity!

After completing my Project 9 in the Competent Communicator (CC) Manual, many members in my club were asking me when will I be delivering my graduation speech. Graduation? Such a significant word. Am I really competent enough to graduate as a CC? Before doing my tenth speech, I decided to hone my communication skills by doing something else so that I can be an eligible CC. That was when I decided to start with my 'clubbing' activities.

I have benefited a lot from the club visits. The learning opportunity that was available from the visits has transformed me to a more natural speaker. By visiting different clubs, I had the chance to learn from different Toastmasters. No doubt my club, Friendship Toastmasters Club, has many experienced speakers who guided me with utter professionalism. However, by visiting other clubs, I am able to learn different skills from other experienced Toastmasters in Malaysia.

Visiting other Toastmasters Clubs is indeed an eye-opening experience for me. I enjoyed the different atmosphere of other Toastmasters meetings. Redoing my speeches in other clubs made me a more proficient speaker and I had the privilege to listen to the comments from various excellent evaluators. Visiting other clubs can really boost our communication skills. However you must grab the golden opportunity to speak in every club visit. In my opinion, learning is all about practicing!

Besides the learning opportunity in the communication track, 'clubbing' also helps us improve our leadership and management skills. During club visits, I am given the opportunity to try out different meeting roles such as general evaluator, speech evaluator, table topics evaluator, grammarian, ah-counter and humour master. These experiences were very useful for me to complete my Competent Leadership(CL) manuals. I started my CL projects in March 2010 in my club, however my progress was extremely slow before I began my club visits. In only two months of club visiting, I've done 70% of my CL assignments. I also managed to expand my network and made a lot of new friends during club visits. They are all very sincere people and eager to help me to improve.

Visiting clubs is not only meant for Area Governors. You may use the time constraint reason to tie you to your comfort zone and claim that you have no time for club visits. Time management is one of the leadership values, as practiced in Project 4 of Competent Leadership Manual. By managing your other commitments, you will be able to squeeze out a little spare time for club visits. Believe me: you will benefit significantly! I would like to take the opportunity to thank all the clubs that welcomed my presence. They are KPMG KL, Sunway, Shah Alam, Exact ADC, IME, CIMA, One World, Phoenix, Speakers' Dream, D'Utama, AFC and Kelab Pidato.