Anchorvale CC Toastmasters 50th Chapter Meeting on 22nd March 2014

Bountiful hearty greetings!

Anchorvale reached another commendable milestone as we gathered for our remarkable 50^th Chapter Meeting. Coupled with our double victory at the recently held Area A2 International Speech & Table Topics Contests on 8th March by our sparkling Salma Begum (International Speech) and charismatic Club President Roger Yap, CC CL (Table Topics), club members were in celebratory mode!

To sum it up with one word, I would use RESILIENCE to describe this memorable afternoon. A meaningful takeaway for everyone present. The followings are the reasons why.

With our usual venue at Anchorvale CC undergoing renovations, as well as last minute cancellations to alternative venues, our VPE Sathya, CC managed to get access to Sengkang West Zone 'D' RC Centre and ultimately made this meeting possible. Bravo to Sathya!

Next, our Club President, Roger Yap’s opening address was about the recent drought, the longest in Singapore’s history. He explained to us about plants that can survive without water for up to four years! Simply amazing!

Interestingly, our prepared speeches all touched on the theme of grit. Firstly, Kiran about his challenges seeking a job from his hometown, to a city in India and finally to Singapore. Rachel Heng on her childhood love of reading and story characters leading to her present job as an editor. Hwee Leng highlighted the power of positive affirmations. Valliappan described his bumpy vacation with his family that ultimately led to a wonderful holiday. Bernard Ng, CC CL introduced a different version of the tortoise and hare story (albeit a humorous one) as he gave May Lee, CC a roasting. Finally, I described prisoners who overcame adversities.

It was a real treat to witness Salma’s rehearsal for the upcoming Division A Contest. Salma, we are all behind you!

We had a unique evaluation this time with May Lee, CC presenting an absolutely scintillating poetic reaction to Bernard’s speech, filled with rhymes and more rhymes.

The theme for our table topics was 'Milestone' to commemorate our 50th meeting. Our Table Topics Master, Joseph Chong provided an array of interesting topics, with 12 enthusiastic volunteers tackling his questions! 

I find it amazing, that even with the change of venue, we still had a turn out of more than 30 folks with many first timers. From the many positive feedbacks, we made a great impression. Kudos to all our members! It is a team effort.

We would like to thank all appointment holders.

Congratulations to the Award Winners.

Best Prepared Speech: Chee Sian, TM

Best Project Evaluator: Norman Tan, TM

Best Table Topics Speaker: Vijaya

Looking forward to seeing all of you at the Division A Contest on 12^th of April at Temasek Poly and our next Chapter Meeting on 19 April 2014.

Cheers!

Article by: Chee Sian, TM

Anchorvale Toastmasters 49th Chapter Meeting- 22nd February

Welcome welcome, to another fabulous day at Anchorvale Toastmasters

A day to show-case the prowess of our talented Toastmasters. Our chapter meeting was attended by more than 30 Toastmaster members and visiting guests.

It was my pleasure to take up the role of Toastmaster of the Day for the very first time.

This meeting was extra special, because we had an induction ceremony for our new members conducted by our VPM Norman Tan.

After the induction ceremony, our Club President- CC/CL Roger Yap gave an opening address in which he explained his thrilling Indonesia adventure where he was stranded due to the sudden volcano eruption causing massive travel disruption.

We had a sterling round of prepared speeches. Congrats to Ken Chen and Zal for completing their maiden speeches in which they described their musical journey and pursuit for self-development respectively. Followed by an empowering speech from Saleena about how we can save the world. Venkat’s P6 was a superb fictional horror story that kept us on the edge of our seats. Our final prepared speaker was our heroic superstar, our VPE Sathya, who just completed his P10. Congratulations on becoming a Competent Communicator! He described his ‘Mission Impossible’ and inspired us to strive to achieve our dreams.

Followed by another round of excellent feedback from our evaluators, and special congrats to TM Joseph Chong who completed his first project evaluation. We moved on to Table Topics, conducted brilliantly by CC May Lee. The topics were based on intelligent quotes inspired by the prepared speeches. As she said, the harder the topics, the better the quality of speeches. And we could definitely see that being true, our table topics speakers wowed us as they tackled the tricky questions.

Our special thanks to VisitingToastmaster- Daniel Lee, Grassroots TMC for participating in our meeting as a General Evaluator and all appointment holders. 

Congratulations to our award winners!

Best Prepared Speech – CC Sathyamoorthi

Best Table Topics – Jim Hencke

We hope to see you at our next meeting on the 19^th of April! Watch out for more details.

Article by: Riyaj Masurekar, TM

Anchorvale's first Speech Craft for 2014

Greetings!!

Guess what folks? 

Anchorvale CC Toastmasters Club has big plans to end this term with a bang. In light with Toastmasters tradition, we organized our first Speech Craft session on the 23^rd of February in collaboration with Sengkang West Zone D RC. 

This was the first in a series of workshops that Anchorvale will be organizing. The Speech Craft program allows experienced Toastmasters to present the fundamentals of public speaking to the general public and club members.

For this session, we had two outstanding Toastmasters to learn from. First up, was our inspiring and enthusiastic club President, Roger Yap, CC, CL. He described the foundations of speech delivery, gestures and movements. His demonstrations were so useful, I felt myself nodding vigorously to his words, and at certain points, having light bulbs go off in my head, with the “ahah, yes I should incorporate that in my speech!”

Our next speaker, hailing from Toastmaster Club of Singapore is a seasoned communicator, Toastmaster Shishir Choudhary, CC CL. Shishir graciously agreed to speak at our first Speech Craft session and my oh my, was it a privilege. He shared his secret for communicating well, with regards to self-awareness. His presentation was so motivating, I didn't just receive secrets of communicating well, I felt much better about myself too.

It was indeed, a fruitful day and we hope that our next three Speech Craft sessions, to be conducted in May will match or be better than our first one.

More information will be posted closer to the dates!

Till next time, adios amigos!

By: Salma Begum