Anchorvale CC Toastmasters Club, Singapore (Sengkang): Anchorvale TMC 67th Chapter Meeting on 25th April 2015

It was yet another Chapter meeting on 25^th April, but it was anything but uneventful, as it had several guests with us, hailing from Grassroots TMC, Hope@Toastmasters, Bishan Toastmasters and NTU Toastmasters.

The meeting kicked off with our very own President, Sathya delivering his opening address and asking the audience, “What is your nickname?” Everyone is bound to have a nickname at some points of our lives – but it is merely an alias that is suitable for our own true style J

Thereafter, we had our Prepared Speech segment, spearheaded by Alvin, who did his P1 Ice Breaker! He shared his musings about how he originally thought Toastmasters stood for ‘Toast Bread’ Club. As he narrated his hilarious recollections, we as an audience were ‘stun like vegetable’ but never so certain about his flair for public speaking :)

Next up, we had Deb who delivered his P7- Research your topic! He spoke about hobbies and its importance as a form of relaxation. As the saying goes, a hobby a day, keeps the doldrums away! Speaking about his favorite hobbies, Match box, Stampers and Watches, Deb even brought his own impressive collection of watches! Dedication indeed!

Our 3^rd speaker of the day was In Tiam, and today was a momentous occasion as he was delivering his P10 Inspire your audience. Question of the day- what is your goal of being here? As In Tiam encouraged everyone to adopt SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time Bomb) goals, he also shared with us simple and achievable steps towards realizing our goals but all the while emphasizing the need to be realistic and grounded.

Our last speaker, Melvyn spoke about Risk and our risk inclinations as part of his AP5 – Speaking to Inform. Through the sharing of some very useful and thought-provoking statistics, Melvyn pieced apart the notion of risk and elucidated how one’s risk can be easily tainted between Perception and Reality, which separates the real hazards from the imaginative ones. His takeaway message - Life is all about taking risks. If you never take a risk, you will never achieve your dreams.

All the speeches were very interesting, but there could only be one best speaker, and that honor went to Deb! Congratulations!

As our evaluators prepared their speeches, we delved into the Tables Topics segment conducted by Norman. The theme for today’s segment is ‘What is your ideal holiday?’ with a catch – each speaker must draw a random mode of transport and budget from a pre-determined list. Kudos to all who attempted, Vinay, Rachel, Alvin, In Tiam and Jackie and congratulations to Vinay who impressed us the most with a $200 trip to Kuala Lumpur via bicycle!

Next up was the project evaluations conducted by our impressive lineup of Deb, Leo, Melvyn and Zulhafni! It was Deb’s maiden attempt at evaluation and it was a close fight. However, the veterans were too strong and the competition was so intense that there was a triple tie for the best evaluator, which eventually went to our Area Governor, Melvyn Goh! Congratulations!

Last but not least, we had our special guests DTM Crispin Rodrigues and Jennifer Lee CC, CL to deliver the Language Evaluation and General Evaluation respectively! Crispin wowed us with his intricate yet spot-on analysis of the meeting’s language use while Jennifer crafted such a detailed evaluation, reminding us at Anchorvale that we definitely still have room to become better =)

Special thanks to all our guests who took time off to visit us today, Thomas, CC, ALB and Jennifer, CC from Grassroots TMC, Melvyn, CC, CL from Hope@Toastmasters, Leo Tan from Bishan Toastmasters and last but not least, DTM Crispin from NTU Toastmasters!

All in all, it was an enjoyable afternoon, albeit a little too short. Regardless, do join us next month, as we will be having an Extraordinary Team Building Chapter Meeting! There will also be a barbecue together with games, so do join us for this special extravaganza!

Details are as follows: