I remember my first day visiting Anchorvale Toastmasters – unprepared, uncertain and unsure, I listened to the brilliant speeches prepared by the members then and thought to myself: “Today, I shall just sit in silence and watch in awe”. Boy, was I wrong – a few minutes later, during my first Table Topics session, Jenny, one of our Club Mentors, urged me to step up and try my hand at doing a speech. With the strong support from the audience, I took that step up and started my Toastmasters journey.
Anchorvale
Toastmasters is all about stepping up – with or without support from the
audience; it is about snatching the mantle when the odds are against us or
grabbing at the opportunities presented to us with gusto and pride. On 25 June
2016, another group of Anchorvale Toastmasters members showed us what it means
to step up.
On 25 June 2016, Anchorvale Toastmasters
gathered together for the final meeting of the term for 2015-16 and celebrate
the conclusion of yet another fun and eventful term. For the special occasion,
we decided to go with a refreshing programme for the Meeting – moving away from
the usual Chapter Meeting format and adding three vibrant segments for the
day’s session.
The meeting started out with a members-only
Annual General Meeting with the goal
of updating the Club members on the events of the term that went by as well as
the developments and future events to look forward to.
With the ‘serious’, heavy stuff out of the
way, we adjourned to enjoy the wonderful set prepared for lunch – tasty,
filling vegetarian pasta from our very own VPE – Salma Begum, ACB, CL, succulent
delights from Old Chang Kee and of course, an impeccably-designed cake as
dessert for everyone! (truly an unfortunate day to be fasting for me!).
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| yummm |
Of course, before the new, incoming
President delivers his Opening Address, I took the opportunity to thank our
members, and particularly, the EXCO of 2015/16 for their brilliant work
throughout the term and for being role models themselves in stepping up – with
a special surprise in store for everyone present during the meeting! (You had
to be there to know what it was!). At Anchorvale Toastmasters, we are also
always on the look-out for members who deserve our recognition for their
contributions to the Club. This year, instead of 1 Toastmaster of the Year – we
recognised 6 different Members for their unique contributions to the Club:
·
Totally-Transformed Toastmasters – Sridhar
·
Creative Czar – Alvin
·
Pro-Active Prince – Sridhar
·
Out-standingly Out-Going – Chee Sian
·
Table Topics Titan – Benjamin
·
Master Mentee – Sindu
·
EXCO’s Pet – Alice
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| Sridhar & Zul |
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| Alvin & Zul |
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| Benjamin & Zul |
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| Chee Sian & Zul |
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| Sindu & Zul |
Congratulations again to all the
Anchorvale Awards winners!
The honour roll continued as well as we
had our past-Division ‘A’ Director and also a dear friend of Anchorvale
Toastmasters, Carolyn Street-Johns. DTM to install our incoming EXCO for the
term 2016-17. Each out-going EXCO member was invited to share tips and advice
for his/her successor for the up-coming term. The powerful Anchorvaler
‘Avengers’ Team consists of:
•
President –
Norman ‘Iron Man’ Tan
•
VPE 1 – Salma
‘Loud Mouth’ Begum
•
VPE 2 – Wee Chee
Sian (the Ladies’ Man)
•
VPM – Sridhar
‘Spiderman’ Maroju
•
VPPR – Owen ‘Not
Wilson’ Lorena
•
SAA – Ram ‘the
Newcomer’ Kumaresan
•
Secretary –
Alice ‘In Wonderland’ Ow
•
Treasurer –
Hemant ‘the He-Man’ Singhal
•
IPP – Zulhafni
‘ORD Loh’ Zulkeflee
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| 2016-17 Toastmasters Mightiest Heroes |
With various refreshing, new talents
coming on board as part of the EXCO – the 2016/17 Term will definitely be an
exciting one for the Club!
The day, however, was far from over – with
the tight schedule we had in mind, we decided to have not one, but two impromptu speech games – our
very own Anchorvale ‘Improv’ Afternoon!
It was safe to say that everyone in the room had the opportunity to participate
and take up the challenge of speaking on the fly.
The first game was the Situation Speaker where speakers had to
deliver a special speech while acting out
a weird quirk! The twist of this challenge was – the audience will have no
idea what the weird quirk is and will be expected to guess from the speaker’s
presentation. With topics such as the new Singapore ‘Ghost-Busters’ team and
quirks such as a speaker who simply enjoys inviting volunteers up for his/her
speeches – each challenger stepped forward with great trepidation but
eventually delivered their speeches with doubtless confidence – kudos to
everyone who stepped up for the challenge!
The second game was a team-based improve
game – Scenes From a Bag where teams
of three speakers took turns to continue and complete a one-liner story and
deliver their secret dialogue. The twist (there is always a twist) is that the
speaker delivering the secret dialogue will not
know the line that he/she has to say! Hilarity of course ensued as a grim
kidnapping session suddenly turned into a romantic quest to find Salma Begum’s
boyfriend – a gripping story from the start to the end as each team went out of
their way to bring the story to even greater heights.
In yet another Anchorvale ‘twist’, the
winner was decided based on the speaker/team with the loudest cheers and the
audience certainly did not hold back with the support – it was near impossible
deciding the winner of the games but finally a consensus was reached. Congratulations
to the ribbon-winners for the afternoon:
·
Situation
Speaker –
Benjamin
·
Scenes
From a Bag
– Salma, Carolyn, Jenny, Sathiya
As the meeting drew to a close, our
incoming, dashing and young Club President, Norman Tan, CC stepped forward to deliver
his first Opening Address – ensuring that the meeting ended on an inspirational
and motivational note. Norman shared his goals of 3 ‘M’s with us and his
direction for the Club.
With that, another wonderful meeting
concluded on a high and contented note. On a personal note, I would like to
offer my thanks and appreciation again for everyone who has contributed to the
ease of my journey as Club President – while the journey was not always
smooth-sailing, the value I received from seeing our Members shine and grow at
Anchorvale Toastmasters contributed to the very rewards of the role itself. I
would also like to take the opportunity to welcome the incoming EXCO – you have
all taken up a challenge that will give you the best challenges and yet, the best
rewards; know that at the end of the day, if no one had stepped up, if every
single one of you decided to take the easy way out and remain sitting, this
Club would not go on. And the only reason why Anchorvale Toastmasters continue
to grow and move forward is because of the passion, enthusiasm and talent of
every single one of you – so keep stepping
up!
Published by the versatile: Zulhafni Zulkeflee
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