120th Chapter Meeting - 28th April 2018

It was 28th April 2018, during the blazing hot afternoon, whereby 22 members and guests all gathered at Anchorvale Community club for our 120th Chapter meeting.

The meeting was convened by Valli, who was the Sergeant at Arms. She laid down the ground rules and kindly requested that all mobiles be in silent mode. She then started the ice-breaker session with the question: Who do you want to be re-born as? Norman said that I want to be a Polar bear as the whole island’s attention is on Inuka. Singapore Zoo’s only polar bear who had sadly just passed away. Audrey wanted to be Captain America as he is down to earth even though he is very powerful and Francis just wanted to be himself with curly black hair and Jenny wanted to be like Donald Trump because he can get things done.

Followed by Manomani who is the Toastmaster of the Day. She explained the agenda and introduced the appointment holders, Timer, Ah Counter and invited the President for the opening address.

In her opening address, Salma asked what was the recent events that was happening in the Government? Yes, a change of the cabinet ministers and she drew comparisons to the Club EXCO. The club needs new blood to lead the club to greater heights. As Chee Sian will be the next President, she hopes that with fresh new ideas, a new uniqueness can be introduced. She clarified that you don’t need to be personally skilled in something before taking up a role, for example she shared that being a treasurer doesn’t mean you have to be an accountant. It should be a role that you enjoy doing. Salma also mentioned that being in her current role has helped her in her job especially during meetings at the ministry and she has received many positive feedbacks from her co-workers on her clarity and accuracy of her summaries. The return of investment for Toasmtasters is tremendous for just $18 a month. On taking new skills, she commended Valliappan for taking the most difficult role which is the Language Evaluator for the first time, proof that we can always find new things to learn here in Toastmasters.

Next was Valliappan who came on stage to introduce the importance on good usage of English and to provide concise feedback of the language use. He introduced the Word of the day “Ebullient” which means cheerful and full of energy. He gives a fitting example of our President, Salma has an ebullient personality. He ended off with a quote by Dole Carnegie “Use a new word accurately five times and it is yours”

Mano started the next item on the agenda. 

Prepared Speeches. Prajwala in his debut ice breaker speech, talked about creation and his transformation from a child to now as an adult.

Francis won the best prepared speech with his analogy of “Do you see the cup as half empty or half full"

Audrey spoke about her biggest influence in her life. Using her love for drama to tell her story about her family, herself and fear of dolls.

Norman spoke about his trip to Japan and his encounter with bad weather and how he got stuck in the airport.

Best Project evaluator: Jenny turned out to be our laughter trigger of the afternoon when she was giving the evaluation speech for Norman. Her antics “look left, then look right” had us laughing off our chairs.

Language evaluator: Valliappan had taken down plenty of notes  and he gave a detailed account of the positive literary devices, metaphors, similes ..etc that the speakers have used. He pointed out errors in the use of the Engllish language and provided examples for areas for improvement. It was truly well done and I learnt a lot from his evaluation.

General evaluator: Rusman was very pleased with the performance of the appointment holders and also provided feedback for Toastmaster of the day on how to make the transitions between segments smoother.

Best table topics winner; Richen had to choose between being able to fly and being invisible. He started off explaining that his new workplace is nearby at Changi but it takes him over an hour to reach. Therefore, he wishes that he can fly, so that he can have time to eat breakfast, flapping his “wings” at the same time much to the amusement of the audience. He also talked about the advantage of saving the cost of an air ticket and not having to endure the crying baby in the flight. “I want to fly….”

Salma in her closing address mentioned that there are a lot of first times in this meeting. Rusman and Melvin as a first-time evaluator. Valliappan, his first time as a language evaluator. 

She also thanked Deepthi for her unusual way of the table topics which make things more interesting. Indeed, it was an ebullient meeting. The meeting closed with an ebullient group photo.

Written By:

Melvin Lee, TM