2018 Christmas Special Chapter meeting!!!!

Just as you thought Christmas Chapter meetings tend to have the lowest attendance, Anchorvale CC Toastmasters Club defied all expectations to conduct one of our most successful Chapter Meetings in 2018! With a special Christmas buffet feast, Christmas Lucky Draw and the attendance of past Club Presidents all the way from 2013 to 2017, guests and members alike were treated to a grand party of friendship and celebration that is likely to be remembered for time to come!

Past Club President 2014-2015 Sathya kicked off the meeting with a thoughtful question to all on how we would like to give back during the year-end festivities. Interesting food for thought, especially given how easily we tend to forget that Christmas is also the season for giving.

This broke the ice between members (*the room was really cold inside) and Chief Elf aka Toastmaster of the Day, Norman next introduced Club President Chee Sian, who literally took up the role of Santa Clause to give out not ONE, but THREE books on public speaking by Dale Carnegie to Club members! Looking forward to your book reviews soon guys :D

Appreciation can make a day and it can even change a life, but today it can be used as the Word of the Day as our Language Evaluator John Tan encouraged us all to embrace and appreciate the people all around us. I myself, appreciated the Christmas buffet lunch very much.

On that note, food seems to be a rather pertinent topic for today as even Jerry Lim, ACB, ALB shared his exploits of cooking for his Advanced Project 5 ‘The Motivational Speech’. The other project speeches covered a plethora of topics, ranging from managing employee expectations (Andy, TM – Pathways Level 1 P2), riding the wave of emotions from happy (Rama, TM – Pathways Level 2, P5) to sadness and regret (Raymond, VC5, EC5 – Pathways Level 1, P2). We also covered inspirational life stories (Jeff, TM – Pathways Level 2 P5) and even had time for a mock interview session with IT Pang and his family (In Tiam, CC – Advanced Project 2 The Interview Show)

After voting, it was time to dive back into our favourite – FOOD. As guests enjoyed the refreshment break, it was also an opportune time to celebrate my (ahem!) our members’ birthdays for December. Special shoutout to the CC Managers, BiÉn and Gabriel who took time off their busy schedules to join us for the celebration.

CC and RC Managers, Gabriel and Bi En with our Club’s birthday boy and girl, Norman and Zhaomin

 After binge-eating, we settled nicely into a food coma and enjoyed the project evaluations that ensued. Jenny, our club mentor delivered a positive and encouraging evaluation for Jerry while Pallavi performed a detailed, surgical analysis of what worked or did not work for Andy. Mithun and Annabelle both delivered concise and insightful evaluations for their respective speakers while Roger gave a tour de force of his evaluation prowess that left us in awe.

Salma took to the stage next and brought an uplifting change in her turn as table topics master. Literally, the topic would change as speakers were on stage, meaning they had to be even more quick-footed to connect their story to the image flashed on screen. Kudos to the brave souls who persevered undeterred!

 Salma introduced a unique set of Christmas themed Table Topics

 Next up was Zulhafni, severely underutilised in his role as Ah-Counter today but he delivered by gaving an in-depth analysis of everyone’s speech patterns and use of pause fillers. If only we had the chance to hear him speak in another role, LE next time perhaps?

Speaking of LE, John Tan was back to show his appreciation to speakers who used the Word of the Day. He also pointed our several ‘’Wow’’ words, good use of the English language and gently encouraged us all to improve. Spoken like a true English teacher.

Finally before the meeting came to a close, Chee Sian in his closing address delivered what everyone was waiting for – the Lucky Draw prizes! Congrats again to the 8 lucky winners of our Christmas giveaway, sponsored none other than our beloved club mentor, Jenny!

What a memorable meeting it was indeed!

 Best Speaker: Raymond Zhong, VC5, EC5

Best Evaluator: Roger Yap, CC, CL

Best Table Topics: Yu Kang (Jeff’s son)

Best Speaker award goes to Raymond Zhong, VC5, EC5

Best Evaluator award goes to Roger Yap, CC, CL

Best Table Topics award goes to Yu Kang (Jeff’s son)

Written by: Norman Tan, ACB, CL

131st Chapter Meeting Recap

Valliappan Selvamani, Sergeant-At-Arms and Toastmaster of the Day, began the 131st Chapter Meeting by asking each one of us about the goal we had set for 2018, how successful we were in accomplishing it, as well as about the goal for year 2019. Year 2018 has been a terrible year for me, and I had not set any goal for myself. I have been attending lectures and seminars by academic professors. I found their talks dry and sleepy, therefore I have set my goal in improving my public speaking skill. I am doing historical research in my free time; therefore, I am sharing my research findings in my speeches in Toastmaster meetings. By taking feedback from my fellow toastmasters, I plan to make my speeches more lively and energetic.

The next session was “Prepared Speeches Session”. The first prepared speech was delivered by Anthony Lin, and the purpose was how to raise our financial awareness on current financial scams. He began his speech by sharing his own “scam” experience. We have learnt much financial terms from his speech.

Next Speaker, Sarah Ong’s speech was all about importance of sleep, and the key take away was we should sleep at least 7-9 hours per day. Rama Krishna delivered a message showcasing importance of communication.

Third speaker, Rusman spoke about qualities of a good leader as it happened so did our fifth speaker Jeff. I picked up some important leadership skills from bth of their speeches.

Being the fourth speaker, I shared many of my memorable experience during my primary school which was the Griffiths Primary School. Helena’s prepared speech was about the horrible effects of diabetes, the pictures in her PowerPoint slides further emphasized her message.

After the refreshment, our distinguished guests from Choa Chu Kang Toastmasters Club, George Chew, Lee Chin Teck, Aaron Ting, as well as our members, Nareesh BN,  Muthu Ganesh, Wee Chee Sian, last but not least, Jenny Au gave constructive and wonderful suggestions to all our speakers.

As Table Topics Master, Narayana Rao picked a number topics regarding “Singapore”, many participants came forward to speak and overall enthusiasm added colour and delight to the session.

Special thanks to Audrey Lim to her timer’s report, Muthu Ganesh’s Language Evaluator’s report, Freeya’s An Counter’s report, and Chee Sian’s thank you note and Award Presentation. Best speaker ribbon was handed over to Rusman, Best Evaluator Ribbon was handed over to Aaron and the best Table topic speaker award was received by George Chew.

I had a wonderful afternoon with Anchorvale Toastmaster’s Chapter Meeting, wherein I learnt a lot of tips and skills on public speaking and leadership, which are useful and precious to me. I am looking forward to the next Christmas Special Chapter Meeting on 8th December.

-Written by Lucas Lui

(More of my speeches could be found at https://www.linkedin.com/in/luikinfai84/detail/recent-activity/posts/ )