137th chapter meeting recap: By Valliappan

It was a very hot sunny afternoon. That too on a school holiday. Nothing can stop our toastmasters from attending the 137th chapter meeting held at Anchorvale CC Falcon room on 23rd Mar 2019.

The chapter meeting was started at 2:00 pm sharp by our Sergeant at Arms, Narayana Rao. He started with an ice breaker question on “What made us attend the toastmasters meeting even though it is a school holiday period?”. Members shared that they love to be in Toastmasters meetings to get rid of their routines and also to learn something new. Some members mentioned in a lighter fashion, that they were in the meeting as they were single or have had accepted roles for the chapter meeting and forced to be there. With all the laughter, the stage was handed over to the Toastmaster of the Day (TMD) , Rusman Hadijanto. 

After briefing the meeting structure and introducing the appointment holders (Hilda - Timer, Marc - Ah Counter, Valli Kasinathan - Table Topics Master and Valliappan - General Evaluator), the TMD welcomed our president Wee Chee Sian for presenting his opening address. Chee Sian mentioned about the importance of public speaking and the 3 possible outcomes of the speech. The speech that we practiced, the speech we actually gave and the speech we desired to give. He stressed the importance of practice to make the speech better and also invited members to take up leadership positions in the next EXCO term starting from 1st July 2019 onwards. He also excited the members by telling about the special chapter meeting to be held on 27th Apr at our club in partnership with Grassroots club.

The TMD was exemplary and did a commendable job by inviting the speakers for their prepared speech by mentioning their speech title, interests and leading the applause. The four speakers for the day were Ponnuchamy, Jeff Lin, Helena and In Tiam. Ponnuchamy impressed everybody with his stupendous ice breaker speech and also shared us about the book “The Answer” , the first book he had read from title page to the last page and inspired all of us to read the book. Jeff Lin spoke about his experience as a “Protege”. The next speaker Helena Lim scared the audience by throwing a fake snake at the crowd, to demonstrate the fear and explain about how to overcome fear in those kind of situations. She also urged everybody to learn to do First Aid. The final speaker In Tiam did a role play with his cutie princess Jung Yi, to persuade her to take up roles in her school events.

Hilda did her role as a timer diligently and provided her timer report. There was no voting for the best speaker as only 3 speakers were qualified for the voting. TMD announced the next exciting segment which was the Refreshment Break, giving opportunity for the members to network with each other while having sumptuous food and a lovely rainbow cake. Our special thanks to Jenny Au, for bringing Papaya for the refreshment.

Following the break, the evaluation segment started and our competent evaluators Narayana Rao, In Tiam, Freya and Chee Sian gave their incredible evaluations to the speakers and  also helped them with some tips to improve their speeches. Unfortunately there was no voting for evaluation as well as only 3 evaluators were qualified.

Valli Kasinathan being the Table topics master came out with various questions for the table topics revolving around women, in lieu of the Women’s Day celebrations in March. As usual our club members and guests volunteered themselves to take up the challenge and there were close to 10 table topics speakers.

Special thanks to Marc, who accepted to take up the Ah counter role on the spot with great spirit. He did an exceptional job by listening very attentively throughout the meeting to capture the pause fillers and repeated words and provided a detailed report.  The last segment was the General Evaluator report provided by Valliappan. He appreciated what went well during the meeting and gave suggestions on areas that could be improved. 

Finally Chee Sian presented the best Table Topic Speaker award to Desmond and DTM Andrew Kwan.

Everyone felt happy for a well spent weekend afternoon and dispersed home.

Bye to all, till we meet on 13th Apr for another great session !