Anchorvale CC Toastmasters Club and Marine Parade Toastmasters Club Joint Meeting on 11th Sep 2021

 

A very warm welcome by our Area A1 Director “Fan Li” who was also the TMD and the Marine Parade Toastmasters Club President “Adam Ahmad” to Toastmasters members and Guests. The President mentioned having a second look at life by appreciating our family, friends, and even the small and simple thing in life like the roses by the sidewalk.

The 1^st speaker was Krupa Shah, who broke the ice with her 1^st ice breaker speech.

Krupa-19 was a girl who always complained about her life. She always wanted to have a perfect life. When covid-19 struck, after a while she finally found 5 new habits: Meditation, Forgiveness, Journaling, Learning new things and Self Challenge, which have completely changed her life better.

2^nd speaker was Wee Chee Sian, he found his past photograph which reminded him of his naivety, arrogance, humiliation, as well his awakening. When Chee Sian tried to recall the mini-series of him in the past, he mentioned being mindful of our thoughts, for it will be determined what comes to you and what goes away from you.

3^rd speaker was Ramanpreet, was sharing about the partition of India whereby India was divided into India and Pakistan in 1947. Learning from this past division, Ramanpreet encouraged us to love each other, and accept each other, and live peacefully.

4^th speaker was Siva, his speech was about WFH (Working from Home).

His working from home activities soon became working from heaven as he enjoyed it, however, after a while, it turned to be working from hell due to juggling with various works including disturbance from the kids at home. He finally loves the balance between working from home for efficiency and working in the office to build a strong network with the team.

Table Topic was brought by our Table Topic Master, Venkat Voleti

Some of the enthralling nuggets of table topics are:

• Preference for switch on/off camera during zoom meeting session, whereby Kavin choose to have a hybrid as it depends on the situation.
• Formal or pajamas during zoom meeting, whereby Jelita chooses flexibility as it depends on the event.
• If team members’ children uncontrollably disturb the zoom meeting. Jenny Lim is ok with this, as children may have an urgent need to attend, while an office meeting can always be rescheduled
• Physical meeting or virtual meeting. Peter prefers virtual meetings, as he can meet up with as much as possible people from all over the world without any boundaries.
• On the topic of caught on zoom unmuted while mocking boss or colleagues, Bee Lim luckily never had this, and she reminds us to always be cautious and always be forgiving and positive mind to avoid this such situation.
• Impression on zoom meeting on 1^st pandemic vs 2 years into the pandemic, Sky is enjoying the use of zoom and fully support its effectiveness.

Project Evaluation

The first Project evaluation of Siva, conducted by Prasad Bakre. He was mesmerized by Siva’s speech whereby Siva indeed is a magnificent speaker, with magnificent speech, and the ability to handle magnificent disruption.

The second Project evaluation of Krupa, by Valliappan. Krupa, was using good use of words such as the old Krupa19 and the current new Krupa21, architecture of the future. Krupa to relax a bit and smile, share more info about self, and follow by a good closing speech.

The third Project evaluation of Chee Sian, by Fan Li. Good opening words of naivety, arrogance, humiliation, and awakening. A good sample of the use of burger as the sample. Little improvement if can sharing the real picture Chee Sian’s younger version during this project and to use more on the body gesture for a better delivery impact.

The fourth Project evaluation of Ramanpreet by Salma. It was good research of speech, and good use of pictures to back it up. In the improvement part, try to cut down some parts and focus on a specific area to keep the speech delivery within the allowance time, and to balance the share between the slide and own speech instead, as the slide will take over most of the space while the speaker will be shown in a small window, by not sharing the slide all the time, she speaker video will be shown in a nice fit size of the screen.

Language Evaluator

Our language evaluator Hanifa Kahar, by profession is the Cross-Cultural Communication Coach and Consultant, was evaluating the good use of the Words of the Day “Magnificent”

• Consonance – commute, don’t commute, difficult to clock
• Use of Rhyme – Living a legacy
• Repetitions as an emphasis:
• lack of coordination, always demanding, always requesting what they want
• rub shoulders, rub tummy, rub whatever
• pleasant, unpleasant
• Contrasting words: no longer of my past, the architecture of my own future
• Triads: as simple as the roses by the sidewalk. Bothered, troubled, and disturbed
• Good vocab: challenge myself; ponder upon; embark on
• Metaphor: working in heaven, a hell of a noise, let your body language shine

General Evaluation by Gwen Ling

Good welcome and hospitable, greeted by Marc and Jenny from Anchorvale CC Toastmasters

Fan Li has done a very well done job by encouraging all the toastmasters to use the various colorful background, including the fancy use of fun color clothes, indeed she has achieved her goal to have an excellent yet fun a colorful meeting.

The closing address was conducted by Marc Wong, the President of Anchorvale CC Toastmasters Club.

Here we go for the announcement for the winners:

Finally, the President of Anchorvale CC Toastmasters Club, Marc Wong, and the Area A1 Director, Fan Li warmly closed the meeting and wished everyone to have a great weekend.

Blog written by Rusman H Lee, CTM, CL, DL5

Recap of 181st Chapter meeting - 28th Aug 2021

Our Club President Marc Wong, warmly greeted us whether we have ever watched “The Pursuit of Happiness” movie?

The movie theme is about Patience and Perseverance will overcome Mountains.

At the start of the movie the main actor, Will Smith was not having the life he wanted to have. He learned from one of the wealthy men who drove a nice Ferrari, being a stockbroker can lead to the betterment of life. Hence he started to envision himself that he wanted to be a stockbroker, especially to provide a better life for his son. Through the ups and downs and the patience and perseverance, Will had finally achieved the success he wanted to have.

Our President Marc, compared the similarity in Toastmasters, whereby there will be ups and downs for the pursuit to be a better speaker, however with Patience and Perseverance, we will be able to overcome the mountain we face, to achieve the success we want.

Our Language Evaluator Terence Nunis introduced the word of the day as “Purloin” (to steal or to take from others)

The first speaker was Durga Prasad, whose speech title was “My Communication style”

He shared the various type of coffee, such as Indian Brew Coffee, Latte, or Yuanyang, to represent the various type of communication styles such as Direct, Initiative, Supportive, and Analytical. 

Durga encouraged us to adjust our communication style to suit our audience's communication style, to have a better acknowledgment from our various audiences.

The second Speaker was Santwana, with her speech title “Different types of learning and teaching skills”.

 

She shared everyone has a different type of learning:

The Audio learner: they may not like to write

The Visual learner: they may not learn well with audio instruction, hence gave some visual info instead.

The Reading / Writing: they like to read and revise over and over again.

Kinesthetic: It was a mix of audio, visual, and write-up.

The third speaker was Doreen. Her opening speech talked about how to make a memorable childhood memory, either the good and the bad. Doreen shared how she had learned that gifts should always be given to someone without any strings attached.

The next event was the most fantastic one, and you are right, it was the Table Topic. The Table topics was conducted by Valliappan. There were various speakers including various youngsters who were so enthusiastic and courageous to do their table topic speech.

Johnny started the evaluation for Santwana’s speech. He assessed the great use of the various style of learning. Johnny shared it’s great if Santwana can share her learning style hence we can get a better understanding of her learning style instead of sharing the other people learning style.

The second evaluator was Sharif and he was evaluating Durga's speech. He shared Durga was using great use of the eyes-grabber opening. Sharif advised Durga to enhance the speech to even better level by having more structured order for the speech.

The third evaluator was Annabelle, and she was evaluating Doreen’s speech.

She mentioned Doreen has great use of body language and great use of vocal variety. A little improvement suggested was to avoid the virtual background and ensure Doreen ’s appearance would be clearer and not shaded out by the virtual background.

Jenny shared with us the best nugget of 5 moments of truth to be a Leader

To be a Leader needs a lot of hard work and diligence, be it in the workplace, social, and various other situations.

Sample of great Leaders: Mahatma Gandhi, Lee Kwan Yeow, Martin Luther King

Toastmasters' core values: integrity, respect, service, and excellence. 

 

The next session was the Language Evaluation, whereby Terence shared about the good use of words “Purloin”

 

He mentioned the good use of language:

Alliteration: startled, stunt, and speechless.

Idiom: patience is a virtue

Phrases: Delayed gratification

Epiphora: Well crafted, well developed

Anaphora: Interesting

Terence summarised his language evaluation with million dollars advice “Say enough that makes people understand, rather than saying so much and people don’t understand”.

Eliminate the pause fillers, pause when it’s needed, and slow down to let the audience grasp your message.

Sivakumar presented his Ah counter report.

The meeting was closed by our President Marc Wong, with his thankfulness for all appointment holders for their great jobs.

Marc proceeded with the awards presentation for the day:

Best speaker of the day: Doreen Neo

Best Evaluator: Annebelle De Arroz

Best Table Topic: Aryan Voleti, Rusman Hadijanto Lee, Marc Wong, Cindy Ong

The blog is written by Rusman Hadijanto Lee, CTM, CL, DL5

Anchorvale CC TMC and Braddell Heights II TMC Joint Meeting on 14 August 2021

Before starting with our wonderful NDP themed joint toastmasters meeting, SAA Aishwarya TC1 asked us to introduce ourselves one by one. Then our very own Club President, Marc Wong, DL4 made the Opening Address. He shared about Helen Keller’s world that was covered with silence and darkness. However, that all changed when her parents found a teacher, Anne Sullivan who made a great impact on Helen’s learning journey. 

The Toastmaster of the Day, Helena Lim IP2, gave her introduction about the meeting. After that, our lovely Language Evaluator Aaron Ting DTM shared the word of the day which was to use adjectives.  

The next segment was my favourite! The… prepared speeches segment! To start off, Anders Tay TM spoke about Uniqlo! He talked about something unique! He shared about something many people may not know, Uniqlo’s traditional patterns.

Our second speaker was Bharathamma Eswarawaka IP5, who shared about a very funny MRT incident which encouraged her to reduce her weight. One important thing I learnt from her speech was, ‘planning is not important, execution is important.’ Next speaker was Valliappan Selvamani CC, CL, PM1. He shared about a series of unfortunate incidents which made him realise that being first is not important. And I was surprised that his parents took a daring step to enrol him as the first student in a newly found school!. We then proceeded to the next speech by Ravindran Pandian DL4. He talked about how Covid-19 affected employees in his office in Singapore. 

We had then finished the prepared speeches segment. What next? The Table Topics segment conducted by Rusman Hadijanto CTM, CL, DL5 First, Lorus Loh PI3, spoke based on a topic, ‘no competition, no progress.’  After him, I (Kavin) spoke on a topic which was, ’don’t quit, do it.’ Followed by three other table topic speakers, Siva Kumar, Rushvida and Aaron Ting.

After that, we moved on to the Evaluation, led by our four excellent evaluators, Sarah Ong IP2, Clarence Eng PM1, Marco Pesce DTM and Wee Chee Sian ACB, ALB, who evaluated our four wonderful speakers. 

Next, we had a workshop on “Beginning and concluding speeches effectively” by Salma Begum, ACB, ALB. She shared with us 4 different techniques to start a speech. It was very lively, and I enjoyed it very much. Her humour and clarity was simply extraordinary! We then had the Ah Counter report presented by Helena Lim and the Language Evaluation presented by DTM Aaron Ting who extraordinarily evaluated everyone’s grammatical and spelling errors. Venkat Voleti PM2 was doing the timer role. Then we had General Evaluator DTM Patrick Sehoo to evaluate the whole meeting. Finally, to conclude the meeting, BHII president Lorus Loh presented the awards. 

I congratulate the award winners:

Best Speaker: Valliappan Selvamani

Best Evaluator: Wee Chee Sian

Best Table Topics: Kavin Valliappan

Blog written by: Kavin Valliappan

Recap of 180th Chapter Meeting on 24th Jul 2021

 

At about 2 pm our Sergeant at Arms (SAA) Valliappan Selvamani who was also doing double role as Toastmaster of the Day (TMD) started the meeting on time. Our SAA introduced the theme of the meeting: Making mind matter. Valliappan started the ice breaker session, by asking the attendees to introduce themselves as well to share, what was previously in their thoughts which now has become reality.

After finishing the ice breaker segment, Valliapan continued with the introduction and invited the club president Marc Wong to deliver his opening address. Our President, Marc Wong, shared that he was shocked with the recent tragic incident whereby a student was allegedly killed on the grounds at River Valley High School. He was shocked that this incident happened in our safe and peaceful Singapore. He shared the importance of the power of the mind which can turn the negative mind into the positive mind.

After President Marc Wong, finished his opening address, our Language Evaluator Gerald Yong shared the Word of the day “Revere” and explained the usage of that.

Once the word of the day was shared, our first Speaker Shweta Mittal started the very first speech of the day. Shweta mentioned the importance of finding out our feeling, this is called Emotional Intelligence. She mentioned the first and foremost ingredient of Dynamic Leadership Pathways is Emotional Intelligence. She shared Zig Ziglar quote “Your life is a result of the choices you have made. If you don’t like your life, start making better choices.

Our second Speaker Kok Siong Cheng, delivered his prepared speech titled “Start your own Business”. He shared some valuable steps before we start our own business:

          1. Conduct self-assessment

Assessment: a. why do I want to start a business? Eg Freedom, money, etc

b. what are my skills? Passion alone may not be enough, but knowing strengths and weaknesses will help us to understand better ourselves.

2. Refine the idea and do research

What are the products, who are my competitors, google search it.

3. Write up a business plan (sales, marketing, financial)

4. Register and fund the business

Our third speaker was Rusman Hadijanto Lee, he shared his experience on having one of his best friend Otty, to coach and guide him to get a better job in his earlier career. Having an Internationally recognizable IT Certificate from a big company such as Microsoft has helped him to elevate his career. When he worked in Singapore, he found out Toastmasters club has the best mentorship program, which has helped him later to be a better speaker and a better leader.

Our fourth speaker Doreen Neo shared her experience of becoming a protégé as well her experience of having a mentor. Her boss who was also her coach mentioned that if she is not taking care of herself, the company won’t be taking care of her, although her family will. Health is above all. She was promoted to be System Customer Service Manager to supervise 30 people, she felt furious, however, her Manager convinced Doreen Neo that she can do it. After starting this new role, Doreen felt overwhelmed with her works. Fortunately, another friend of her ‘Margaret’ who eventually became her great mentor reminded her to delegate the works, otherwise, she always felt overwhelming. She mentioned that delegation will help her to prioritize the works, hence she can start to focus on the most important tasks rather than taking care of everything. Through Margaret's constant guidance, Doreen was finally able to manage her job well. Till today Margaret is still the true friend and Mentor of Doreen.

Once the prepared speech session finished, we moved into the Table Topics session led by our Table Topic Master, Sarah Ong. Before the table topic began, she shared very valuable tips for table topics.

Samuel attempted his first table topic on “Make yourself a priority”. He mentioned a quote from Bill Gates “Don’t compare yourself with anyone in this world, if you do so, you are insulting yourself. Daphne table topic was on “The way you speak to yourself matters”. Sienna Arenas shared her Table topic on “How you love yourself is how you teach others to love you”. She believes she can’t give what she doesn’t have. By taking the balance of everything like work, with enough sleep and rest, as well feeding mind and soul like attending Toastmasters. She shared a nice quote of “Be the change you do want to see in this world” by Mahatma Gandhi. Kavin on Table Topic “It’s okay if the only thing you did today is breath” said, If we have so many things we need to do over and over, but without breathing we wouldn’t be able to do all these things. Shin Tan did her table topic on “Happiness is not the absence of problems, It is the ability to deal with them. Shweta Mittal on Learn to set boundaries to learn to say no. Bridget’s table topic was on “Train your mind to see the good in every situation”. She learned about humility to serve, capacity to love, ability to inspire.

After our refreshment break, we started back our meeting. It was time for Project Evaluation, by our Toastmasters experts.

John Tan did his first energetic and enthusiastic Project Evaluation to evaluate Shweta's speech. Our second Project Evaluator Bridget Lee was evaluating Kok Siong Cheng’s speech. She shared good feedback on Kok Siong’s good gestures and good robust content. Some improvement suggested was, by the end of a speech to put a call to action, to encourage the audience to take the action after. Our third Project Evaluator Peter Roth was evaluating Rusman Lee. He mentioned about great real life sharing experience of Rusman, whereby having a mentor has helped Rusman to get faster and greater results during his earlier career, and by having the good mentorship in Toastmasters, especially if we are willing to expand ourselves to visit other clubs, we will gain much more of experience we can learn from the various mentors in Toastmasters. The fourth Project Evaluator was Samantha Kwan, she was evaluating Doreen Neo’s speech. She mentioned Doreen has used good use of body language and Doreen is very expressive. A good share example of dialog between Boss and Doreen. To make it even better she suggests using different use of the voice of different bosses, and when representing ‘stand up, stand out and stand tall’ this will even be more impactful if Doreen can show real action of stand up, and stand out and stand tall.

Once Project Evaluator finished their evaluation, Gerald Yong was invited to present his Language Evaluation. As Language Evaluator Gerald Yong shared:

Kick me in the down mode -> just mention kick me down

Instead of I will end my speech, just say, “Back to you Toastmasters”, to end the speech.

“Whereby no pressure from the top”, just mention, “no pressure from the top” to reduce the wordings.  Power of right emphasises, “How much money, we need to get the business started”, instead, we say “how much money we need, in order to get the business started”

Back then in 1998, just say in the year 1998.

Bill Gates was like a Mark Zuckerberg of that time, instead, Bill Gates was like a Mark Zuckerberg of today.

Learn something of it, instead learn something from it.

Some Gems observed during the meeting:

Trigger our mind

Shocked, and couldn’t make sense of it

News spread far and fast

Some nice Contrast used:

Am I doing too much? Instead, am I doing enough

Guilt can haunt you

Freedom of no pressure from the top

Have a good idea and run with it

Register the fund, and fund the business

Triads used:

Great job, great life, and a great salary

Stand up, stand out and stand tall

Very very tough, with very very little time

We can’t give what we do not have

Wake every day and every day is a new day

Speak slowly and pause frequently

Inspiration, Motivation, and Aspiration.

After the Language Evaluation, we moved into the last session which was General Evaluation by William Lim. He mentioned that “The Zoom link in the program sheet was incorrect” and hence we need to ensure to provide the correct link for the next session. For timers when there is no bell, they can improvise using a can or some other thing to simulate like a bell, to ensure when the speaker is out of time, to simulate the bell ring. William excellently closes his evaluation with a nice quote “To start we don’t need to be good, but to be good we need to start”.  He showed us a metaphor of a coin at the bottom of the light match, and he kept tapping the top part of the light match, and somehow the coin secretly moved from the bottom to the top. It leaves me with the inspirational thought and ideas “If we haven’t see what we want to see yet, don’t stop, keep on trying, and somehow magically we will start to see what we would like to see”

Last but not least, our Ah Counter Jenny Au, shared her excellent and fun review of the Ah Counters. We normally feel bad about how many pause fillers we have made, however this time around, Jenny made it so fun and full of laughter, as she always used to be, she is indeed a truly great mentor in our club, we are so grateful to have her, indeed.

The meeting came towards the end with our President’s Closing address. Our President Marc Wong, announced our champion of the day

For our Champion of today, here we go (drum roll…..)

Best Speaker: Doreen Neo and Rusman Hadijanto Lee

Best Evaluator: Peter Roth

Best Table Topic Speaker: Sienna Arenas

The next meeting will be held on 14^th Aug, it’s a joint meeting together with Braddell Heights Toastmasters Club.

Class dismissed….☺ and have a great day.

Blog written by: Rusman H Lee, CTM, CL, DL5