Recap: 171st Chapter Meeting - 23rd January 2021

Life has changed dramatically with the Covid-19 pandemic and finally I’m able to attend Anchorvale CC Toastmasters Club's 171st Chapter Meeting on Zoom!

The meeting started off with a quick round introduction thanks to our Sergeant at Arms and Toastmaster of the Day, Audrey Lim, PM2, with “What’s your plan for the Chinese New Year long weekend” and got everyone excited to share their plans & events. Our Club President, Rusman Hadijanto, CTM, CL, DL5, made a quick opening speech and shared his experiences and takeaways being a Club President. He encouraged members to join the Executive Committee (EXCO) for the coming 2021 / 2022 term.

Four speeches lined up for everyone!

1) Speaker: Samrit Das, TM, delivered “Generation Gap” made us wondered he will come up with different values between young people and their parents. However he shared his observations on the evolution of technology in our life.

We witnessed from bulky personal computers to laptops to sleek tablets. Film cameras to digital cameras to smartphones and the list goes on.

Social media is the new form of socialization, we are more connected with the world, however we gradually lost the human touch.

2) Speaker: Tan Siew Foong, TM, presented “Change your brain & Change your life” with her personal experience on how she recovered from burnout at work.

She was fortunate to meet a psychiatrist during her visit to USA while on sabbatical leave, her advice is to take care and improve our brain:

- Consume healthy food

- Sleep more than eight hours to remove toxic in brain

- Mediation: give our brain time to rest and stop thinking

- Gratitude: Be thankful, grateful & appreciative towards what we have.

3) Speaker: Angela Cai, TM, prepared speech on “Tips for Sleep” further emphasized the importance of health after Siew Foong.

Her research concluded that Sleep is a magical cure for memory, creativity and clarity development. To achieve this sleeping environment condition is rather critical; our body responds to light & darkness differently which includes:

- Ensure exposure to good sunlight

- Avoid artificial light at night as it sends wrong signal to brain

- Creating a comfortable bedroom with no or minimal electronic devices.

4) Speaker: Marc Wong, DL2, “Once upon a time”, started with himself as a young boy, dreaming to be a super hero (Superman), a freeman when he completed his National Service, an investor and now an entrepreneur.

“Once upon a time” always a beautiful story to start with; always warm his heart and this “Once upon a time” moment he valued originated from his life stories that he mentioned to his children now.

Good job to all speakers! It was a delightful session that made the Saturday afternoon absolutely awesome!

Table Topics segment came right after our refreshment break. Always the nerve-wracking Table Topics! Our Table Topic Master, Freya Gwee, TM, introduced seven memes as Table Topics. The whacky topics resulted in surprisingly hilarious speeches from many of our speakers.

Speech Evaluation

The Project Evaluation segment after Table Topics gave evaluators sufficient time to provide insightful feedbacks to speakers.

Siva Kumar Nulu, PM1, Durga Prasad, TM, Rusman Hadijanto, CTM, CL, DL5 and Valliappan Selvamani, CC, CL, gave their opinions on the respective prepared speech speakers. Even for the rest of us, their evaluations educated us on how to make our future speeches better.

Special thanks to all other appointment holders:

Timer: Santwana, TM

Ah Counter: Gurusamy, IP3 (visiting Toastmaster)

Congratulations to all Award Winners:

Written by Freya Gwee, TM

Recap: 170th Chapter Meeting - 9th January 2021

Tan Siew Foong - "be a nurturing team leader"

Kelvin Tan (guest) - "learn a new language"

Helena Lim - "exercise more to reduce waistline

Venkat Voleti - "stay fit by visiting gymnasium and going for run regularly"

Siva Kumar Nulu - "remain healthy"

Sarah Ong - "go to bed early to have adequate restful sleep"

Santwana Shrivastava- "break through COVID barriers, eg. went photo shooting recently"

Marc Wong - "get a professional certificate in line of work"

Salma Begum- "go for gymnasium workout with group of friends"

Jacqui Heng (guest) - "find an ideal job"

You guessed it! These are the New Year Resolutions of members and guests who attended Anchorvale CC Toastmasters Club's 170th Chapter Meeting, the first meeting of the year 2021! 

Leaping into the New Year with unparalleled resolutions!

Indeed, as mentioned by some of the respondents, making a resolution is easy, keeping it though, requires persistent effort. This blogspot can perhaps serve as a reminder, a check (heehee!😆), as well as a motivation to see the resolutions thru 💪👍.

Club President Rusman Hadijanto, CTM, CL, DL5, in his opening address wished everyone a Happy New Year! He even quoted "Tomorrow is a mystery, yesterday is history, which is why we call today a present", "Where there's no friction, all of us perish" - from the bible and "Be stubborn on vision, but flexible on details" - from Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos.... all timely reminder in this pandemic.

Our courageous Durga Prasad, TM, who took on the dual role of Sergeant at Arms and Toastmaster of the Day even went on to take up a little of the Language Evaluator role by introducing the Word of the Day "Faux Pas" which means social blunder, and encouraged everyone to include it in their speech. Bravo Durga!

Prepared speech speaker, Cheng Kok Siong, TM, gave us all a timely topic too. Happiness is all about mindset. If we allow our happiness to be dependent on external factors, we will find it outside the sphere of our control. So do cultivate a positive thinking mindset. Kok Siong, speaking of himself, go for constructive activities like exercising and reading on a regular basis. He also gave an example other than himself. The late Sam Berns, who suffered from progenia disease, lived a happy and fulfilling life by focusing on what he can do and he did.

Siva Kumar Nulu, PM1, gave us an overview on dealing with different communication styles at the workplace. Namely, direct, initiating, supportive and analytical. Our Vice President Education 2, Venkat Voleti's encouragement towards our members to take up roles in our meetings was used as an example of effective communication style.

Marc Wong, DL2, once dreamt of making it big after the completion of his National Service (NS) obligation. He pursued his career in the information technology (IT) field where he faced the challenges of constant and never ending technological advancements. In addition, he learnt and dabbled in the stock market in the hope of making loads of money. Unfortunately, the financial crisis happened in the year 2008. He lost it all then. The one fortunate thing that come out of it is, he grew emotionally stronger from the loss.

Table Topics Master, Helena Lim, CC, prepared topics related to the New Year in the most colorful fashion. Graphics were added into the Table Topics. It certainly imbued cheerful tone to the New Year's first meeting.🎇🎆

What was the single best thing that happened in 2020?
Marc Wong is grateful his family is well, safe and sound together.

How has life taught you recently?
Venkat Voleti shows resilience in the face of difficulties. He bonded better with his family during this difficult pandemic.

How old would be if you do not know how old are you?
Our guest, Kelvin Tan, feel grateful everyday regardless of age.

What is one New Year resolution that you take every year?
Another guest, Samuel, would strive to make family proud with good examination results.

What is your number one goal in 2021?

Kok Siong wishes upon everyone to cultivate positive mindset as shared in his prepared speech. He would like to continue to share positive messages to others around him.

What are the changes you want to see in the world in 2021?
Siew Foong would love to see kindness to the environment and the animals in this planet Earth.

If the average human lifespan is 40 years, how would you live your life differently?
Santwana opined 40 years are not enough to accomplish much.

What is one piece of advise you wish you could had followed?

If she could turn back the clock, Sarah Ong would certainly choose to follow her friend's advise to upgrade her apartment.

When was the last time you tried something new?
Siva Kumar Nulu shared his passion in travelling and had recently began investing into bitcoin.

If happiness is the national currency, what would you do to make you rich?
Rusman loves to get everyone to start using this happiness currency if it is real.

Graphics added into the Table Topics by Helena Lim imbued cheerful tone to the New Year

Santwana, TM, evaluating Kok Siong's speech, praised a well research topic and suggested adding expressions and examples.

Valliappan Selvamani, CC, CL, evaluating Siva's speech, pointed out the pluses of the speech, simple, well structured, cool and composed. Other good points include, appropriate example was used and it appealed to the audience. Improvements for consideration are; closing the gap between the content and the title, vocal variety, and pauses for key takeaways.

Salma Begum, ACB, ALB, evaluating Marc's speech, gave thumbs up on good twist of the story and refreshing take on stocks trading. She observed Marc had shared his colorful personal life's ups and downs but his expressions did not show. Look of sadness when telling the audience he lost his shirt will make a bigger difference to the impact the speech have on the audience. Ending of speech could be further elaborated to show better connection.

Ah counter Tan Siew Foong, TM, who has been paying special attention to everyone's speech gave a precise count of all the pause fillers used.

The winners of the first meeting for the New Year 2021 are:
Best Speaker: Marc Wong, DL2
Best Evaluator: Salma Begum, ACB, ALB
Best Table Topics: Samuel (guest)

Written by Wee Chee Sian, ACB, ALB