Anchorvale CC Toastmasters 50th Chapter Meeting on 22nd March 2014

Bountiful hearty greetings!

Anchorvale reached another commendable milestone as we gathered for our remarkable 50^th Chapter Meeting. Coupled with our double victory at the recently held Area A2 International Speech & Table Topics Contests on 8th March by our sparkling Salma Begum (International Speech) and charismatic Club President Roger Yap, CC CL (Table Topics), club members were in celebratory mode!

To sum it up with one word, I would use RESILIENCE to describe this memorable afternoon. A meaningful takeaway for everyone present. The followings are the reasons why.

With our usual venue at Anchorvale CC undergoing renovations, as well as last minute cancellations to alternative venues, our VPE Sathya, CC managed to get access to Sengkang West Zone 'D' RC Centre and ultimately made this meeting possible. Bravo to Sathya!

Next, our Club President, Roger Yap’s opening address was about the recent drought, the longest in Singapore’s history. He explained to us about plants that can survive without water for up to four years! Simply amazing!

Interestingly, our prepared speeches all touched on the theme of grit. Firstly, Kiran about his challenges seeking a job from his hometown, to a city in India and finally to Singapore. Rachel Heng on her childhood love of reading and story characters leading to her present job as an editor. Hwee Leng highlighted the power of positive affirmations. Valliappan described his bumpy vacation with his family that ultimately led to a wonderful holiday. Bernard Ng, CC CL introduced a different version of the tortoise and hare story (albeit a humorous one) as he gave May Lee, CC a roasting. Finally, I described prisoners who overcame adversities.

It was a real treat to witness Salma’s rehearsal for the upcoming Division A Contest. Salma, we are all behind you!

We had a unique evaluation this time with May Lee, CC presenting an absolutely scintillating poetic reaction to Bernard’s speech, filled with rhymes and more rhymes.

The theme for our table topics was 'Milestone' to commemorate our 50th meeting. Our Table Topics Master, Joseph Chong provided an array of interesting topics, with 12 enthusiastic volunteers tackling his questions! 

I find it amazing, that even with the change of venue, we still had a turn out of more than 30 folks with many first timers. From the many positive feedbacks, we made a great impression. Kudos to all our members! It is a team effort.

We would like to thank all appointment holders.

Congratulations to the Award Winners.

Best Prepared Speech: Chee Sian, TM

Best Project Evaluator: Norman Tan, TM

Best Table Topics Speaker: Vijaya

Looking forward to seeing all of you at the Division A Contest on 12^th of April at Temasek Poly and our next Chapter Meeting on 19 April 2014.

Cheers!

Article by: Chee Sian, TM

Anchorvale Toastmasters 49th Chapter Meeting- 22nd February

Welcome welcome, to another fabulous day at Anchorvale Toastmasters

A day to show-case the prowess of our talented Toastmasters. Our chapter meeting was attended by more than 30 Toastmaster members and visiting guests.

It was my pleasure to take up the role of Toastmaster of the Day for the very first time.

This meeting was extra special, because we had an induction ceremony for our new members conducted by our VPM Norman Tan.

After the induction ceremony, our Club President- CC/CL Roger Yap gave an opening address in which he explained his thrilling Indonesia adventure where he was stranded due to the sudden volcano eruption causing massive travel disruption.

We had a sterling round of prepared speeches. Congrats to Ken Chen and Zal for completing their maiden speeches in which they described their musical journey and pursuit for self-development respectively. Followed by an empowering speech from Saleena about how we can save the world. Venkat’s P6 was a superb fictional horror story that kept us on the edge of our seats. Our final prepared speaker was our heroic superstar, our VPE Sathya, who just completed his P10. Congratulations on becoming a Competent Communicator! He described his ‘Mission Impossible’ and inspired us to strive to achieve our dreams.

Followed by another round of excellent feedback from our evaluators, and special congrats to TM Joseph Chong who completed his first project evaluation. We moved on to Table Topics, conducted brilliantly by CC May Lee. The topics were based on intelligent quotes inspired by the prepared speeches. As she said, the harder the topics, the better the quality of speeches. And we could definitely see that being true, our table topics speakers wowed us as they tackled the tricky questions.

Our special thanks to VisitingToastmaster- Daniel Lee, Grassroots TMC for participating in our meeting as a General Evaluator and all appointment holders. 

Congratulations to our award winners!

Best Prepared Speech – CC Sathyamoorthi

Best Table Topics – Jim Hencke

We hope to see you at our next meeting on the 19^th of April! Watch out for more details.

Article by: Riyaj Masurekar, TM

Anchorvale's first Speech Craft for 2014

Greetings!!

Guess what folks? 

Anchorvale CC Toastmasters Club has big plans to end this term with a bang. In light with Toastmasters tradition, we organized our first Speech Craft session on the 23^rd of February in collaboration with Sengkang West Zone D RC. 

This was the first in a series of workshops that Anchorvale will be organizing. The Speech Craft program allows experienced Toastmasters to present the fundamentals of public speaking to the general public and club members.

For this session, we had two outstanding Toastmasters to learn from. First up, was our inspiring and enthusiastic club President, Roger Yap, CC, CL. He described the foundations of speech delivery, gestures and movements. His demonstrations were so useful, I felt myself nodding vigorously to his words, and at certain points, having light bulbs go off in my head, with the “ahah, yes I should incorporate that in my speech!”

Our next speaker, hailing from Toastmaster Club of Singapore is a seasoned communicator, Toastmaster Shishir Choudhary, CC CL. Shishir graciously agreed to speak at our first Speech Craft session and my oh my, was it a privilege. He shared his secret for communicating well, with regards to self-awareness. His presentation was so motivating, I didn't just receive secrets of communicating well, I felt much better about myself too.

It was indeed, a fruitful day and we hope that our next three Speech Craft sessions, to be conducted in May will match or be better than our first one.

More information will be posted closer to the dates!

Till next time, adios amigos!

By: Salma Begum

Anchorvale TMC Club Contest Series

Warm greetings to all and especially to all our brave contestants for the upcoming Anchorvale TMC International Speech and Table Topics Club Contest!

As part of this series in the build-up to the exhilarating day, hear from the 'veterans' of Anchorvale TMC and take a rejuvenated confidence for the contest!

First up, some encouraging words from Contest-veteran (who has been to the Division Level) and charismatic Club President, Roger Yap:

"It is true, when you step out as a contestant in facing the challenge, you need to have the courage to stand alone, under the spotlight.  Nevertheless, it is also true that when you reach for the stars, at least you won't end up with a handful of dust.  Go make your mark! " 

With that, all the best to all participants and remember, regardless of the competition, we are all in essence, definitely still the Anchorvale family!

Joint ITC-Bintang TMC & Anchorvale TMC Meeting - 23rd Nov 2013

He steps out of his house, intoxicated by the promise of the meeting evening. It was a meeting of two parties, the start of a fresh relationship and the birth of a consummate pairing. Definitely dressed for the occasion, he waited in the room for her arrival – dressed in his best, dressed to impress.

No, this is no simple love story – this was the meeting between ITC Bintang Toastmasters (“ITC Bintang”) and Anchorvale Toastmasters (“Anchorvale TMC”)! Under the blistering heat of the Singaporean intense sun on yet another Saturday (23^rd November 2013), members from both sides of the Causeway gathered together at Anchorvale CC for a delicious Joint Chapter Meeting between ITC Bintang and Anchorvale TMC. A brainchild of both teams, the stage was set for what was to be an impeccably sumptuous oratorical feast.

It was indeed my immense fortune to be drafted as the Toastmaster of the Day; I was able to experience first-hand the hospitality and effervescent nature of the toastmasters from ITC Bintang and Maxis TMC. Why, the Club President of ITC Bintang himself, Gabriel Chong, ACB/CL, was simply delightful as I tied down the programme for the day!

The session was of course definitely made special by the attendance of our local visiting Toastmasters as well as the guest attendances of our triadic talents – District 80 Governor, DTM Pradeep Kumar, Division A Governor, DTM Carolyn Street-Johns and Area A2 Governor Rebecca Chan! In what was an indication of the quality of the session to come, both Club President Roger Yap, CC/CL and Pradeep Kumar, DTM gave stirringly inspirational opening speeches as a reminder of us to reach out and be “legends” while at the same time not to be “too serious” about Toastmasters! I was definitely hard-pressed to give a performance worthy of the opening!

Project Speeches

In a spread befitting of the session, we had a buffet of 7 speeches, comprising of 4 projects from the CC Manual and 3 Advanced Projects from 3 different AP Manuals. Riz, TM from Anchorvale started out with a charismatic and sincere lesson on how a parent should raise his/her child. We were further treated to an existential journey with Hareesh, TM followed by a trip down terror lane with Salma Begum, TM and Vereen Foo, TM delivering spine-chilling personal renditions of their personal experiences of being held at parang-point and supernatural encounters respectively. Bernard Ng, CC/CL entertained the crowd with his speech while Roger offered us a deal we couldn’t resist. Melvin Tham, CC/CL from ITC-Bintang gave a sincere re-telling of a folk tale from the Storytelling Manual to round off the Project Speeches.

The session paused for refreshment as everyone brought their empty stomachs to the actual spread of buffet which was ready for everyone to tuck into. It was another round of enjoyable networking for the crowd and even the SAA found it tough to gather everyone back to resume the session!

Project Evaluations

In tandem with the traditional programme of ITC-Bintang, the session this time was subsequently helmed by the charismatic and energetic Gabriel Chong of ITC-Bintang fame. In a fresh twist to our standard programme, the audience were treated to not only the valuable spread of evaluations but also an immediate evaluation by the General Evaluator of each Project Evaluator – definitely something we can consider incorporating in future meetings!

Table Topics

Everyone was definitely geared up and ready for the challenging Table Topics session – helmed by the effervescently personable Tham Cinyee, CC/CL who was prepared with a complete set of Malaysian and Singaporean topics for the taking. From a special tour of the Night Safari to a recount of Malaysia’s delectable pineapple tarts, we were definitely entertained byt the creative genius of all the speakers who courageously took up the challenge. I’m sure every single of us agree that no one ‘mempertosoykan’ themselves during the session (you have to be there to know that that means!).

Our Division A Governor,Carolyn showed everyone her ever-expanding repertoire of toastmastery talents by gamely taking up the refreshing role of Evaluator for Table Topics – she provided us with immediate, sharp and relevant comments on the speakers of the day and all this within a short preparation time!

Conclusion

All good things however have to come to a conclusion – while everyone was reluctant to take their leave (we only left the room because we needed to vacate the premises for the next booking!), we all went back nonetheless with a saturated mind and a satisfied soul. It was a feast for the mind, a feast for the senses and definitely a feast befitting such an occasion – mark my words, this is but only the start of a beautiful friendship between ITC Bintang and Anchorvale TMC and likewise, we will definitely look forward to any future opportunities for collaboration!

Thanks & Congratulations

In that vein, we would like to offer our thanks to (in no order of merit):

• Our District 80 Governor, Pradeep Kumar (for sharing your books as well!), Division A Governor, Carolyn Street-Johns (and for taking up the Table Topics Evaluator role), Area A2 Governor, Rebecca Chan (for taking up the evaluator role as well)
• All our appointment-holders for the day
• To all our visiting Toastmasters from District 80, ITC-Bintang TMC and Maxis TMC (especially to those who took up appointments)
• And all our guests!

At the same time, we offer our hearty congratulations to the ribbon-winners for the meeting:

Best Project Speaker – Melvin Tham CC/CL & Riz, TM
Best Evaluator – Robin Yap, CC/CL

Best Table Topics Speaker – Claudia Ryu

Final Words

With that we hope to see you at our next meeting! Watch out for details! 

43rd Chapter Meeting - Anchorvale TMC - 26th October 2013

And here's a highlight reel of our previous Chapter Meeting on the 26th October 2013!

Video Courtesy of Bernard Ng, CC/CL

Anchorvale TMC - Golden Gavel Once Again!

The Div. A Golden Gavel has landed on Anchorvale's turf again! The travelling group who helped us grabbed the glory on the 8th October 2013 was made up of the following members;  Sathiya, Zulhafni, CC (Project Evaluator), Salma (Language Evaluator),  Joseph (Ah Counter) and Roger, CC (Toastmaster of the Evening). Thank you, once again, to Fengshan TMC for having us down for such an entertaining and enriching session; we definitely gained a lot from the session!