Anchorvale CC Toastmasters 92nd Chapter meeting on 13th August 2016

Celebration Joseph Schooling’s Olympic gold has come True

Today, on 13th August, Joseph Schooling made history in realizing his dream of Olympic gold, he also realized the dream of many others. Some people say it's the biggest birthday present for Singapore's 51st birthday. Not only did it bring about our happiest moment but it also reminded us of how a dream can become true.

We all have a dream, but how do we make a dream come true? Today Joseph Schooling has showed us how to do it:

1 First of all, dream big with a very specific target result.
When we have a dream, it will not likely to become true if we just leave it or forget about it. We need to make our dream very specific. When it became a specific target with details of what you need to do and plans on how to achieve it, our dreams will come closer to us.

2 Secondly, separate your dream into smaller goals you could achieve one by one.
What are the resources, skills that I need in order to achieve my dream? Who should I ask for advice? Where should I get started? What should I start first?
Dreams can be very big, but if we break it into smaller pieces and achieve it one by one. It will become easier. By doing so we can plan the right things to achieve and get closer to our dream.

3 Do enough research on how to do it, find teachers, mentors. Work out the correct way.
Acquiring the right knowledge is very important, it will help you understand what to do and how to do it. We can find it from books, internet or even ask a mentor.
4 Last but most importantly: Determination and Persistence.
We all know Joseph Schooling’s dream was when he was a kid, and it took him many years to achieve it. What we’ve learned from him is never give up, and be patient with ourselves. By pushing through hard times, we will surely see small success one by one.
Celebration at Anchorvale CC Toastmasters Club 

At Anchorvale Toastmasters, we gathered together to celebrate and share our thoughts. Alice from Wonderland has prepared us non-alcoholic wine and Pizza. We do believe food brings happiness. :)

Speeches at Anchorvale Toastmasters are always interesting, as people spend a lot of time to prepare and wish to provide the best for everyone. We had people talking about their dreams, how to handle their experiences on projects, interesting topic of selling health products. Things that we can learn or relate to in our own lives.

Evaluation of the projects gave a lot of suggestions on improvements for public speaking. We heard about how to project our voice, how to make use of the stage fully, how to engage the audience, and most importantly how to control pauses. Using pauses for emphasis, conveying humour, or conclusion. Sometimes, pausing also shows the confidence of the speaker and makes the audience feel more relaxed and confident. 

Our Table Topics Master was our Humorous Speech Contest Winner, Riz Masurekar. He prepared topics based on a very interesting theme: Job interviews.

Such topics are truly relevant to everyone’s life. We all go through interviews no matter if we are looking for job or looking for potential investor/customers. Everyone in the room was engaged because there were plenty of questions which gave almost everyone a chance to try it out.

It was a wonderful afternoon well spent with our members of Anchorvale CC Toastmasters Club. Please join us for our next meeting, a special Hackathon Chapter Meeting whereby we will be discussing issues and concerns the club faces in a brainstorming session that involves everyone. It promises to be an exciting, enlightening and enriching session, so please do join us on the 27th of August at Anchorvale CC, 3rd Floor Conference Room, Falcon from 2pm to 5pm for another awesome afternoon with Anchorvale.

Written By:
Angela Cai, TM

Anchorvale CC Toastmasters Humorous and Evaluation Contest 2016!

: A Collection of Anecdotes :

"The wind was cold, the tribes people covered in thick cloth, shivering and awaiting what would come next. Some call this the day of judgment; some live for this moment, but for most of us mortals, this was a day to fear. Welcome....to Anchorvale CC Toastmasters Humorous and Evaluation Speech Contest 2016l Of course, with that tongue in cheek introduction, the atmosphere in the air was more electric than cold, with members dressed in their best cloth. With another bumper set of 7 contestants vying for the iron throne, the audience was in for another roller-coaster ride"

-       -    By Zulhafni Zulkeflee, ACB

"As members of the organizing committee blazed about getting the venue ready, the audience was slowly streaming in, all eagerly awaiting an exciting extravaganza. Meanwhile the contestants could be seen in a dizzying array of pre-contest moods. Some were intently rehearsing by the stairs or the alley way, some were freely mingling and laughing with other toastmasters and some just sat in deep thought, but all equally and anxiously awaiting their turn to shine in the spotlight.

It was a fabulous way to start a Saturday. Because nothing is better than an Anchorvale CC Toastmasters Humorous and Evaluation Speech Contest.

With the room brimming with bright energy, our contest chair, the charming Sindu began rounding up the contestants to conduct her briefing to draw the ballots. Here we go, the show begins! Sit back and enjoy the ride. It promised to be a tempting and tantalizing treat." 

-      -   By Salma Begum, ACB, CL

"Looking like Aishwarya Rai. A dream of millions of ladies including our dear Salma. Enough for her to spend over RM$3000 on facials, only for her to realise her skin pores are like the aftermath of volcanic eruptions. Eeeewww! Don’t take what the service industry says too literally please!

Filled with naivety, Hareesh and friends wanted to eliminate drinking problems in their hometown. When confronted with a huge, wife-berating drunkard, dear Hareesh was so frightened he could only remember to ask for directions. “Change the world!” but “at your own risk” of course!

Dozing off in a laboratory gave Senthil a dream, of him being a sleeping beauty. No kisses from anyone to wake him up though.

Being called “pig loves you” in Chinese is about as non Halal as Zulhafni can be. Talking about food, there’s another name for alfresco dining these days. Hawker center, with their Michelin Star stalls.

Honesty is the best policy. Our Riz took it to an unprecedented level. When asked who killed Benjamin Franklin, he replied honestly “not me”.

The live performances Alvin gets to enjoy follow from his little one’s “entourage”. And it starts in the shower room. Father and son relationship blossomed into full time celebrity management."

-            -      By Chee Sian, CC, CL

And then comes our mysterious speaker Wei Bin from Bishan TMC, with his hilarious speech titled “How much should you spend on first date?”. His speech provided everyone with insights on various options to spend from $1000 to $0, also on where to spend - locations like McDonalds, Changi Airport and even your grandmother’s funeral. Yes, you read it right… your grandmother’s funeral is also in his list for best location!

Behold our warriors <Hareesh, Zul, Riz, Salma, Benjamin, Alvin, Norman>, who took charge of the battle field to evaluate Wei Bin’s speech, each warrior presenting their brilliant skills and provided their inputs on body language, vocal variety and use of the stage floor, it was great to hear so many evaluations and everyone was floored

- By Sridhar Maroju, CC

As the Chief Judge entered the room, a deathly silence descended across the room. All chattering and small talk ceased. He held out a piece of paper and Sindu took it, her hand trembling slightly. The long wait was finally over.

..

Sindu glanced down, her eyes widening as she saw the results. Triumphant, she looked up and roared, "OUR HUMOROUS SPEECH CHAMPION IS RIZ MASUREKAR!!"

The room burst into euphoria and celebration as our newly crowned Champion stepped forward to receive his trophy. The excitement was feverish but it died down quickly. Everyone was eagerly awaiting the next annoucement - the Champion of the Evaluation Contest.

Sindu, her smile beaming, her eyes glinting, announced to the crowd "AND NOW, OUR EVALUATION CHAMPION IS ZULHAFNI ZULKEFLEE"

The atmosphere in the room exploded as everyone cheered Zul on to receive his prize. The cheers and chants were deafening, as we ushered in our two Champions. Featuring brilliant performances from the other Contestants, what a Contest it has been today! 

-       - By Norman Tan, CC

And alas, a closing message from our beloved Club Mentor, Jenny Au

The Humorous Speech & Evaluation Contests held last Saturday, 23 July 2016 was engaging, exciting and entertaining.  It was very encouraging to see so many toastmasters and guests (approximately 50) supporting our club’s Humorous Speech and Evaluation Contests.  The Humorous Speech and Evaluation Contestants exhibited their speaking skills very well drawing the audience roaring with laughter and energizing the whole atmosphere in the room.  Feedback from the judges was that they had a hard time deciding the winners for both contests because their performances were of very high standards.

It was the first time that we had the honour to have Mr Raymond Chua, Seng Kang West CCC Chairman presented the prizes to our top three winners for both contests.  Kudos to Sindu, the Contest Chair for being an excellent host of the event and Muthu, the Organising Chair and his team in planning, organising and executing the event successfully including the yummy home-cooked food!

Congratulations to all the contestants for participating in the challenging contests.

Anchorvale CC Toastmasters Club is always raising the bar for more challenges and successes….

Jenny Au, DTM

Once again, a big shoutout to everyone who has helped made our Contest such a success, especially to our friends, guests and fellow appointment holders! Thank you!

Anchorvale TMC 91st Chapter Meeting on 9th July 2016

A new term, a new beginning but many new unknowns…

That had been the ethos for preceding weeks before our 91^st Chapter meeting. With a dearth of project speeches and appointment holders, a few questions lingered ominously over us. “Will we be able to still hold our next meeting? Will we have a good turnout?” 

Did we know if our meeting could still proceed? Probably not. 

But that did not deter us from taking the chance, planning ahead and hoping for the best!

That was my message in my first opening address as President and as it turned out, our fears were completely unfounded as our 91^st Chapter meeting fired off for an amazing ride, filled with brilliant speakers, new and old and many fresh new guests and friends!

Our designated captain, Toastmasters-of-the-Day Thomas Lee, CC wasted no time energizing the crowd with his quick witted commentaries and hilarious opening lines. Despite the initial hiccup in the venue, he kept a firm grip on the helm and guided our ship past any rough maelstroms. Supported by the wonderful Debbie from MDIS Toastmasters, first-time Ah Counter Choon Lian and the profoundly-meticulous Hareesh, CC as LE, our voyage ..ahem.. meeting was off to a great and exciting start!

 

For the prepared speeches, Prasad took to the stage first in his Project 1 Ice-Breaking speech about his three greatest ‘Gifts’ in life. Having helped with his preparation, I was really heartened to see Prasad confidently narrate his life story without any notes or pauses. 

This was followed by a very insightful Advanced Project 2 –Resources for Entertainment by Benjamin, CC who spoke about not judging people by their appearances, reinforcing the time-tested rule that one should never judge a book by its cover. 

Next came big, bad Alice CC (Advanced Project 1 – The Folk Tale), who gave us a chilling retelling of the classic ‘Three Little Pigs’. After that speech, I promised never to look at cheeseburgers the same way again. 

Lastly, our newly minted Dad Senthil shared with us how to Master the Art of Parenting as part of his Project 8 – Getting Comfortable with Visual Aids. A very informative speech! (Note to self: to re-visit again for future use)

After a short break, we resumed with our Project Evaluations, helmed by Owen, our two awesome guest evaluators Rachie Lanked CC and Mike Woon, DTM/ALS and yours truly. Each evaluator had his own distinctive style, some opting to use emojis while others relied on hilarious yet useful lines. I myself chose to evaluate Alice from the perspective of a police inspector and it was truly a great experience watching all these great evaluators.

Just like how the Titanic had a thrilling climax, our Chapter meeting had a thrilling table topics, conducted by our very own Leonardo DiCaprio, Benjamin with his gravity-defying hair and fake microphone props. 

With his crowd-sourced topics (Note: everyone agreed that it was a resourceful and time-saving move), Benjamin hauled 7 speakers onstage, namely Choon Lian, Huan Ling, Jack, Yuan Yuan, Kuan How, Adil, Renji. With a vast range of questions such as “How old is Benjamin” to “What would you do during the Standard Chartered robbery”, each of them gave hilarious and wacky answers that attest to their creativity and quick thinking.

After that, we had a spritely Ah-counter report from Choon Lian and a very detailed language evaluation by Hareesh, who had been keenly taking notes. He also elaborated on the correct use of grammar, vocabulary and rhetorical devices. Great analysis Hareesh! It was a great journey and we’ve finally arrived at our eventual destination, the end of the meeting. 

If today’s meeting was any indication of the coming term, it is that our upcoming year is definitely going to be really interesting! If you wish to experience more, do join us for our next meeting on 23rd July 2016 at Anchorvale CC, 3rd Floor Conference Room (Falcon) from 2pm to 5.30pm. 

It’ll be our Humourous and Evaluation contest, where the best and the brightest of Anchorvale will clash to vie for Toastmasters glory! Its really an event not to be missed. Stay tuned!

Again, congratulations to all the Award winners!

Best Speaker: Benjamin

Best Evaluator: Norman "d'Chairman"

Best Table Topics: Kuan How

Written By: Norman Tan

Anchorvale's Annual General Meeting & EXCO Installation of Toastmasters Mightiest Heroes!

I remember my first day visiting Anchorvale Toastmasters – unprepared, uncertain and unsure, I listened to the brilliant speeches prepared by the members then and thought to myself: “Today, I shall just sit in silence and watch in awe”. Boy, was I wrong – a few minutes later, during my first Table Topics session, Jenny, one of our Club Mentors, urged me to step up and try my hand at doing a speech. With the strong support from the audience, I took that step up and started my Toastmasters journey.

Anchorvale Toastmasters is all about stepping up – with or without support from the audience; it is about snatching the mantle when the odds are against us or grabbing at the opportunities presented to us with gusto and pride. On 25 June 2016, another group of Anchorvale Toastmasters members showed us what it means to step up.

On 25 June 2016, Anchorvale Toastmasters gathered together for the final meeting of the term for 2015-16 and celebrate the conclusion of yet another fun and eventful term. For the special occasion, we decided to go with a refreshing programme for the Meeting – moving away from the usual Chapter Meeting format and adding three vibrant segments for the day’s session.

The meeting started out with a members-only Annual General Meeting with the goal of updating the Club members on the events of the term that went by as well as the developments and future events to look forward to.

With the ‘serious’, heavy stuff out of the way, we adjourned to enjoy the wonderful set prepared for lunch – tasty, filling vegetarian pasta from our very own VPE – Salma Begum, ACB, CL, succulent delights from Old Chang Kee and of course, an impeccably-designed cake as dessert for everyone! (truly an unfortunate day to be fasting for me!).

 

yummm

Of course, before the new, incoming President delivers his Opening Address, I took the opportunity to thank our members, and particularly, the EXCO of 2015/16 for their brilliant work throughout the term and for being role models themselves in stepping up – with a special surprise in store for everyone present during the meeting! (You had to be there to know what it was!). At Anchorvale Toastmasters, we are also always on the look-out for members who deserve our recognition for their contributions to the Club. This year, instead of 1 Toastmaster of the Year – we recognised 6 different Members for their unique contributions to the Club:

·         Totally-Transformed Toastmasters – Sridhar

·         Creative Czar – Alvin

·         Pro-Active Prince – Sridhar

·         Out-standingly Out-Going – Chee Sian

·         Table Topics Titan – Benjamin

·         Master Mentee – Sindu

·         EXCO’s Pet – Alice

Sridhar & Zul

Alvin & Zul

Benjamin & Zul

Chee Sian & Zul

Sindu & Zul

Congratulations again to all the Anchorvale Awards winners!

The honour roll continued as well as we had our past-Division ‘A’ Director and also a dear friend of Anchorvale Toastmasters, Carolyn Street-Johns. DTM to install our incoming EXCO for the term 2016-17. Each out-going EXCO member was invited to share tips and advice for his/her successor for the up-coming term. The powerful Anchorvaler ‘Avengers’ Team consists of:

•      President – Norman ‘Iron Man’ Tan

•      VPE 1 – Salma ‘Loud Mouth’ Begum

•      VPE 2 – Wee Chee Sian (the Ladies’ Man)

•      VPM – Sridhar ‘Spiderman’ Maroju

•      VPPR – Owen ‘Not Wilson’ Lorena

•      SAA – Ram ‘the Newcomer’ Kumaresan

•      Secretary – Alice ‘In Wonderland’ Ow

•      Treasurer – Hemant ‘the He-Man’ Singhal

•      IPP – Zulhafni ‘ORD Loh’ Zulkeflee

2016-17 Toastmasters Mightiest Heroes

With various refreshing, new talents coming on board as part of the EXCO – the 2016/17 Term will definitely be an exciting one for the Club!

The day, however, was far from over – with the tight schedule we had in mind, we decided to have not one, but two impromptu speech games – our very own Anchorvale ‘Improv’ Afternoon! It was safe to say that everyone in the room had the opportunity to participate and take up the challenge of speaking on the fly.

The first game was the Situation Speaker where speakers had to deliver a special speech while acting out a weird quirk! The twist of this challenge was – the audience will have no idea what the weird quirk is and will be expected to guess from the speaker’s presentation. With topics such as the new Singapore ‘Ghost-Busters’ team and quirks such as a speaker who simply enjoys inviting volunteers up for his/her speeches – each challenger stepped forward with great trepidation but eventually delivered their speeches with doubtless confidence – kudos to everyone who stepped up for the challenge!

The second game was a team-based improve game – Scenes From a Bag where teams of three speakers took turns to continue and complete a one-liner story and deliver their secret dialogue. The twist (there is always a twist) is that the speaker delivering the secret dialogue will not know the line that he/she has to say! Hilarity of course ensued as a grim kidnapping session suddenly turned into a romantic quest to find Salma Begum’s boyfriend – a gripping story from the start to the end as each team went out of their way to bring the story to even greater heights.

In yet another Anchorvale ‘twist’, the winner was decided based on the speaker/team with the loudest cheers and the audience certainly did not hold back with the support – it was near impossible deciding the winner of the games but finally a consensus was reached. Congratulations to the ribbon-winners for the afternoon:

·         Situation Speaker – Benjamin

·         Scenes From a Bag – Salma, Carolyn, Jenny, Sathiya

As the meeting drew to a close, our incoming, dashing and young Club President, Norman Tan, CC stepped forward to deliver his first Opening Address – ensuring that the meeting ended on an inspirational and motivational note. Norman shared his goals of 3 ‘M’s with us and his direction for the Club.

With that, another wonderful meeting concluded on a high and contented note. On a personal note, I would like to offer my thanks and appreciation again for everyone who has contributed to the ease of my journey as Club President – while the journey was not always smooth-sailing, the value I received from seeing our Members shine and grow at Anchorvale Toastmasters contributed to the very rewards of the role itself. I would also like to take the opportunity to welcome the incoming EXCO – you have all taken up a challenge that will give you the best challenges and yet, the best rewards; know that at the end of the day, if no one had stepped up, if every single one of you decided to take the easy way out and remain sitting, this Club would not go on. And the only reason why Anchorvale Toastmasters continue to grow and move forward is because of the passion, enthusiasm and talent of every single one of you – so keep stepping up!

Published by the versatile: Zulhafni Zulkeflee