It's Anchorvale CC Toastmasters Club 200th Chapter Meeting!

The long-awaited day has finally arrived. It is 10^th September 2022. It is the Anchorvale CC Toastmasters Club’s 200^th Chapter Meeting! It was a tremendous privilege and an honour to have that opportunity to witness and participate in this enthralling occasion.

It was a bright and sunny day. The sun shone brilliantly in the clear, blue sky. Committee members arrived at the meeting venue ahead of time to decorate the conference room and to ensure the right hardware is properly set up to enhance the experience for both the "Zoomies" and "Roomies". Members and guests were greeted with beautiful decorations to start off the celebration at Anchorvale Community Club, 3^rd floor conference room (Falcon).

Gracious and pleasant, our Sergeant-at-Arms of the Day, Jennifer Lim, IP3, who is also doubled up as the Toastmaster of the Day, started the meeting with the ice breaker and introduction session. 

After which, Our Club President, Venkat Voleti, PM3 made an eloquent opening address and welcomed everyone with open arms. 

Coming up next was the presentation of Historical Moment of Anchorvale CC Toastmasters Club. Zoom-Master, Siva Kuma, PM5, presented 10 years (year 2010 – 2020) milestone video montage nicely produced by past Club President, Valliappan Selvamani, CC, CL, PM1, and introduced member of Exco and events held from year 2021 – 2023. 

Following the journey story was the Knowledge Moment. We are delighted to have the opportunity to invite a Senior Lecturer from a University in Australia to provide us an enriching learning session - Crafting the speech. She loves travelling and meeting people, learning, and sharing culture through food. She is an angel in disguise, known as a person with a kind heart, a person who is always ready to help others. She is none other than Lee Buckley, DTM.

She shared her experience of crafting a speech. In year 2020, she came across a fellow trainer in Sydney who shared the secret of how to craft a speech in 30 minutes. She mentioned that crafting a speech is different from writing a speech, crafting is a process when you set the foundation, when you think of the ideas and put them together in your speech.

A few tips were shared by Lee Buckley to ensure that toastmasters can craft a speech with aplom:

1. Speech content. Where do I get stories from? E.g., holidays, travelling, family, work, friends – keep all the life events in your “piggy bank of stories”.
2. Every speech should have a general and specific purpose.
• General purpose: Entertain, Inform, Inspire, Motivate, Persuade
• Specific purpose: What do you want the audience to do after listening to your speech
3. Define the message, list down 3 key points, know your audience, do your research, plan your story, internalise your presentation, connect with the audience, and solidify connections made.

Imagine writing a great speech starts with the skeleton, then elaborate on the vital organs (pick 3 of them!), connect the arteries, make the conclusion, think of an introduction, decide the speech title at the end and, Voila.

It is important to understand the theory behind the workshop, but surely it is even more important that it can put that learning into practice. Madhushika Munasinghe resonated happy ball, cry ball with herself. She mentioned that it is perfectly okay to cry if she feels like need to cry. Expressing her emotions through crying can be very soothing and feels much better than hiding them away or pretending she is okay when she is not. Her speech title was “Don’t cry. No. I cry.” Next, the Club President, Venkat Voleti shared about how AVCC successfully planned and executed the 200^th Meeting celebration and his speech title was “Blue and Gold”. 

Addition to Knowledge Moment, Marc Wong, DL5, PM1, has carefully handpicked the English game, via Mentimeter. Here were the words and definitions:

• What is a Pangram? A sentence using every letter of a given alphabet at least once. E.g., A quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
• How does the saying “Great minds think alike…” end? But fools rarely differ.
• Which Singlish word is NOT found in Oxford English Dictionary? Chope.
• When do you describe some a Mouse Potato? A person who spends a great deal of time using a computer.
• The dot over the letter “i” is officially known as a? Tittle.

Next was the World game:

• Which is the smallest country (by area) in the World? Vatican City
• Which is the tallest building in the World? UAE - Burj Khalifa
• Which country is the biggest island in the World? Greenland
• Which country is known as the “Playground of Europe”? Switzerland
• Which is the most stolen food in the World? Cheese

2^nd part of the game was Charades. Marc mentioned that this game allows us to demonstrate our nonverbal communication i.e., body language and body gesture other than the direct/verbal communication.

Here was the performance by our talented members and guests.

The games were great. We had a ball. 

Next up on the menu was cake cutting ceremony, followed by photo taking sessions. 

The afternoon continued with Talent Moment. 

Club Mentor, Jenny Au, DTM, presented a graceful and elegant Tai-ji performance with smooth movements. Valliappan Selvamani, CC, CL, PM1 sang a Tamil song "Mustafa Mustafa – Friendship", the song represents the friendship and journey he has with Anchorvale CC TMC. Sarah Ong, IP2 took us a trip down memory lane to school days with a Chinese song "小幸运 – A Little Happiness". Last but not least, Rusman Hadijanto, CTM, CC, DL5, PI4 said that Anchorvale CC TMC feels like a home and family to him, and the song said it all "Kaulah Segalanya – Say You Will Always Be Mine". 

Time flies when you are having fun. Ends are not bad things; they just mean that something else is about to begin. And there are many things that do not really end, anyway, they just begin again in a new way. Ends are not bad, and many ends are not really an ending; some things are never-ending.

The 200th chapter meeting and celebration ended with closing remarks by Club President - shared his heartfelt appreciation to committee members, master of ceremonies, workshop speaker, members, and guests. 

Here is the 1-min clip of the 3 hours footage. Enjoy!

Written by Julie Tay, PM1

Anchorvale CC Toastmasters Club's 200th Chapter Meeting!

You are cordially invited to celebrate the 200th Chapter Meeting with us.

Date: 10th September 2022

Time: 2:00 pm to 5:00 pm

Venue: Hybrid via Zoom or F2F at Anchorvale Community Club

Do register via https://tinyurl.com/sbt86m2p to RSVP.

Come join the fun. See you soon!

198th Chapter Meeting on Saturday, 13th Aug 2022

 

Sarah Ong, IP2, our Sergeant at Arms / Toastmaster of the Day, nicely opened the meeting with the theme “Stronger Together” as we have just celebrated the National Day 2022 of Singapore's 57th Birthday.

Our Club President Venkat Voleti, PM3, he shared about how Singapore has handled the Covid situation diligently. Venkat also mentioned how our Anchorvale CC Toastmasters Club can achieve the President Distinguished Club awards for many consecutive years. He believes these all can be achieved as the team is working cohesively and embracing the spirit of Stronger Together in every activity we are doing as a club.

Lynda Neo, ALS, ACS, our Language Evaluator, introduced the word of the day as “SPORADIC”, she was also emphasizing our today's meeting theme “Stronger Together” is aligned with one of the African quotes that she likes whereby “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

Prepared Speech Segment

1st Speech by Siva Kumar, PM5. Siva likes Badminton and Technologies. His speech title is “Follow ABC”.

His "Follow ABC" method stands for Always Be Careful whereby represents his speech tips: 1) Use of pause fillers; 2) Good use of vocabulary, and 3) Good use of accent adjusted to the local environment.

2nd speech by Lai Kok Fook, IP5, DL5, VC5, TC1. He was a Computer Technician before, and a Body Builder coach as well.

He learned to be a good Mentor and a Good Leader it shouldn’t be passive rather it should be an active action, thus he took the liberty of becoming a Mentor at his Body Building Club as well he took Leadership experience by enrolling an Executive Committee Leadership roles in Toastmasters Club.

3rd speech by Audrey Lim, PM2. Audrey is risk-averse. She saw some people adopting the lifestyle of YOLO “You Only Live Once”. Numbers of adventurous groups of people risk their lives by taking many daredevil actions. When the person died, some of the comments on social media mentioned “Life should be fun but not dumb”. Audrey encourages us to embrace the positive part of YOLO “You Only Live Once”, therefore we need to treasure our life by doing something meaningful but not by risking our life.

Table Topics Segment

The next segment was Table Topics by Jun Tay, PM5. Outside her work, Jun is enjoying yoga, running, and hiking.

There were a lot of great topics on this Table Topics (the Impromptu speech), and of course, this Table Topics is just for fun, thus please do not take it too seriously 😊

The first topic was Flight or Fight and Rusman shared that in terms of problems in life when we fight and not fly (run away) from it, although it’s tough however we will be able to build up more muscle to overcome many problems in life.

Next topic, Alvin chooses Gorilla as his friend because by having a gorilla as a friend he believes he can be a famous guy, and he also believes Gorilla can protect him from any bad guy.

Aishwarya chooses to be sneaky as a snake, as she can be escaping many things by becoming as sneaky as a snake.

Mihika the last jaw-dropping moment, she watches Superman and Batman movie and she loves it because it runs her wild imagination of this super wonderful hero who can do a lot of amazing things.

Yenny chooses a grizzly bear friend, whereby she believes as a parent she needs to be a parent who can helps and supports each other. After Covid situation gets better she hopes that she will have more friends who are supportive like the grizzly bear friend to keep encouraging and supporting each other.

Varun chooses the topic of to be enormous as an elephant. He likes to be an elephant because the elephant is big and strong however he is also worried as an elephant is slow, and he might be the tiger’s meal of the day.

Marc's topic about what inspired him last week. He mentioned Elon Musk's movie whereby he learned to fail, whereby failure shouldn’t be a dead end, but rather a great way to keep learning and getting better at what someone wants to be good at.

Daniel got to choose the last topic as stubborn as an ox, whereby in his real experience in the past he doesn’t like people to object to his opinion, however along the way he learned sometimes he need to learn to listen to other people opinions, and this makes his life better.

Venkat Voleti, PM3 brought a workshop about Meditate.

Meditation is a technique for controlling the mind to increase focus to have a better life.

There are many benefits we can get from meditation such as more focus, more calm, and better sleep.

Project Evaluation Segment

1st Evaluator is Alvin Kuek, TM. He is an inspiring Toastmaster, and this is his first speech evaluation. He shared about using the good use of quality and not just quantity of speech, and good use of abbreviation ABC as it’s easier to remember by others.

2nd Evaluator by Delton Teo, VC4, whereby he is evaluating Lai. A good balance of hand gestures, well positioned on the screen. Improvement suggestion for the good powerful use of pause fillers to enhance the speech to the next level.

3rd Evaluator Thomas Chen, CC, CL. He started public speaking when he was studying at Nanyang University. He liked Audrey's speech with the real example of people who encountered an accident by wrongly living a Yolo life. Thomas encourages Audrey to use a personal story to elevate her speech even to have a better persuasion.

4th Evaluator Jenny Au, DTM, evaluating Alvin’s evaluation. Jenny emphasizes a good Alvin way of evaluation and also the well-elevated abbreviation of ABC instead of Always Be Careful, extended into Always be Creative, Always Be Confident, Always Be Charming.

Next, Language Evaluation segment by Lynda Neo, ALS, ACS. Lynda founds various good use of words such as:

• Work cohesively,
• Happened in tandem
• Seamlessly together
• Accomplishment and Pride
• Training Vigorously
• Told me specifically
• Die for narcissistic reason
• Prudent and Cautious
• Fight or Flight
• Sneaky as a snake
• Jaw-dropping
• Drop dead gorgeous
• Catapult to stardom
• Regardless and there are no words ‘Irregardless’
• Idiosyncrasy

Ah-Counter by Julie Tay, PM1 found some pause fillers use such as: am, so, ah, I I (repeated words), and remind Toastmasters to be more cautious to reduce pause fillers in the future.

Meeting closed by Club President with the awards presentation for:

Best Speaker

Best Table Topic

Best Evaluator

Written by Rusman H Lee, CTM, CL, DL5, IP4

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