Dear Toastmasters@Hope and Guests,
Our previous chapter meeting on 4 Dec 10, was a resounding success. This was due to the active participation of everyone present, who had made a special attempt to be present on a cold, rainy Saturday morning, in spite of our warm, comfortable beds beckoning and enticing us to snuggle longer and deeper under our duvets. Three members took on a new role – SAA, TMD, Timer - for the first time, and all members, present, lent a helping hand in one way or another. Our VPM, Sharon Siow came in early to help out and to lend her support before going off during the break to join her family for an outing. Thank you, one and all!
OUR GUESTS
First, on behalf of Toastmasters@Hope, I would like to thank our first-time guests, Kandimathi, ACS, ALB, from Star Millenium Advanced Toastmasters Club, Saint Yi Htet, CC, CL, from Bedok Toastmasters Club, and TM Pee Poh Seng from ERA Toastmasters Club for taking up the appointments of Language Evaluator, Project Evaluator, and Project Speaker, respectively.
I would also like to thank our faithful supporters, John Tan, ACB, CL, from Siglap Toastmasters Club, Mark Leong, CC, CL, from Star Millenium Advanced Toastmasters Club, Vincent Loo, CC, from Raffles Singapore Toastmasters Club, and Jacky Ha, CC, from ERA Toastmasters Club, for joining us once again and taking up the roles of General Evaluator, Project Evaluator, Table Topics Master, and Project Speaker, respectively.
In addition, I would like to specially thank Vincent Loo for offering to take up dual appointments as a Table Topics Master and Project Evaluator at the 11th hour, just before our meeting started. This is an excellent display of support for fellow toastmasters - something which we could emulate. Thanks, Vincent.
SAA FOR THE MEETING
Taking up the role of SAA for the first time, Richard did an excellent job. He arrived before 10am and had everything ready and well set up before our guests arrived. For his ice-breaker, he got us to stand up, move around, and greet each other with a high five, thus making us more comfortable with each other (guests and members), relaxed, and ready for the meeting.
TOASTMASTER-OF-DAY
The Toastmaster-of-the-Day sets the tone for the meeting, and thus plays an extremely important role in any chapter meetings. A very enthusiastic Senthil took on the challenge to be the TMD. It was his maiden attempt, and he did a great job in moving the meeting along at a good pace.
OPENING ADDRESS
Our Club President, Luke Thurai, sent his apologies as he had to conduct a funeral service. We, as members of Toastmasters@Hope, fully understand that when duty calls, he just has to respond, and we would not like him do otherwise.
Our VP-Education, Catherine, in her role as Acting President, delivered a compact opening address by sharing her vision for the club to strive for a high-quality, excellent club by striving to achieve Distinguished Club Award for our 1st year of formation. She gave an overview of the Distinguished Club Program (DCP) and explained the benefits for us:
(1) DCP promotes club quality.
(2) DCP ensures productive meetings.
(3) DCP provide direction and incentive for all members to achieve personal and collective goals.
(4) DCP increases the enthusiasm of the club, which in turn will inspire loyalty and success among members.
Our previous chapter meeting on 4 Dec 10, was a resounding success. This was due to the active participation of everyone present, who had made a special attempt to be present on a cold, rainy Saturday morning, in spite of our warm, comfortable beds beckoning and enticing us to snuggle longer and deeper under our duvets. Three members took on a new role – SAA, TMD, Timer - for the first time, and all members, present, lent a helping hand in one way or another. Our VPM, Sharon Siow came in early to help out and to lend her support before going off during the break to join her family for an outing. Thank you, one and all!
OUR GUESTS
First, on behalf of Toastmasters@Hope, I would like to thank our first-time guests, Kandimathi, ACS, ALB, from Star Millenium Advanced Toastmasters Club, Saint Yi Htet, CC, CL, from Bedok Toastmasters Club, and TM Pee Poh Seng from ERA Toastmasters Club for taking up the appointments of Language Evaluator, Project Evaluator, and Project Speaker, respectively.
I would also like to thank our faithful supporters, John Tan, ACB, CL, from Siglap Toastmasters Club, Mark Leong, CC, CL, from Star Millenium Advanced Toastmasters Club, Vincent Loo, CC, from Raffles Singapore Toastmasters Club, and Jacky Ha, CC, from ERA Toastmasters Club, for joining us once again and taking up the roles of General Evaluator, Project Evaluator, Table Topics Master, and Project Speaker, respectively.
In addition, I would like to specially thank Vincent Loo for offering to take up dual appointments as a Table Topics Master and Project Evaluator at the 11th hour, just before our meeting started. This is an excellent display of support for fellow toastmasters - something which we could emulate. Thanks, Vincent.
SAA FOR THE MEETING
Taking up the role of SAA for the first time, Richard did an excellent job. He arrived before 10am and had everything ready and well set up before our guests arrived. For his ice-breaker, he got us to stand up, move around, and greet each other with a high five, thus making us more comfortable with each other (guests and members), relaxed, and ready for the meeting.
TOASTMASTER-OF-DAY
The Toastmaster-of-the-Day sets the tone for the meeting, and thus plays an extremely important role in any chapter meetings. A very enthusiastic Senthil took on the challenge to be the TMD. It was his maiden attempt, and he did a great job in moving the meeting along at a good pace.
OPENING ADDRESS
Our Club President, Luke Thurai, sent his apologies as he had to conduct a funeral service. We, as members of Toastmasters@Hope, fully understand that when duty calls, he just has to respond, and we would not like him do otherwise.
Our VP-Education, Catherine, in her role as Acting President, delivered a compact opening address by sharing her vision for the club to strive for a high-quality, excellent club by striving to achieve Distinguished Club Award for our 1st year of formation. She gave an overview of the Distinguished Club Program (DCP) and explained the benefits for us:
(1) DCP promotes club quality.
(2) DCP ensures productive meetings.
(3) DCP provide direction and incentive for all members to achieve personal and collective goals.
(4) DCP increases the enthusiasm of the club, which in turn will inspire loyalty and success among members.
She encouraged those who have started off well but have ‘pulled their brakes’, to resume the journey by working on their projects.
TABLE-TOPICS SESSION
Vincent Loo, as Table-Topics Master, took charge of a very unique and interesting Table Topics session where the topics given were just one interesting word or a phrase. He gave us a variety of easy-to-relate-topics to choose from, and at the same time, he threw in a small gift for all participants to take away with them. Aha! The Spirit of Christmas is moving. It is heartening to see members eagerly volunteering to speak.
The first table-topics speaker is Richard Wong, who spoke on ‘Gourmet’. We learnt that the appearance of food is important to him as visuals affect his mood for food. Aha! It seems that May has to not only be a good cook, but also be an artist.
Peter Chuang spoke on ‘Fashionista’. (Make a guess whether he could speak Spanish, fellow toastmasters.) He mentioned that he was shabbily dressed, but we saw a gentleman who is tastefully dressed and who does seem to take care of his appearance. He used the ‘Contrast' technique’ in his speech delivery and talked about managing our fashion properly and that fashion has a role and place in our time.
Murni spoke on ‘We love Singapore’. From her 2-min speech, we realized that she was swept off her feet by Peter while studying in Australia, and persuaded to ‘uproot’ and ‘replant’ in Singapore. Her initial hateful, lonely, and trying time in Singapore has turned into a lovely time, and now she can truly say that she loves Singapore. Aha! I think it was the tender-loving care and attention of a special someone that transformed her. When love comes a calling, we don’t need a toastmaster to persuade. She also used the 'Contrast' technique and the 'Before' and 'After' technique in her speech.
Our feisty Merine Yeo spoke on ’Adventurer'. She participated in a half-marathon of 10km, where she had to race and pace. She told us that she didn’t like to fail, but was inspired by Catherine’s speech to dare to try and dare to fail. Aha! Good for you, Merine. You will have more adventures in life.
Once again, we saw telepathy at work among our members. Helen, our last table-topics speaker, spoke on ‘Dare To Try’. She spoke about not being the daredevil, one who is recklessly bold, but one who recognizes the importance to dare to try. She said, “I’m still learning although I’m still trembling”. I thought that was a beautiful encouraging phrase. Aha! Could she be inspirational speaker in the making?
PROJECT SPEECHES
Catherine embarked on her second round of Competent Communicator project speeches, and delivered her Project 1, ‘Ice Breaker’. From her speech, we got to know more about her family, career, and aspirations. We also got to know the three main chapters of her live and what she has learnt from them – (1) the importance to dare to try, (2) the importance to set your priorities right, and (3) that retiring from the corporate and jet-setting lifestyle is not the end of a useful life, but the beginning of a new meaningful phase of life. She is now pursuing an Encore Career where she combines 3Ps – Passion, Purpose, and a Paycheck.
Pee Poh Seng delivered his P9 speech, ‘Persuade With Power’, and used a chemical formula: "Performance = Potential - Interference", to persuade us to strive to achieve our full potential and to remove the interference in order to have high performance.
In his Advanced Project 2 Speech -“Speak In Praise”- from the “Special Occasions Manual”, Jacky Ha gave a very encouraging speech for all members at Hope on our imaginary First Anniversary of Toastmasters @Hope, where we celebrated and witnessed the historical moment of the birth of 4 new CC’s. It is a motivational speech where he praised the entire club and a specific person. Jacky was able to weave the character of this person seamlessly into his speech by using the revealing technique. He used the acronym ‘NICE’ – noble, involved, compassionate, and encouraging - to describe the person. I thought that he was delivering an Area Governor’s speech. Aha! A potential Area Governor in the making.
PROJECT EVALUATORS
Our team of evaluators, Saint Yi Htet, Vincent Loo, and Mark Leong were frank and did not white-washed the project speeches. They highlighted the strong points of the speech and gave good, specific, and logical suggestions for improvement. I have learnt much from them.
LANGUAGE EVALUATION
Kandimathi gave an interesting history lesson of the origin of the English Language. She highlighted the many good use of the English Language by our speakers and evaluators and reminded us to be conscious of our pronunciation if we wanted to be clearly understood. Kandi taught and showed us an effective exercise for our jaw muscles to improve our pronunciation by vocalising ‘AH’, ‘OH’, ‘EE’. Try it, fellow toastmasters.
The Word-of-the-Day is ‘Sanguine’.
GENERAL EVALUATION
It is always good to invite an external experienced toastmaster to evaluate our meetings, especially when the club is pretty new like ours. John Tan took on this important role and lived up to my expectations. His evaluation was very encouraging and useful for us. His suggestions or reminders are as follows:
(1) Suggested that we read out the Toastmasters Mission.
(2) Reminded us to practise our speeches to ensure we finished speaking within the time given. It might be a good idea to give the outline of our speech to our evaluator.
(3) Suggested that TMD use cue cards to facilitate his emceeing. Reminded us that the programme is a very useful tool for the TMD. Reminded us that TMD is in control of the whole meeting, and therefore, TMD needs to control the time so that meeting ends on time.
(4) Reminded us to use POETTS to introduce the Prepared Speech segment and the speaker.
P= Project
O=Objectives
E=Evaluator
T=Timing
T=Title of Speech
S=Speaker’s name and title.
(5) Reminded us to observe proper protocols in addressing the audience by first addressing the TMD, followed by Club President, District, Division, and Area Governors or Officials (if any), Fellow Toastmasters, and Guests.
OTHER APPOINTMENT HOLDERS
Once again, a chapter meeting cannot be conducted without the help of the Ah Counter and Timer.
Murni has her ‘ears pulled all the way back’ to catch all the pause fillers that rolled off our tongue. There was no escape for both new and experienced toastmasters.
Team spirit came into play once again when Irene, our 1st time Timer and youngest toastmaster, lost her way when taking a shortcut to our meeting venue, and Helen promptly took over as Timer. Helen gallantly let Irene take up her Timer’s role after refreshment break, and she herself took on a leadership role by sitting next to her to encourage, guide, and mentor her. Congratulations to Irene for taking on her first appointment at our chapter meeting.
Thanks to our reliable Club SAA, Philip Quek, for providing the ‘icing on the cake’ with his assortment of food. The simple bee-hoon is a clear favourite with Murni and I, both wanting a second helping.
BEST RIBBON AWARDS
The ribbons went to Jacky Ha for Best Prepared Speech, Saint Yi Htet for Best Evaluator, and Richard Wong for Best Table Topic. Congratulations to all three. Well done!
I am sanguine that we will see more people next week at our next chapter meeting on 18 Dec 2010. The Theme for our next meeting is “The Spirit of Christmas”.
Warmest Regards
Catherine Goh
VP- Education 2010/11Toastmasters@HopeD80-1464586 Area
OTHER APPOINTMENT HOLDERS
Once again, a chapter meeting cannot be conducted without the help of the Ah Counter and Timer.
Murni has her ‘ears pulled all the way back’ to catch all the pause fillers that rolled off our tongue. There was no escape for both new and experienced toastmasters.
Team spirit came into play once again when Irene, our 1st time Timer and youngest toastmaster, lost her way when taking a shortcut to our meeting venue, and Helen promptly took over as Timer. Helen gallantly let Irene take up her Timer’s role after refreshment break, and she herself took on a leadership role by sitting next to her to encourage, guide, and mentor her. Congratulations to Irene for taking on her first appointment at our chapter meeting.
Thanks to our reliable Club SAA, Philip Quek, for providing the ‘icing on the cake’ with his assortment of food. The simple bee-hoon is a clear favourite with Murni and I, both wanting a second helping.
BEST RIBBON AWARDS
The ribbons went to Jacky Ha for Best Prepared Speech, Saint Yi Htet for Best Evaluator, and Richard Wong for Best Table Topic. Congratulations to all three. Well done!
I am sanguine that we will see more people next week at our next chapter meeting on 18 Dec 2010. The Theme for our next meeting is “The Spirit of Christmas”.
Warmest Regards
Catherine Goh
VP- Education 2010/11Toastmasters@HopeD80-1464586 Area
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