This was our final Chapter Meeting of The Open Alumni Toastmasters Club and Telok Blangah Toastmasters Club for the term July 2020 to June 2021. It was held on 17 Jun 2021.
As such, this chapter meeting was graced by the presence of the Area Z2 Director, Pranav P, ACB, PI2 from NUS Toastmasters Club, the incoming Division Z Director, Yip Li Xian, ACB, CL also from NUS Toastmasters Club, who is also the outgoing Area Z1 Director, and the incoming Area Z1 Director, George Chew, DL2. Among our visitors was also a former toastmaster from the Telok Blangah Toastmasters Club, Claudia Cheng who was stranded by the pandemic in Norway doing her Ph D programme.
Table of Contents
Word of the Day
Pranav P, Area Z2 Director was our Language Evaluator of the meeting. He introduced the Word of the Day for this chapter meeting, which is: Transition.
President’s Opening Address
Triggi, the president of The Open Alumni Toastmasters Club, kicked off the Chapter Meeting with her President’s Opening Address.
She began by lauding the advancement of technology that has enabled us to meet safely online via Zoom amidst the pandemic. She added that it is not just the technological advancement, but more of the positive energy fostered by the toastmasters who have continued to meet up online, learning from one another.
Triggi likened knowledge to tools in a tool box. Each time we learn something new, the knowledge is added to the tool box like a tool. As the number of tools in the tool box increases, there are more tools available to be put to use. She encouraged everyone therefore to continue learning as our learning journey become easier as we increase and abound in our knowledge.
Table Topics
This Chapter Meeting’s Table Topics Master was Avinash Narasimhan, PM1.
- If you were a piece of paper, how would you liked to be used before you were trashed?
- If you were a leader who has control over all the countries in the world, what would be something that you do for your people?
- Only dead fish swim with the stream.
- If you could represent yourself with a single object, what would that object be and why?
- Would you rather be a worried genius or a joyful simpleton?
- What sound, other than ringing, would you want your telephone to make? Why?
If you were a piece of paper, how would you liked to be used before you were trashed?
Speaker: Claudia Cheng
Claudia began by first telling us the many different purposes paper could be used. She felt that the most honourable way a piece of paper could be used is to be written on as it stores information and passes down knowledge. Thus, if she were a piece of paper, she would want useful informations to be written down on her and have these information transmitted to others.
After the informations that were stored on her have lasted for a long time, she can subsequently be recycled into a piece of toilet paper that is used to maintain people’s personal hygiene before getting flushed away totally.
If you were a leader who has control over all the countries in the world, what would be something that you do for your people?
Speaker: Xerxes Ghista, PM1
Xerxes would want to be king that is usually depicted in dramas and stories. The rise and fall of O Mighty King Xerxes Ghista.
At first Xerxes would begin as a benevolent leader that blessed his people with welfare, health care, provision of jobs and education. He envisioned himself as a leader who would do all the wonderful things he could for his people up to a point.
He was loved and reverenced by his people up until his ego grew to its optimal size. So tremendous was his ego that he himself that he himself could not bear it.
“Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.” (Proverbs 16:18 KJV)
What was once a benevolent king turned into a tyrant. Like all tyrants, they fell and were destroyed. After his passing away, his works, his tyranny, are remembered and recorded in the chronicles.
Only dead fish swim with the stream
Speaker: George Chew, DL2
George said that he is someone who likes to go with the flow and he also possesses initiatives and the ability to adapt to things that happen around him. However, he was of the opinion that people should also have the strength to push against the flow when things do not go the right way. Thus, a wise fish is one that can decide when to swim with the stream or against the stream.
If you could represent yourself with a single object, what would that object be and why?
Speaker: Francis Goh, ACS, ALB
Francis chose the object in question to be a concept, and he chose to represent himself as in the concept of relationship.
Francis believes that relationship is the beginning of everything. He cited the example of his toastmasters club to be the summation of relationships among all the members in the club. They are here in the club together because of relationships. Relationships require time and commitment, and just like everything else, relationships come with a price. Francis told us that the things that constitute a relationship best represents his values and belief system.
Would you rather be a worried genius or a joyful simpleton
Speaker: Irma Wang
Irma found it very stressful to be a genius because as a genius, you would have to be very competent and be better than anyone else. Instead, she would rather be a joyful simpleton, a little potato as she would describe herself. She wants to be happy with herself and to bring joy and happiness to others as well. Thus, Irma found it to be very easy to be a joyful simpleton. More over, as a simpleton, she could help to make other people’s lives meaningful as well.
What sound, other than ringing, would you want your telephone to make? Why?
Speaker: Myljoy Poliestico
Apart from the ringing tone on her phone, Myljoy would like her phone to make the sound of laughter. She chose laughter because laughter is a great remedy. Compared to any other remedy, laughter is free and instantaneous. Besides, it is more attention grabbing than just a plain ringing tone. Laughter connects with the heart and it is important for relationship. Finally, she concluded that laughter is a gift to the world.
Prepared Speech
1st Speaker: Myljoy Polestico
Pathway Project: Presentation Mastery, Level 1, Project 2, Evaluation & Feedback
Title: The Gift Of Anger
Evaluator: Chay Wen Liang, DTM, VC3
At the beginning of Myljoy’s speech, she shared with everyone her greatly diversified cultural background. She was born in Philippine and lived there for the first 7 years of her life. After which, she moved with to Australia her parents and lived in Australia for 20 years. For the last 12 years, she has been living in Singapore.
In her speech, Myljoy wanted to talked about the benefits of anger. Firstly, she classified emotions into 4 categories:
- Happiness
- Fear
- Sadness
- Anger
She first began by contrasting between happiness and anger. Myljoy regarded happiness is an emotion that everyone wants but it is an emotion that is overworked and underpaid. Whereas for anger, it has always been viewed upon negatively and we are often told, “Don’t be angry!”
Myljoy further subdivided anger into 2 types:
- the soft side of anger,
- and the intense side of anger.
The soft side of anger is experienced as apathy and boredom. Apathy and boredom are actually the mask of anger. Anger has the energy that drives you to take action instead of sitting around and let things be.
The intense side of anger is hatred. Hatred is a mirror. What you hate in somebody is actually what you hate in yourself except that you do not want to say it out loud. Instead you project it onto others.
Myljoy loves the emotion of anger because it sets your boundaries and protects you. When you are angry, it means that your boundaries have been overstepped. When someone screams and shouts, it means that emotion has been suppressed and it is bursting out. However, if you repress your anger, you may turn inward into destructive thoughts and behaviours of apathy and depression.
Instead you should re-evaluate and reintegrate by asking yourself,
“What do I value?’
‘What must be protected and restored?’
Ask yourself and transit into action to protect and restore your lost boundaries. Anger need not be repressed or expressed.
In contrast, emotions of happiness cannot do the job of anger.
2nd Speaker: Ann Luo Jinyu, PM1
Pathway Project: Presentation Mastery, Level 2, Project 1, Managing Time
Title: What We Can Learn From Bitcoin
Evaluator: Triggi Chan, CC
Ann shared with us in her speech, her knowledge and understanding about bitcoin. She covered the origin of bitcoin, its features and benefits. If you have already known what blockchain and cryptocurrency are, you would be able to follow and understand her speech as she mentioned the common issues and key terms used related to bitcoin and mining of cryptocurrency. However, if you have no idea about what bitcoin is, you would probably get a vague idea of what bitcoin is. Nevertheless, she did not mention about blockchain, the essential technology intricately related to cryptocurrency. Blockchain and bitcoin, a type of thousands of cryptocurrency, are usually confused one for another.
Ann began her speech by highlighting the volatility of bitcoin, telling us the current market value of a bitcoin. She went on to tell us that Satoshi Nakamoto invented the bitcoin. She then touched on the SHA-256 cryptographic hash, mining and how miners are rewarded with bitcoins.
Honestly, this is quite a complicated issue that I personally have not yet fully understood after attending several courses on blockchain and cryptocurrency because the emphasis was on blockchain and not on “how to mine for cryptocurrency” and “what is mining”.
Ann tried to help us appreciate the benefits of bitcoin, telling us about how it is a non-traditional way of record keeping and payment which uses a decentralised payment system. She also touched on the limited number of bitcoins that will be issued in contrast with the unlimited printing and circulation of fiat money.
Finally, she warned us to only invest in bitcoin with our spare money owing to the volatility of bitcoin and the high risk associated with it. She also advised us to keep a look out on policies and regulations pertaining to bitcoin.
3rd Speaker: Xerxes Ghista, PM1
Pathway Project: Presentation Mastery,Level 2, Project 3, Introduction To Toastmaster Mentoring
Title: The Weekend Apprentice
Evaluator: Francis Goh, ACS, ALB
Xerxes was at a lost trying to recall who has ever been a mentor to him at any point of his life.
He got an inspiration from a notification on his handphone. It was a reply from someone whom he has been following. That person gave Xerxes a systematic point by point reply on all the queries that Xerxes had directed to that person on coding. Xerxes thought that this person might just be who considered as someone like a mentor to him.
Xerxes then sidetracked to how his mother guided him on making lasagne. He gave a detailed elaboration on how his mother has guided him on how to cook his dishes and on keeping the kitchen hygiene. Xerxes thought if he could also consider his mother as his mentor.
Xerxes decided to coin the term, “Weekend Apprentice”, which he defined as someone who spend his time learning a skill over a weekend, in contrast of mastering a skill from a master over a longer period of time.
Xerxes concluded that so long as we have tried learning new skills from time to time from someone better than ourselves over a weekend, we can be considered as a weekend apprentice.
4th Speaker: Jane Pang, CC, CL, VC2
Pathway Project: Visionary Communication, Level 3, Project 1, Develop a Communication Plan
Title: Preparing For My First Town Hall Session
Evaluator: Annabelle Yong, DTM
Jane shared with us the process of the development of her communication plan for her Town Hall meeting.
She began by defining town hall meeting as an opportunity to engage staff with a two-way dialogue. Jane shared that prior to COVID-19, her workplace used to engage their staff regularly. Ever since COVID-19 hit, engagement with their staff has been adversely affected.
These are the key points In her communication plan she developed with her committee:
The key message is to emphasise on their core values. One of which is to build a great place to work. In working around this core value, they planned on what are the key initiatives and the projects they want to undertake. As a result, they want to plan on having one-on-one engagement and some programmes related to human resource.
They also want to project a positive message on caring for staff in telling them what is happening and the direction of the organisation going forward.
Jane also wanted the staff to be proactive during the meeting so she needed to decide on the mode of engagement to avoid the staff disengage themselves while attending the meeting. Taking this into consideration, they planned on targeting 90 to 95 percent of the Singaporean staff and just around 5 to 10 percent of the staff from the Johore Bahru office. As for the mode of communication, between YouTube Live Streaming and Zoom session, she decided on using Zoom as she felt that YouTube live streaming would be too stressful.
Jane did not want to end up as the only person talking so she wanted the attendees to participate as well. She decided on sending out questionnaires in advance so that answers can be given during Question and Answer session.
All in all, after the planning of the message, it had to be submitted for clearance and invitation was sent to out to the staff to attend the meeting.
Jane ended her speech by telling us that she has to rehearse her speech that night because her town hall meeting would be on the next day.
5th Speaker: Elaine Tan, ACB, CL, DL4
Pathway Project: Dynamic Leadership, Level 5, Project 2, Leading In Your Volunteer Organisation
Title: The Volunteer Manager Journey
Evaluator: Wekie Tay, DTM
In this project of “Leading In Your Volunteer Organisation”, Elaine shared with us her journey as a Volunteer Manager in her job where she needed to provide support for young stressful parents. Her project in this job was to form a Family For Life Online Committee to create an online platform where she and her colleagues can reach out to young stressful parents and provide support for them.
The first task that she had to undertake was rally a bunch of volunteers with adequate parenting knowledge and experience to provide these virtual support for young parents.
Some areas she needed to look into were:
- Who to recruit?
- What are their roles?
- How to get parents to be helped by them?
- What the common challenge parents are facing?
Elaine and her colleagues began first by making cold calls to 200 over volunteers who has worked with many social service agencies and conducted counselling sessions and parenting talks to parents. Among these people, they identified 80 plus of them and recruited them to be their regular volunteers.
In order to help maintain anonymity for young parents who needed guidance, they created a closed group on Facebook. In order to lure these young parents to come forward for help and support, they create fun quizzes on the Facebook Group in the attempt to create bonding with these parents.
Nevertheless, Elaine was challenged with the fact that these young parents tend to remain quiet for the reason that either they are shy or they are unfamiliar with the volunteers. In the event that things do not work out as planned, she needed to be innovative to come out with new ideas and test them out. Some of the things that she tried were holding virtual events, playing games with the parents and giving out goodie bags. She also had to keep her volunteers updated from time to time because the volunteers too need to keep abreast of the progress of the effort that they have made.
All in all, Elaine shared that her volunteers are very satisfied with the support that Elaine and her team have given them.
Best Speakers
Best Table Topic Speaker
Myljoy Polestico
Best Evaluator
Wekie Tay, DTM
Best Speaker (Prepared Speech)
Myljoy Polestico
Congratulation to Myljoy Polestico for winning the double best speaker awards!
President’s Closing Address
Owing to the absence of Telok Blangah Toastmasters Club President, the Club Coach, Wekie Tay, DTM, presented to us the Best Speakers Results as well as gave us the closing address.
Wekie acknowledged the presence and participation of our following guests which included district officers, fellow toastmasters, an ex-member of Telok Blangah Toastmasters Club and a visitor.
- Pranav P, ACB, PI2 (NUS Toastmasters Club) – Outgoing Area Z2 Director cum Incoming Public Relations Manager
- Yip Li Xian, ACB, CL (NUS Toastmasters Club) – Outgoing Area Z1 Director cum Incoming Division Z Director
- George Chew, DL2, Incoming Area Z2 Director (Choa Chu Kang Toastmasters Club)
- Claudia Cheng (ex-member of Telok Blangah Toastmasters Club)
- Irma Wang (visitor)
While Wekie acknowledged the contribution made by each of the guests, he craftily and cunningly “coerced” and convinced the district officers to assist the club in future as well as for the ex-member and non-member to join the club. In Wekie’s own words, the way to do it is acknowledge someone publicly and make that person promise in front of everyone.
Next, Wekie announced and celebrated the achievements of Division Z and Telok Blangah Toastmasters Club for attaining the title of President Distinguished Division and President Distinguished Club respectively. Wekie then invited Pranav, Area Z2 Director to announce the upcoming Division Z Achiever’s Day to be held on 20 June 2021 (Sunday) and the incoming Area Z2 Director, George Chew to announce the Division Z Club Officer Training (1st Training) to be held on 17 July 2021.
Finally, Wekie moved on to his official closing address. He began by congratulating everyone for having survived the pandemic thus far. However, it is not about just surviving but to learn what we have learned.
During this pandemic, some clubs may have disintegrated while some clubs have thrived on, say the Telok Blangah Toastmasters Club that has achieved the President Distinguished Toastmasters Club. We are also supporting each other in times of struggle and hardship and Wekie thanked The Open Alumni Toastmasters Club for the support given to Telok Blangah Toastmasters Club for the last few years.
Wekie then moved our attention to the Word of the Day, “Transit”. To Wekie, the word “Transit” is not just moving from one place to another place, which is merely existing. More importantly, it is about carrying something you have learned from the past into the future. More than just transiting, it is transforming further, to a transformed speaker, a better person to help others, a better leader to serve the community.
To move from transition to transformation.
We transit to transform.
As a result, we can become better people in the midst of this COVID. Let not COVID defeat us but let COVID represents courage and confidence in our life that can effectually make a difference to others. As long as you are willing to keep learning, keep turning up for the monthly chapter meeting, you will always become a better person.
Finally, Wekie ended his closing address by asking everyone to stay well, stay safe and keep transforming.
The next combined Chapter Meeting of The Open Alumni Toastmasters Club and Telok Blangah Toastmasters Club will be held on 15 July 2021, the 3rd Thursday of the month of July, 2021.
0 Comments