471st Meeting Recap (20th February 2014), or The Nails, The File and The Fire Engine

Best Prepared Speech: Darren Loh

Best Evaluator: Ang Wee Yong, ACG, ALB

Our Toastmaster of the Day, Toastmaster Joe Wan, gave the meeting his own unique flavour when he asked us to pair up in groups of 2, and tell each other “I think I'm going to love this guy!!” (“This guy” meaning Joe)

Club President Gurmit Singh, CC, officially started the meeting with a story: there was once a boy who used to get angry often. His father told him, to control his anger, he had to hammer in a nail into a wooden fence post, each time he got angry. It took quite a bit of effort to hammer the nails in (these were the days before nail guns, or his father didn't allow him to use one). Soon, the boy learned to control his anger. After a few consecutive days of angerless bliss, his father told him to pull out each of the nails: but he could only pull out one nail per day. When he finally finished pulling out ALL the nails in the fence post, his father told him to look carefully at the wooden fence post. There were holes in the fence post (the boy was a genius), where the nails used to be. His father told him, “You see, these holes are like the hurt we cause whenever we say something in anger. Even though the nails are gone, but the hurt remains”

The first Prepared Speech by Toastmaster See Shunwei, began with him showing us a coin. He told us that it had 2 sides, a head and a tail. And Shunwei talked about how many of the things that we see can be interpreted 2 ways, eg pictures of schoolkids sleeping on the MRT train seats. Are they really tired, or do they just want to occupy the seats by pretending to sleep? Or consider the case of a guy with tattoos and piercings wanting to share a table with us, during mealtimes. Would we be willing to share the table with them, or say that the seats available are occupied, even though it is not?

The second Prepared Speech, by Shaun Li, ACS, ALB, started with a question: “What if, only after getting married, the true colours of your spouse emerges?” Shaun illustrated, full of drama, to show us what a daily commute to the city was like. More importantly, Shaun shared with us 2 techniques of entering MRT trains: 'The File' and 'The Prata'. 'The File' involves slotting in sideways in a narrow space (like placing a file on a shelf), and 'The Prata' is when you weave in between people to get ahead.

The third Prepared Speech, by Toastmaster Kathryn Low, was about her Chinese New Year Celebration. Kathryn spoke in detail about how she prepared for Chinese New Year, why some people avoid relatives during this time (it's like a Police interrogation, even though they may 'mean well'- they're probably just really bored) and why she makes sure there is fish at mealtimes ('fish' in Chinese sounds like 'yu' or 'abundance)

The fourth Prepared Speech by Toastmaster Darren Loh, started with “I have a dream” like Martin Luther King, Jr's landmark speech. Darren then proceeded to talk about how his son dreamed of becoming 'a fire engine' (sic). Darren wanted to correct his son's grammar, saying what his son really wanted to be, was a 'fireman' (actually I agree with his son, because to me 'fireman' conjures up an image of a man on fire. Either that, or Donald Trump). “It's really pointless arguing with a boy that has a fire engine in his hand” Darren conceded. He's right. Later when he asked his son again, his son wanted to be a 'gardener'. His son clearly took pride in his work, watering the plants in their garden with amazing regularity. Darren said he can change his original dream of becoming 'the best engineer' to 'the best father' to support his son's ambition. That's a Dedicated Daddy if I ever saw one.

The fifth Speaker, Toastmaster Flora Fong, in her speech entitled “Everything Happens for a Reason”, told the sad tale of how she flew all the way to Singapore for a job interview, and ended up not getting the job. However, Flora was persistent and asked her interviewer what she did wrong, and why she wasn't hired. Her interviewer was kind enough to tell her the area she needed to improve: her communication skills. Flora took it in the right spirit and concentrated on improving that area of her life. Long story short, Flora is now working in Singapore!

Andrew Chen, ATMB, ALS, presented a speech for the AP4 “Addressing the Opposition” project. He talked about how Tampines Changkat Toastmasters has evolved from NCOC 1 (thank goodness we got rid of that robotic name, even though it's our heritage) to the present form. Each time the club had to close down, we found a way to resurrect it! In a hypothetical situation where we were going to be charged to use the Community Centre's facilities, we basically had 3 options:

1. Raise membership fees to offset the additional charges (not everyone's favourite option)
2. Hand over control to the Community Centre, (including all decision making and funds!)
3. Move to another Community Centre, which allows us free reign of usage time and fund allocation

After the presentation, there was a Question and Answer session. Then we all took a vote to decide the (hypothetical) future of the club. Can you guess which option most people went for?*

Our seventh speaker, Toastmaster Linda Low, gave a speech entitled “Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?”, which got our attention. She talked about how there are 3 types of millionaires:

1. Those self-made millionaires
2. Those who inherited their millions
3. The 'windfall' type: eg lottery winners

Can you guess which type will have the millions at the end of their lives?**

(Even though I aspire to be Type 3, I just have to accept that I'm going to be a Type 1- time to get cracking!)

Last but not least, we had John Bhaddo Lee talk about a place he's travelled to: Chiengmai, in Thailand. I've personally heard wonderful things about Chiengmai, mostly involving tall, supermodel-looking women populating the city. I must go someday!

Back to John: he described the wonderful food, noodles with grilled meat and something called “Kau Soy”- a soup with crispy egg noodles. Sounds yummy! Everything except the tall, supermodel-looking women. Wonder if it's true...?

After a really short break, and listening to the incredibly energetic and enthusiastic Evaluators, we ended the meeting. Next meeting, we'll be having our club's International Speech and Table Topics Contest.

Till next meeting, be a millionaire so that you can support your kids' ambitions!

Carl Wong HL

Vice President of Public Relations

*Option 3: Move to another CC

**Type 1: Self-made millionaires, barring any financial catastrophes, eg planes dropping down and totally destroying their cargo ships. Hey, it happens. Or, if they were in said cargo ships, then yes, they did die with their millions.

Best Prepared Speech: Darren Loh

Best Evaluator: Ang Wee Yong, ACG, ALB

Roy just joined us as a member!

Pijush who just joined Tampines Changkat TMC, giving his thoughts about the meeting

Irene Choo, one of our guests

Kheng Soon

Shaun Li and Johnbosco: Do they look like brothers?