523rd Chapter Meeting

Tampines Changkat Toastmasters Club celebrated its 523rd Chapter meeting on 7th April, 2016. The meeting, of course, was made even more interesting with a special birthday segment and a performance by Vice President - Membership, Toastmaster Zhuo Shuzhen. However, more on that will be discussed in the later paragraphs.

The appointment holders for the evening were as follows:

Acting President: Shunwei See

Sergeant-at-Arms: Abigail Lee

Toastmaster of the Evening: Tia Maria

Table Topic Master: Arjun Chakrabarti

Ah Counter: Mei Yee

Timer: Law Jia Hong

The meeting began with a good warm-up session by beautiful and eloquent Sergeant-at-Arms Abigail Lee who, along with the introductions, required the guests to choose his or her favourite flavour of ice-cream. She soon handed the mike over to the elegant and equally funny Toastmaster of the Evening, Tia Maria. Toastmaster Tia kept up the energy of the program and kept people engaged throughout the meeting with her charming smile and witty comments.

The next item of the meeting, was the opening speech by Acting President Shunwei See, who was standing in as Club President Gladys Tye could not make it due to her examinations. Toastmaster Shunwei spoke about taking the leap and going for tasks without worrying about it. Although a very inspiring speech that moved the audience to muster the courage to attempt difficult tasks, what the audience most enjoyed was his concluding statement: "You were expecting a queen but tonight you have a king!"

It was now time for the Prepared Speech segment of the meeting. There were four speakers tonight. The order of speeches was as follows:

1. Soon Tong 

2. Mohana Priya

3. Carl Wong

4. Ashish Kundra

5. Vincent Chen

The speeches were fabulous and engaging and comprised various topics ranging from backpacking to minotaurs to procrastination, laziness and even human potential. The audience was thoroughly entertained and uplifted with the quality of the speeches.

 

After the speeches, it was time for Birthday Celebrations. This special segment was organized by the Vice Presiedent, Membership Toastmaster Zhuo Shuzhen. Along with the cake cutting and regular Happy Birthday song, Toastmaster Shuzhen sang a special song dedicated to the birthday babies who were present that day. The lyrics were contributed by Toastmaster Arjun Chakrabarti. The birthday babies present that day were:

1. Andrew Chen.

2. Ray Oh.

3. Law Jia Hong

4. Amirul

The lyrics of the song are as follows:

We have reached that time once again

When we forget sorrow, worry and pain

And together then we all say

April babies Happy Birthday

He’ll make you laugh till you’re sick

With his humorous table topic

He is smart, handsome and so cool

Our dear little brother Amirul

The next young man in line

Is wonderful and equally fine

His list of achievements is long

Super-human toastmaster Jia Hong

This awesome dude likes to jive

With the fishes during his scuba dive

He dresses smartly every day

Changkat family member Oh Ray

This man we all look up to

All club roles he will happily do

Perfect with tie and with pen

Our Co-opt member Andrew Chen

Now I wanna tell these young folks

We may have said a lot of jokes

But what we really want to say

Is a very Happy Birthday

The break session involved fantastic Fried Rice, Bee Hoon and cake. This was followed by the Evaluation Section. Evaluations are an extremely important section of the meeting because both the speakers and the audience get to benefit from knowledge of the good parts of a speech and from tips on how to improve the speeches. The evaluators of the night were:

1. Vincent Chen

2. Jaric Ng

3. Andrew Chen.

4. Chia Choong Kiat

5. Yee Yuen

The final section of the night was the very interesting Table Topics session. Table Topic Master was Toastmaster Arjun Chakrabarti. He openly declared that he was going to provide easy topics for guests and quite difficult ones for members. He was true to his word and members were challenged with his choice of topics. However, Tampines Changkat members do not back down from challenges and they tackled Toastmaster Arjun's topics with expertise.

After Table Topics, the final section of the night was the distribution of ribbons to the winner. The winners of the night were as follows:

Best Speaker - Vincent Chen

Best Evaluator - Vincent Chen

Best Table Topic Speaker - Lau Kheng Soon

The night was good. People had fun. There was laughter, joy and jokes. However, if you want more, do join us for the next chapter meeting.

Tampines Changkat Toastmasters Club is having a joint meeting with AIA Toastmasters Club in order to share and learn the best practices of the two clubs on 14th April, 2016. DO join us there for more fun, frolic and learning, Feel free to contact Toastmaster Zhuo Shuzhen (90274183) for more information.