524th Chapter Meeting

Tampines Changkat Toastmasters Club held its 524th Chapter Meeting on 21st April, 2016. There were two phenomena in this meeting that were out of the ordinary course of events. Firstly, this was a Speech Marathon which meant that the Table Topics section was replaced with more speaking slots for some amazing speakers. Secondly, Vice-President Public Relations, Toastmaster Arjun Chakrabarti presided over the meeting since Club President Gladys Tye was unable to make it. What was ordinary, however, was the extra-ordinary Thursday energy levels of the club members. The meeting went well and keep reading to know the rest of the events.

Every meeting is heavily dependent upon the appointment holders. For this particular meeting, the appointment holders were as follows:

Sergeant-at-Arms: B.R. Muralidhar

Timer: Ashish Kundra

Ah-Counter: Tia Maria

Toastmaster-of-the-Evening: Naveena Methani

Language Evaluator: Abigail Lee

The meeting started with an excellent ice-breaking session by Sergeant-at-Arms Toastmaster Murali, after which Toastmaster Naveena displayed her fantastic compering skills and kept the audience charged and excited. Then followed the Acting-President Arjun's opening address which mentioned the importance of going to first principles and remembering why we joined Toastmasters in the first place. His emphasis on proper dressing and continuing to strive towards one's goals was well-received by all and his speech was greeted with a standing ovation by the audience.

It was now time for the excellent speeches of the night. The speakers were as follows:

1) Amirul Syaffiq

2) Tan Mei Yee

3) Sarvanaraj Rathinam

4) Hyder Taufik

5) Ray Oh

6) You Xiao

7) Mervin Chan

Excellent speeches were followed by excellent and lengthy clapping. A lot of the speakers like Toastmasters  Amirul, Raj, You Xiao and Hyder delivered prepared speeches in the club meeting for the first time and the audience was very appreciative of their efforts.

After a good speech session, the members bonded over food and chit-chat. The next segment of the meeting was Evaluation of the prepared speeches. The meeting had excellent evaluators, both in-house as well as external. The list of evaluators is presented below:

1) Andrew Chen 

2) Chia Choon Kiat

3) Vincent Chen

4) Jaric ng

5) Kapil Pareek

6) Salma Begum

7) Ng Kin Foong

A great evaluation session is marked by the amount of suggestions that the audience can retain and take back after the meeting. The evaluations of the night were of such high standards and gave the audience enough thoughts and knowledge to carry back home. However, there was one more interesting session before the audience could begin their homeward journey. This was the Language Evaluation session by Toastmaster Abigail Lee. She was taking up this role for the first time and yet her confidence and performance showed that she has a fantastic grasp over the English language. 

It was now time for recognizing the best speaker and evaluator of the night. The results were as follows:

Best Speaker: Hyder Taufik

Best Evaluator: Salma Begum

The meeting had finally come to an end. Acting President delivered the closing address and officially closed the meeting. However, as you all know, this just signaled the beginning of the bonding session. The members moved out to the coffee shop and had a great time over coffee, tea, drinks and food. 

If you want to participate in the fun, frolic and education, please feel free to join our next meeting on 5th May, 2016. Till then, keep reading the blog for more news, views and trivia on the most exciting Toastmasters Club in Singapore.