Crazy Hats/Halloween Meeting 15 October 2020

We had an enchanting and spooktacular evening with members donning different crazy hats or Halloween get up. 

Here's our Toastmaster of the Evening Rubin looking very enigmatic in her witch's hat and glittery mask, guiding us through the night's proceedings.

Our enigmatic TME Rubin

Club President Swarna completed her Innovative Planning L5 Speech "Mirror, mirror on the wall" as her opening address. She reflected on her learning journey in pursuing the Innovative Planning Pathway and the many lessons on leadership she has learnt.

"Mirror, mirror on the wall" by Club President Swarna

We had three Icebreaker speeches from our new members Haifa, Rachel and Bee Bee, as well as a Level 2 speech from Effective Coaching Pathway by veteran member Malcolm Chen.

Haifa related a story that affected her deeply. Months before her O level exams, she was diagnosed with Hepatitis A, a viral infection that caused her liver to become enlarged and inflamed. She had to be hospitalised and go through blood tests three times each day. She took two months to recover and is thankful to her family and friends for supporting her each step of the way. Although she did not do well for her O level exams due to the illness, she found the strength to re-take her O level exams and she eventually did well. After her exams, she volunteered for many children-related activities and found her passion in teaching children.  This made her decide to take up the Diploma course in Early Children Development and Education at Ngee Ann Polytechnic. The illness has taught her a powerful lesson in resilience. Haifa was voted the Best Speaker for her moving and inspiring speech.

Rachel shared about her 19-years journey on earth. She can play the guitar and ukulele well as she likes music. She is currently pursuing a Diploma in Electronics Engineering in Temasek Polytechnic. She enjoys learning new things but the problem is she does not try very hard nor try to be the best. Her grandfather considers her a jack of all trades but master of none. Rachel wants to cherish the wonderful opportunity to be a Toastmaster and hopes to become a jack of all trades and master of one!

In her speech "Third Time's a Charm", Bee Bee shared that her dream is to become a good speaker and presenter. When she was a junior accountant, she joined the ICPAS Toastmasters Club but dropped out after the Icebreaker speech. When she went to Switzerland with her husband who was posted there, she joined a second Toastmasters Club but found it stressful and did not stay on. She regretted that she had given up Toastmasters with the last two clubs. Now that she is a financial controller and is required to give presentations to senior management, she aims to work hard to improve her communication skills for both professional and personal growth! That is why she has decided to join Katong Toastmasters Club! 

In his level 2 speech, Malcolm spoke about different communication styles. He enumerated four communication styles, namely, the direct style, the supportive style, the analytical style and the initiating style. He considers himself to have the initiating style of communication and people with such styles of communication are generally sociable, enthusiastic, spontaneous and fun-loving. They also appear more self-assured and persuasive. He has learned that he can use stories to connect with people, focus on hopeful aspects of exchanges, and allow time for others to express their feelings and share their opinions, instead of dominating the conversation.

Our arsenal of evaluators including club members Marina, Ida and Eliz, as well as invited guests Raymond & Celia, provided useful and insightful feedback to our five speakers.

Table Topics "Monster" Kah Heng gave us cryptic topics like Switcheroo of Souls, Burn, baby, burn! and For car owners only. When asked what non-living item he would take if his house was on fire, Table Topic speaker Raymond convinced us that his vintage fountain pen was the most valuable item he would take with him as he could use it for multiple purposes. He was voted Best Table Topics Speaker for his incontrovertible spiel.

Debut Language Evaluator Cherylene wowed us with her organised and insightful evaluation. She highlighted various rhetorical devices such as parallelism, rhyme, triads and personification. She also pointed out grammatical and pronunciation errors that needed correction.

We had the privilege to invite DTM Jim Wan from JPMorgan TMC Australia to give us a Table Topics Evaluation. He commended TTM Kah Heng for his choice of interesting topics and shared his feedback for each of the Table Topics Speaker and how they could improve on their content and presentation. 

Huge congratulations to the award winners for the night: 

Best Speaker Haifa Naz

Best Evaluator Raymond Zhang

Best Table Topics Speaker Raymond Zhang