Members and guests of Tanglin Toastmasters Club met for our regular monthly meeting on 17 July 2008 at 7.30pm.  Although only 8 members turned up for this meeting, as many of our members were out of Singapore, we had an overwhelming number of guests (10) at this meeting, making it a most enjoyable evening for all who were there.

Sergeant at Arms for the evening, Vivienne Ng called the meeting to order and got us to introduce ourselves by talking briefly about what we had done the previous weekend.  TME Alan Puah then took over the programme for the evening.  Language Evaluator, Yip Pei Shan, introduced the word of the day which was “ricochet”.  Newly elected President, Judy Lee, then gave her inaugural opening address, calling on all members to do their best to “make every meeting count”. 

Guest Brian Wong from SMU TMC gave his P5 project entitled “First Impression”. His speech gave us some thought-provoking examples of how first impressions can turn out to be so wrong.  Guest Aw Soke Kee from AIA Changi TMC, then presented her P9 speech entitled “Making it happen”.  It was a most inspiring and persuasive speech which gave us a wonderful insight into the different paths she has taken in her personal life and how it has enriched her life.  Our member, Savitri Iyer rounded off the prepared speech segment of the meeting with  Advance Project 2 from “The Entertaining Speaker” manual.  Her speech “Be careful what you ask for” had us in stitches as she re-enacted scenes between an insolent hotel staff and a hassled hotel guest.

After a 20-minute break, our meeting resumed with evaluations on the project speeches.  Our evaluators Chia Choon Kiat, Gerald Ong and Ng Seng Chuan highlighted the strong points the speakers had as well gave pointers on how they could have improved their presentations.

Table Topics Master of the evening, Suanny Gouw, then led us through a most interesting session by challenging speakers to sell items they had picked from her goodie-bag.  She must have touched an innate desire to sell in all of us as everyone was raring to have a go; and all our 5 guests who were new to Toastmasters meetings, made their impromptu table-topic speeches.

Language Evaluator Yip Pei Shan then took us through our language usage for the evening. She gave us high marks for the standard of the language for the meeting and was impressed at creative use of the word “richochet”.

The evening then ended with the presentation of awards which are as follows:
Best Table Topics Speaker: Sunder
Best Evaluator : Ng Seng Chuan
Best Speaker : Aw Soke Kee

Meeting was adjourned at 9.45pm | Next meeting: 21 August, 2008.

~ Judy ~