On the 8th August
2019, AIA Toastmasters Club held its chapter meeting under the theme “Home of
the Heart.” Putting this meeting
together was considerably harder than it should have been. An unforeseen series of events forced several
external appointment holders, and even some internal speakers, to withdraw with
barely a week's notice. I spent that
week hunting down replacements rather than preparing my own material. I was not impressed, and I still am not,
retrospectively. A club that can absorb
that kind of last-minute chaos and still deliver a meeting worth writing about
has earned the right to call itself resilient rather than merely lucky.
The Firsts
Michelle Tan was inducted into
the club, serving her first appointment as Timer. Vice-President, Membership Ivan Lee, DTM,
conducted the induction. Soh Yi Kai took
on Sergeant-at-Arms for the first time.
Cindy Gan served as Creative Director for the first time as well.
The Opening
Address
Jack Sia delivered the opening
address, speaking on maintaining the standards and legacy of AIA Toastmasters
Club, and the weight of responsibility every member carries in sustaining that
excellence. Given the week we had just
survived to get to this meeting at all, the theme landed with more weight than
usual.
The Speeches
Linda Lee delivered her first
Pathways speech, after nine years as a Toastmaster. Nine years is a long runway before a “first,”
and the speech justified every one of them.
She offered a line worth remembering on its own: “Good, better, best;
never let them rest; make the good, better; and the better, best.” Her speeches have always carried memorable
sound bites, and I still recall her earlier, genuinely hilarious speech on
struggling with dyslexia, only for the final twist to reveal the diagnosis was
entirely self-administered. That is not
merely a good joke. It is a masterclass
in structuring misdirection so the punchline recontextualises everything that
came before it.
Eric Tan, DTM, spoke
about Jiro Ono, the Japanese chef and owner of Sukiyabashi Jiro, the
three-Michelin-starred sushi restaurant in Ginza, Tokyo, regarded by his own
peers and contemporaries as the greatest living sushi craftsman. He drew on his own visit to the restaurant
before pivoting into the story of Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s founding Prime
Minister, drawing a parallel between two men who pursued excellence
relentlessly, each within his own discipline.
Woven into National Day itself, the speech argued that people fear
excellence more than they fear failure, and that fear, not lack of ability, is
what actually holds most people back.
This was technically the most demanding speech of the evening, and he
delivered.
Ivan Lee, DTM, spoke on
his own challenge convincing former co-workers to adopt a healthier lifestyle,
describing an engaging, often funny account of deploying everything from social
media campaigns to enlisting management support directly. A man willing to weaponise both memes and
middle management in pursuit of his colleagues’ cholesterol levels has range
worth noting.
I delivered my final speech in
the Visionary Communication Pathway, my second reflection on the journey,
though considerably different from the first.
This time, I spoke about who I actually am, rather than the events and
facts I have leaned on for seven years at AIA without ever really letting
anyone in the room know me personally.
Seven years is a long time to remain a well-documented set of
achievements rather than a person, and correcting that in front of this
particular audience felt overdue.
The Appointment
Holders
Jeannie Kwara served as
Language Evaluator. Celine Goh, Penny
Anne Radcliffe, Wiwiek Najihah and Muhammad Nurhakim, DTM, served as
Project Evaluators. Gerald Ong, DTM,
served as Table Topics Master, and brought along a bottle of wine as a prize,
which is the kind of incentive that gets people volunteering for Table Topics
with genuine enthusiasm rather than reluctant obligation.
The Results
Best Speaker went to Eric Tan,
DTM. Best Evaluator went to
Wiwiek Najihah. Best Table Topics
Speaker went to Heny Chen. A meeting
that began the week as a logistical scramble ended it with a first-time
Pathways speech nine years in the making, a technically superb National Day
tribute, and a personal reflection overdue by seven years. Chaos in the planning stage does not
guarantee a mediocre meeting. It
occasionally guarantees the opposite, provided the people filling the gaps
actually show up prepared to work.
Terence Nunis, DTM
| Division Advisor, District 80 Division M | Club Advisor, AIA Toastmasters |
Past President & Founder, Awesome Toastmasters
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