Chua Chu Kang Toastmasters Club: Passion, Gardens, & the Goddess of the Moon

On 10^th October 2019, I was at Chua Chu Kang Toastmasters Club as Language Evaluator, my 84^th club visit on the 102^nd day of the Toastmaster year.  Katherine Kang served as Sergeant-at-Arms.  Dalvin Lee served as Toastmaster of the Day.  Shruti Virun served as Ah Counter.  Sajeeva Silva served as Table Topics Master.

Passion as a Business Strategy

Pei Yi Heng, DTM, in his opening address, referenced Oprah Gail Winfrey’s passion for her work as the catalyst that turned her daytime talk show into an international phenomenon, quoting her: “Passion is energy that makes you feel the power of what excites you.”  The Oprah Winfrey Show ran for twenty-five seasons, from 1986 to 2011, becoming the highest-rated talk show in American television history and turning Winfrey into the first Black woman billionaire in the United States.  A quote about passion, delivered by someone whose passion for a single format sustained a quarter-century of dominant ratings, carries more weight than the same line borrowed from a motivational poster.

A Garden Lost, and Regained

Lilly Routray recounted her childhood in India and her love for gardening, describing the pain of discovering her garden ruined by flower thieves, and the years it took her to return to it afterwards.  Grief over a violated space, even one as modest as a garden, is an underused subject in public speaking, because it forces the speaker to admit a wound most people would rather present as trivial than examine.

Leading from the Youngest Chair in the Room

Garen Tee gave a presentation on the challenges of being the youngest person on a large executive committee, and simultaneously its president, at the Toastmasters Club of Singapore.  He walked the room through his own system for motivating club members.  Leading a committee where every other member is older carries a credibility burden most leadership material never addresses directly, and a speaker willing to detail the mechanics of overcoming it, rather than asserting that he did, gave the room something more useful than reassurance.

Hou Yi, Chang’e, and the Origin of the Mid-Autumn Festival

Priscilla Chew explained the reasons behind the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival and its associated myths, speaking of Hou Yi and Chang’e, the heavenly animal spirits, and the events between them.  In the most widely told version of the legend, Hou Yi, a legendary archer, shot down nine of ten suns scorching the earth, and was rewarded with an elixir of immortality by the Queen Mother of the West.  Rather than drink it himself, he entrusted it to his wife, Chang’e, for safekeeping.  When his disloyal apprentice, Peng Meng, attempted to steal the elixir by force, Chang’e swallowed it rather than surrender it, and ascended to the moon, where she remains as its goddess to this day.  A myth this old, still driving an entire modern festival’s mooncakes and lantern displays, is an effective vehicle for teaching cultural literacy, because the audience already half-knows the ending and never learned the reasoning behind it.

The Evaluators and Results

Best Speaker went to Garen Tee.  Best Table Topics Speaker went to a guest.  A meeting spanning television history, a violated garden, the burden of youthful leadership, and an ancient Chinese myth about a stolen elixir gave this room a wide range of material to carry home, and not a single transition felt forced across any of it.

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Terence Nunis, DTM | Division Advisor, District 80 Division M | Club Advisor, AIA Toastmasters | Past President & Founder, Awesome Toastmasters