On the 24th October 2019, AIA
Toastmasters Club held its NFNF meeting.
I served as Table Topics Master.
Chng Pia Kim served as Sergeant-at-Arms.
Gordon Yeo served as Toastmaster of the Day. David Low served as Timer. April Lin served as Ah Counter. Linda Lee served as Creative Director. Soh Yi Kai served as Photographer.
The Speeches
Jack Sia spoke on the necessity of
motivating others, particularly from a position of leadership, drawing on his
own path to becoming the current President of AIA Toastmasters Club. He wove in his experience as a father of two,
treating fatherhood as its own leadership curriculum rather than a separate
subject entirely. His leadership motto, “Never
above me, never below me, always beside me,” carries more discipline than most
corporate mission statements manage in a full page.
Eric Tan, DTM, delivered a workshop
covering the investment positioning of the underlying funds within the Platinum
Wealth Elite, walking through the differing strategies of BlackRock, Wellington
Management, and Baillie Gifford. As one
of AIA’s premier advisors on this class of financial product, he remains,
without question, the right person to address it, both from a technical
standpoint and from the standpoint of actually selling it credibly to a client
who has done his own homework.
Maria Abraham spoke on mental stress and
suicide. Her family relocated to
Singapore from Indonesia after her husband was posted here, a move her children
resisted, leaving them isolated in an unfamiliar place with a language they did
not speak. Her daughter fell into
serious depression during that adjustment.
Maria drew on what she had learned watching her own father, a pastor,
support suicidal congregants over the years, and spoke directly to how easily
mental health struggles go unnoticed until the situation has already become
critical. Singapore recorded 441 suicide
deaths in 2024, a rate of 8.23 per 100,000 residents, and suicide remains the
leading cause of death among Singaporeans aged 10 to 29. A speech built on lived family experience, addressing
a subject this serious and this current, deserves to be recorded with the same
weight the numbers themselves carry.
Chng Pia Kim used kueh lapis, the
Nonya layered dessert, to illustrate his own retirement strategy. As a financial advisor, he plans for his
clients’ retirement as a matter of profession.
Building his own retirement plan with the same rigour, layer by layer –
investment plans, insurance, and CPF schemes among them – demonstrated he is
willing to take his own advice rather than merely dispense it.
Chermayne Tng spoke on the need to
connect, addressing the paradox that social media, built to connect people,
frequently isolates them instead. People
are retreating into virtual interaction and neglecting the face-to-face
relationships a healthy society actually depends on, a pattern research on
loneliness has continued to confirm well beyond 2019.
Cindy Gan spoke on her previous career as
a nurse, describing how she learned to negotiate with patients even when
compliance was unambiguously in their own interest. She has carried that same negotiating
discipline directly into her work as a financial advisor, where client
resistance to good advice is a considerably more common obstacle than most
advisors admit.
The Evaluators
Eric Tan, DTM, June Lee, Linda Lee,
Zhuo Shu Zhen, DTM, and Ivan Lee, DTM, served as Project
Evaluators, handling six speeches spanning leadership, technical finance,
mental health, retirement planning, social isolation, and clinical negotiation,
without a single evaluation feeling rushed across that range.
The Results
Best Speaker went to Cindy Gan. Best Evaluator went to Eric Tan, DTM. Best Table Topics Speaker went to Soh Yi
Kai. Few club meetings manage to cover
fund management strategy and suicide prevention within the same hour and still
land every speech with equal weight.
This one did.
Terence Nunis, DTM | Division Advisor, District 80 Division M | Club Advisor, AIA Toastmasters | Past President & Founder, Awesome Toastmasters
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