On 5th December 2019, I was at
Buona Vista Toastmasters Club as Language Evaluator, my 131st club
visit on the 158th day of the Toastmaster year. Julyka Hameed served as Toastmaster of the
Day. Serena Lee served as Timer. Lee Pei Geok served as Ah Counter. Chong Ruey Hua served as Table Topics Master.
Christmas, Anchored in Memory
In her President’s address, Pee Hai Ning
told the room how much she loves Christmas, sharing some of her earliest
childhood memories: artificial snow at Tanglin Mall. Her address centred on the theme of family. A holiday memory this specific, an artificial
snow machine in a tropical shopping mall rather than a generic reference to
festive cheer, does more work than an abstract sentiment ever
could, because the audience can picture exactly where she was standing.
Two Thousand Five Hundred Years on
the Water
Melvin Tan gave a presentation on dragon
boat racing, informing the room that the sport carries a history stretching
back roughly 2,500 years. It began as a
festival commemorating the poet Qu Yuan, who lived during China's Warring
States period and, by tradition, drowned himself in the Miluo River as an act
of protest against political corruption, with local villagers paddling out in
boats to try to save him, and later to protect his body from fish by beating
drums and throwing rice into the water.
That ritual eventually became the Dragon Boat Festival still celebrated
today. Tan also walked through
the mechanics of the race itself and how a crew is structured, a technical
explanation grounded in competitive discipline, sitting alongside an old piece of cultural history most casual observers of the sport
never learn.
Scepticism, Anchored in the Sky
Tushar Sinha spoke on the need for
scepticism, opening with an explanation of axial precession, the slow wobble in
Earth’s rotational axis that changes which star sits nearest the celestial pole every 26,000 years. When the
Great Pyramids were built, close to 4,700 years ago, the pole star was Thuban,
in the constellation Draco, a star the ancient Egyptians are believed to have
aligned parts of the pyramid complex toward.
By around 4000 CE, the pole star will shift to Gamma Cephei, in the
constellation Cepheus. Sinha’s
underlying point is that the sky itself, the single fixed reference point
humanity has relied on for navigation across recorded history, is not fixed at
all. If the North Star changes on a
predictable, calculable cycle, and most people never notice or question it, it
becomes a fair opening argument for why scepticism, examining even the things
we treat as permanent, deserves to be a standing habit rather than an
occasional exercise.
The Evaluators and Results
Wilson Ong and May Zhang served as Project
Evaluators. Best Table Topics Speaker
went to Pee Hai Ning. There was no
voting for Best Speaker or Best Evaluator on this occasion. A meeting spanning a childhood Christmas
memory, a 2,500-year-old river festival, and a 26,000-year astronomical cycle
is a wide arc for one club to cover between the ah counter’s report and the
closing gavel.
Terence Nunis, DTM | Division Advisor, District 80 Division M | Club Advisor, AIA Toastmasters | Past President & Founder, Awesome Toastmasters
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