On 10th October 2019, I was at
Chua Chu Kang Toastmasters Club as Language Evaluator, my 84th club
visit on the 102nd 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.
Terence Nunis, DTM | Division Advisor, District 80 Division M | Club Advisor, AIA Toastmasters | Past President & Founder, Awesome Toastmasters
