AIA Toastmasters Club, 24th October 2019: An NFNF Meeting That Covered Everything from Retirement to Suicide

On the 24^th 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.

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

Clarity Toastmasters Club: Impromptu Speaking, Method Acting, & a Reading from a Missing Hero

On 21^st October 2019, I was at Clarity Toastmasters Club as Project Evaluator, my 95^th club visit on the 113^th day of the Toastmaster year.  Clive Chng served as Sergeant-at-Arms.  Ang Ming Song served as Toastmaster of the Day.  Gary Tsu served as Timer.  Florence served as Ah Counter.

Why Impromptu Speaking Deserves the Emphasis

Vernon Lim, DTM, gave a short presentation on why people should join Toastmasters, expounding on the need to speak impromptu.  Brandon Ng continued the theme in his opening address, segueing into the club’s branding and chapter mission.  Impromptu speaking is, without dispute, the hardest discipline the entire Toastmasters programme teaches, since there is no script to lean on and no rehearsal to fall back on.  Two speeches opening the meeting by making that case, rather than assuming it self-evident, gave the guests in the room a clear reason to stay for the rest of the evening.

A Cautionary Story, Told as an Inspirational One

Calvin spoke on his own weight loss journey, citing Christian Charles Philip Bale as an inspiration.  Bale’s transformation for his 2004 film The Machinist is a matter of public record: he dropped from 173 to 110 pounds on a daily diet of a single apple, a can of tuna, and black coffee, becoming too weak to climb a flight of stairs.  Bale himself has since described the experience candidly, and the account is worth citing honestly rather than romanticising.  It made for a striking performance.  It was also a medically dangerous, unsustainable method used to inhabit a fictional character for a few months of filming, not a template for lasting personal health, and Bale regained the weight for his very next role.  Calvin’s own journey, whatever form it took, deserves credit on its own terms, separate from the extreme example he chose to reference.

A Name, an Ambition, and a Cosmopolitan Choice

Nao, who is Japanese, explained the meaning of her name and how she came to live in Singapore.  Since childhood, her ambition was to travel, and she chose Singapore for its cosmopolitan blend of East and West and to master English.  A decision weighing culture and language together rather than choosing a destination by convenience alone reflects genuine planning behind what most people treat as an impulsive move abroad.

Stereotypes, Compared Across Two Contexts

Ernest Tung spoke on discrimination and stereotypes, recounting his own experience of being stereotyped for his Chinese ethnicity while overseas, and drawing a comparison to the situation minorities face within Singapore itself.  A speaker willing to hold his own experience of prejudice abroad alongside the prejudice minorities encounter at home, rather than treating only one direction as worth discussing, produced a more honest speech than most treatments of this subject manage.

A Difficult Passage, Read Well

Garen Tee gave an interpretative reading of a section of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince.  It is a challenging book, built on deceptively simple language carrying genuine philosophical weight beneath it, and it was a challenging passage.  Reading Saint-Exupéry aloud well requires resisting the urge to perform it as a children’s story, since the text itself was never written as one.

The Evaluators and Results

Brandon Ng, Ang Ming Song, Quek Li Lin, and I served as Project Evaluators.  Best Speaker went to Calvin.  Best Table Topics Speaker went to a guest.  A meeting spanning method acting, cross-cultural identity, ethnic stereotyping, and French literary philosophy gave this room a genuinely wide range to work through in a single evening.

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

Jauhari Bilingual TMC as Toastmaster of the Day, 19th October 2019

On the 19^th October 2019, I was at Jauhari Bilingual Toastmasters Club, as Toastmaster of the Day.  This was my 92^nd club visit on the 111^th day of the Toastmaster year.

The sergeant-at-arms was Siti Zuhriyyah binte Mohammed Ariffin, the table topics master was Benjamin Leow, the language evaluator was Raymond Zhang, and the timer was Muhammad Nurfarhan bin Abdul Jaaffar.

Wiwiek Najihah binte Hairudin, in her presidential address, spoke of her struggles as a young mother.  It was these challenges that inspired her to make Jauhari Bilingual Toastmasters Club child friendly, a kampung of sorts.

Syazwani Dwiputri binte Abdul Wahid gave a presentation on the consequences of consuming energy drinks.  This is based on an actual research paper she co-authored, and the presentation was, thus, well-researched, with a wealth of details, and data.  She spoke of the effects on health, and psychology caused by excessive consumption.

Siti Zuhriyyah binte Mohammed Ariffin mentioned two stories to illustrate her leadership style.  It was a juxtaposition of flawed leadership, and leadership of the flawed.

Wiwiek Najihah binte Hairudin then gave a project speech in Malay.  She mentioned briefly about her favourite songs to listen to while performing her housework.  The meat of the matter was the late Zubir bin Mohamad Said’s Semoga Bahagia, a song written for children almost half a century ago.  It is the official Children’s Day song of the Ministry of Education, and is performed annually on Children’s Day, Youth Day, and at the ASEAN Youth Festival.  The speech was a reflection of the lyrics, in contrast to her real encounters with elderly who have been neglected by their adult children.  Ultimately, society wants the best for its children, but as adults, we forget the very parents that carried those hopes for us.

Since it was a Children’s Day theme, there was a performance by the children of club members.

The evaluators were Celia Jacqueline Lim, and Sophia Ngo Thi Van.

Best Speaker: Siti Zuhriyyah binte Mohammed Ariffin;

Best Evaluator: Celia Jacqueline Lim; and

Best Table Topics Speaker: Guest.