21st June 2016 – Chasing ‘Cheese’ (and Other Stories from Istanbul to Belfast)

Office Bearers

1. Toastmaster of the Evening – TM Supatra Lee (Thought: When you give the chance to learn through difficult times, take the opportunity to grow).
2. Table Topic Master – TM Mei Ann Lim (Theme: Entertainment).
3. Table Topic Evaluator – Amran Jamaluddin, CC.
   

   TM Dalton is fond of his Word of the Day.

4. Grammarian – TM Dalton Lim.

• Word of the Day: Fond i.e. having an affection or liking for
  e.g. I have very fond memories of my childhood days

• Rhetorical Device of the Evening: Aporia; express doubt about an idea or conclusion.
  e.g. I do not know whether removing table topics will be good for our club.

5. Ah Counter & ‘Who said what’ –Rano Iskandar, CC CL.
   

   The towering Timer and Tip, TM Gerald.

6. Timer & Tip – TM Gerald Goh (Tip: spend more time preparing so you have more time delivering).
7. General Evaluator – TM Aziman Nasir.

Prepared Speeches

The Toastmaster for the evening, kick started the proceedings by introducing the first prepared speech of the evening, TM Suneeta Pathak’s CC2 project entitled ‘Career Change’. The speech shared her experience in career change from a physicist to teaching physics to teenage students. She described her career change based on a book ‘Who moved my cheese?’ She said that a career change may not be smooth sailing, and shared two tips to ease the transition; ensuring familiarity by aligning the new career with the old one; and having a mentor to build upon your strengths, and develop professional skills.

TM A. Faiz Hj Zailani doing his CC4 titled,’Turkish Surprise’ shared his exciting adventure in Istanbul, Turkey in the summer of 2012 with 5 complete strangers after his friends bailed out. He recalled beautiful sceneries of a city made of concrete. He shared so many fond memories of his trip, with the highlight being his new found friends taking turns carrying his heavy bag containing two laptop. He also shared several tips to make life easy whilst travelling, such as finding worthwhile company whilst travelling, going with the flow and not letting disappointments prevent oneself from enjoying life, and most importantly, to only pack what you need!

TM Rahmat Tarsat began her CC7 project on ‘Stereotyping People’ by explaining that human babies are able to differentiate race by 9 months, and develop a preference for their own ethnicity. Studies have confirmed that humans are more likely to cooperate with others of the same race or physical features. She followed up by sharing a nasty experience of being racially harassed whilst in Ireland, by youths throwing cigarette butts and chewing gum onto her unprovoked. She met an old lady called Neave shortly after, who calmed her down, and TM Rahmat felt better as she walked her home, helping out with her bag. She concluded by saying that if peace is what we’re after, we need to open up our minds to the fact that we are more similar than our primitive brains want us to be.

Table Topic Session

The Table Topic Master’s first topic was, ‘If you have only one type of genre of book to read, what will it be?’ In a heartbeat, TM Rahul began talking about his love for books about people and networking. He shared a story about how he got interested in social networking by reading a book called Connected over 15 years ago. In 2009, the culmination of his passion led him to publish a research paper on “Association of Concluding Machinery’ which has brought him to places he never expected.

TM Valeen talked about how she cannot live without Instagram as it is her guilty pleasure to beautify her selfies, captioning them with her poetry.

First timer guest, Puneet got the question on his favourite your sport’s person to watch and explained it was Connor McGregor, a famous UFC fighter. Puneet was moved by his ‘You always keep up what you’re doing with action, not by words.

Jordon Yau, CL talked about the contentious topic of Star Trek vs Star Wars for his table topics speech. He chose Star Wars for its continuity and smooth storyline, which leaves him hyped for every subsequent movie. The crowd reaction during the meeting also indicated their preference for Disney’s space opera.

Best Table Topic and Evaluator of the Night

Puneet was voted to have presented the best table topic speech, followed by Genevieve Lai, DTM being voted the best evaluator for TM Rahmat’s CC7 prepared speech project.

 

Written By:

TM Ada Lim Rani

Photography By:

Reuben Chin, ACS, ALB