The start of the day….
It’s the season for laughter (humourous speeches) and fun (evaluation). The day started off with much buzz and excitement for this first basic and advanced clubs joint bi-annual contest. There was many participants (7 participants for both the humourous speech contest and the evaluation speech contest), many external officials (judges and appointment holders) and many supporting members and guests. Despite the hustle and bustle, the contest started punctually with Edwin Tan – the contest chair announcing the start at 7.33pm … 
Lets see who draws the most laughter….
First up was the humourous speech contest and the lucky number 1 to start was Kelvin Tan who shared his encounters with divine ‘help’. Coupled with nifty card tricks, he extended his humourous speech into a small magic show. Next up was Club President Peter Nguyen who never failed in surprising us with his out-of-the-world stories. For this contest, he shared his secret potions to address an intimate concern for all toastmasters-that is the antidote to trembling legs on stage. He further shared the 3 different potions for the 3 different toastmaster levels, all attractively priced.
I shall not divulge detail information about this potions here, but fellow toastmasters who have a similar problem can approach him in person and I am sure he will be able to prescribe the RiGhT antidote for you! The third contestant was Sunny Chong who shared with the ‘INs and Outs’ of his experience. Very enlightening but most importantly hilarious was this speech, that eventually bagged the first prize(basic club).
The forth contestant, also the first contestant from the advanced club was club-mentor Yeo Chai Tun who coaxed the audience to have more children and to do national service for the country. It was indeed a timely speech in the month of the national day that was aligned to the bigger interest of the country! Next, was one of the proud toastmasters of the club-Yvonne Tan (last year’s club and area evaluation champion) who presented on ‘grandmother stories’. Highly animated
speech, punctured with punches and kicks (literally), Yvonne brought much laughter to the audience and was to be well rewarded as the champion at the end of the day. I especially like her statement that she uses to describe her tertiary football club that did not win any tournaments and did not have adequate support – ‘it was like an old bra-without the cup and adequate support’. The last contestant was Pei Chin, who presented a candid story about her own blurness like walking onto obstacles and coming to toastmasters meeting on the wrong day. What was more inspiring was her story of challenging herself to do the humourous speech series in her advanced track when this is the toughest for herself.
Time to evaluate or be evaluated….
The 2nd half of the contest (the evaluation contest) started with the test speaker – Tony Tang from Vietnam giving a close-at-heart speech about ‘Do Singapore still need immigrants?’ This was followed the evaluation contestants of Angus, Kelvin, Evan, Victor, Pei Chin, Yvonne and Chin Boon taking turns to evaluate the speech, while being evaluated themselves by judges on their evaluations itself!
And the winners were….
The meeting concluded with the presentation of prizes the to contest participants and the chief judge – Michael Wee, DTM. The results and the winners for this contest are as follows. All the best to the club champions who will represent the clubs in the upcoming area contests. We wish that the club champions will continue to do the club proud in the upcoming area (basic-A2, Advanced-A3) contests.
Humourous Speech
Basic Club
- * Sunny Chong
- Peter Nguyen
Advanced Club
- *Yvonne Tan
- Yeo Chai Tun
Evaluation Contest
Basic Club
- *Victor Ng
- Kelvin Tan
Advanced Club
- *Yvonne Tan
- Lim Pei Chin
Notes: 1.* denotes the champions for each contest who will represent the club in the area contests (Area A2 – TPCTMC, and Area A3- TPCTMC (Advanced). In an event that the winner is unable to represent the club, the 2nd runner up will replace her to contest in the area contest.
