Yokogawa Toastmasters Club

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1|July 2013|11th Term

Yokogawa Toastmasters Club July 2013 11th Term, Issue 1

Meet the new EXCO team

Welcome to the 11th Term 2013-2014 of Yokogawa Toastmaster Club. I had conducted a

quick interview with the newly elected EXCO members. Let see what they have to tell us

about themselves and Toastmasters.

Jhelyn Suan – President

Q: Please share the ultimate goals of the club this year? Do you have pressure to match

the achievements in the previous term?

A: The ultimate goal is to have fun-filled meetings with great speeches. I don’t feel much

pressure because I strongly believe my team shares a common goal towards achieving

Perfect 10 Distinguished Club Program.

Anthony Lim – Immediate Past President

Q: What advice would you like to give the new EXCO team?

A: Enjoy your journey as a leader, work hard together, participate in Toastmasters activi-

ties, practice your speaking skill and promote our club, whenever you visit other clubs, at

the same time meeting the club goals.

Sivakumar Gopalan – Vice President Education

Q: What is your plan to motivate members to deliver speeches?

A: My Plan is to continuously mentor and guide new members to deliver their speeches.

For the experienced speakers, it is a matter of reminding them to sharpen their skills. I will

visit other clubs to listen to other speakers and motivate our members. We also plan to

record all the chapter meetings to help the speakers look back on their performances later.

Sushant Pandita – Vice President Education

Q: Your impression after attending the annual ‘Reach for the Star’ Convention?

A: Attending Reach for the stars convention was a very enriching experience. All the

guest speakers were inspiring and motivating. Listening to the prepared and table topics

speeches from the Division champions sparks confidence and yearn for Yokogawa Toast-

masters win at District and International Level.

Patrick Chan – Vice President Membership

Q: Despite your tight schedule with lots of travelling, you are still very active in TMC.

What motivates you?

A: I have joined Yokogawa Toastmaster about two and a half years ago. Having partici-

pated in the club meeting regularly, I began to appreciate spontaneous response to oth-

ers during conversations. I have realised that been a TMD does helps me in this area. It is also fun

listening to others speak, especially on different experiences beyond my imaginations.

In this Issue Meet the new EXCO

team What is Toastmasters? YTMC’s International

and Table Topic Speech Contest Division S’s Interna-

tional and Table Topics Speech Contest

Reach for the Stars Annual Convention

Hall of Fame 12-13

Welcome on board!

New members Prasanthi Polakala

Gangadhara

Sivakumar Parama-sivam Thiyagarajan

Karthik Raja Periasamy

Ganesh Thiagarajan

Nally Li XiaoMu

Executive Committee 2013-2014 President Jhelyn Suan Immediate Past President Anthony Lim VP Education Sivakumar Gopalan Sushant Pandita VP Membership Patrick Chan VP Public Relations Amber Nguyen Chen Zhenkang Secretary Aruna Kasoju Treasurer Prasanthi Polakala Gan-gadhara Sergeant At Arms Ganesh Thiagarajan Karthik Raja Periasamy Nally Li Xiao Mu Club Advisors Dr. Amit Thakare Promod Ponkshe Marco Jose Mari Rubi-Cruz

Coming Events Installation Ceremony

on 12th July

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Amber Nguyen – Vice President Public Relations

Q: Since you’ve been VP-PR for more than one term, what do you like most about your role? - asked by Jhelyn.

A: I like both writing and designing so I have more to offer in this role than any others. My personal goal is to come up

with nice posters and interesting newsletters to attract more new members to join our clubs. However, I would also like to take up

new challenges in a new role, perhaps during next term if I have the chance to serve the club as an Exco member again.

Chen Zhen Kang – Vice President Public Relations

Q: Your speeches are very entertaining. Do you plan to take part in the Club’s Humorous Contest this year?

A: I only knew about Toastmasters when I am introduced to our club. By presenting my speeches there, I feel that I was

forced to take up challenges which I did not enjoy at first. However, I appreciate it now because the process of preparing and the fact

of standing up to an audience and delivering the speech benefit me a lot in improving my confidence. Humorous contest shall be a

good opportunity to learn and I would like to participate in it.

Prasanthi Polakala Gangadhara – Treasurer

Q: You were very shy to speak at first. How attending meetings and hearing others’ speeches inspire you to deliver your

projects?

A: Initially due to nervousness and the lack of confidence to speak in front of a group, I use to keep silent. But listening to the speech-

es boosted up the confidence in me and I questioned myself as “Why can’t I be benefited from this platform”. This is the reason why I

have joined the Toastmasters family. And I am working to improve both my communication and the leadership skills.

Aruna Kasoju – Secretary

Q: You achieved a Competent Communicator title during last term. What are your new goals?

A: My new goals are completing the Competent Leader (CL) and the Advanced Communicator Bronze (ACB) projects. I

have already received the manual for ACB so I will start to work on those projects and at the same time do CL simultaneously.

Ganesh Thiagarajan – Sergeant At Arms

Q: What do you benefit from joining Toastmasters?

A: I believe Toastmasters will be a good platform to sharpen my skills and help me achieve my career goals. My wife,

also a Toastmaster, gave me motivation and inspiration to join Toastmasters Club.

Karthik Raja Periasamy – Sergeant At Arms

Nally Li Xiao Mu– Sergeant At Arms

Dr. Amit Thakare, Pramod Ponkshe, and Marco Jose Mari Rubi-Cruz – Club Advisor Q: Some might think that joining Toastmasters takes time and affect their work. What do you have to tell to them?

A: Our fast-paced environment is filled with noise. The ability to reduce noise to avoid uncertainty on a topic at hand is a critical skill

in the toolbox of working professionals and even the man on the street. If we value this ability, we need to invest time and work on

this skill at a personal level - from within ourselves. That’s where Toastmasters come into the picture. Toastmasters gives us a

platform to sharpen our communication skills, slice away the clutter, make mistakes at times, and experiment. There is no other

platform that gives you a similar chance.

The aim of Toastmasters is to make effective communication a global reality. Yokogawa is among the few companies in the world

that supports this initiative fully. It is up to the individual to make this a commitment for his own benefit. And for those who do, we

make sure that we help each other become an inch better one meeting at a time.

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What is Toastmasters? by Ms. Naoko Ehara, Global HR Director

Honestly I never knew about Toastmasters. My best guess, which I soon found totally wrong, was some-

thing related to ‘bread’. No to ‘yum yum’ as it turned out to be a very professional (but not stiff or seri-

ous) organization. As many of you know that Toastmasters is a prestigious historical club that was found-

ed in 1924 in USA,, currently headquartered in Rancho Santa Margarita, California, and it has more

than 280,000 memberships in 13,500 clubs in 116 countries, out of which 36 members (as of June 30th,

2013) are from our Yokogawa family. 36 may be a small number out of 280,000 but it is bigger than an

average member per club of 20. And our club has gone over the decades and won awards, medals and

recognition around the world. Yokogawa Toastmasters has, indeed, made every one of us proud.

I would like to tell you my personal experiences with the members whom I had met more than a few

times at their meetings.

They are afraid of speaking but they still get up and deliver.

It is a frightening experience when you have to go up in front of an audience and speak in a structural

manner. Every time there is an impromptu speaking part at a meeting, I am totally frightened it may

come to me. But my fear is such a low level thing, as there are always people who raise their hands within

three seconds and volunteer to do it. When they speak, I can tell that they are so nervous and stiff that I

wonder why they would do it. Their hands shake, voices tremble and feet rumble. Yet, they deliver. And

the moment they complete the speech, they become a new person. They feel victorious (and I feel like I

am a coward). It is amazing to see how one person can change within a super short period of time of just

sixty seconds.

Toastmaster Club is a competition but this competition begins within us. They get up and speak not be-

cause they want to speak but they want to overcome fear. It is a competition between you and yourself.

And if you win, no one can take away the victorious feeling from you.

(Continued on next page)

“Their hands shake… Yet they deliver.” “...the moment they complete the speech, they become a new person.”

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Public speaking is great but leadership is even greater.

It is a tough truth but let’s face that if you want to be a leader, public speaking is one of the most critical

skills you must have. Leaders often inspire people by telling a story. The members certainly have genuine

interest in wanting to speak better in public but their goals are beyond that. They learn about the world’s

great leaders who inspire them. What they learn at the club is not only speaking techniques but also how

they can live their life in a more fulfilling way.

Here is the thing. Everyone has a motivation switch. This motivation can be switched ‘on’ by various fac-

tors, like weather, new clothes, a new pair of shoes, your boyfriend sends you flowers, or your girlfriend

says she likes your tie etc. However, the motivation switch is usually ‘off’, simply because your everyday is a

routine and we all know that is life. ‘Switch off’ is a very normal state for us (we just do not want to be de-

motivated!). But we also know when we realize we can do things better than yesterday, and it is recognized

by the others, we feel best motivated and want to do more and even better. Self-development and receiv-

ing recognition by feedback build a strong foundation for leadership. So if you are looking for a place where

to turn on your motivation switch, Toastmasters is certainly that place.

My dear Toastmasters friends, you are admiring. The leadership baton has been passed from Anthony to

Jhelyn, and I wish you and your journey continue to a brighter future at Yokogawa Toastmasters Club.

After note: They can also check your grammar, spelling, phrases, and they can even show you where you can get the best writing

tips! Thanks Amber!

Editor’s note: Ehara-san is Yokogawa’s Global HR Direc-

tor. She has shown interest and support to Yokogawa

Toastmasters Club ever since the first visit. On June 27th,

she attended a special Toastmasters meeting—the last

chapter meeting of 10th Term. We greatly appreciate her

contribution to our newsletter with this amazing article.

We look forward to seeing her

in our coming meetings. And

perhaps by then she will volun-

teer to speak for the impromp-

tu speeches.

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Yokogawa Toastmasters Club’s International and Table Topics

Speech Contest 2013 By Lwin Lwin Tun, CC

Champion : Pramod Ponkshe “Happy Happy We Shall Be!”

Thank you YTMC for giving me an opportuni-ty to exercise Organization and Delegation Skills at our International and Table Topics Speech contest on 2nd April, 2013. This is definitely the most memorable moment of my Toastmasters journey.

I would like to express my deepest apprecia-tion to all the contestants who have deliv-ered inspirational speeches and grabbed the opportunity to participate in impromptu speech. All contestants were very impressive and eloquent.

Heartiest Congratulations to Pramod who has also emerged as the Champion for the competition in Area S with his awe-inspiring speech “Happy Happy We Shall Be!” We are very proud of his achievement.

This contest would not be successful with the effort of our role-players and supporters. Henry Fort quoted that “Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success”. Without the team work, we wouldn’t have executed this contest successfully. Appreciation extended to all hardworking role-players.

Contest Chair : Sivakumar Gopalan

Timers : Amber & Maricel

SAA : Aruna & Devendra

Tally Counters : Nitar & Kay from Bedok TMC

Very special thanks to Chief Judge, Chia Choon Kiat and Area S6 Governor Mansur for gracing this event, making it lively and mean-ingful!

Champion : Jose Mari Rubi-Cruz

1st Runner-up : Harry Wong “The Golden Rule”

1st Runner-up : Sivakumar Venkataraman

2nd Runner-up : Jhelyn Suan “Happiness”

2nd Runner-up : Anthony Lim

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Division S’s International and Table Topics Speech Contest by Anthony Lim ACS, ALB

On 12 May 2013, that is Mother’s Day, several members like Lwin Lwin Tun, Devendra Rahangdale, Siva-kumar Gopalan, Jhelyn Mabelin Suan, Amber Nguyen. Harry Wong, Marco and me attended the Division S contest held at the Old Parliament House to support one of Yokogawa Toastmasters Club’s member named Pramod Ponkshe who has performed very well, being the Areas S6 Champion, to progress and to compete in this Division S International speech contest. He gave a very inspiring speech titled “Happy Hap-py We Shall Be”.

Several guests of this event took this opportunity to take a seats for a short while on seats where past min-isters sat in past parliamentary sessions, for example the seat that was formerly taken by Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew was popular. The organizers honored the Toastmasters mothers who participated as guests, as organizers or as contestants. The organizers also paid tribute to the late Dr. Diana Young, the Charter President of Entrepreneur Toastmasters Club, a Singapore entrepreneur as well as the founder and former chief executive of aviation company Mil-Com Aerospace. She died on 21 September 2004 in a car accident in China.

Although Pramod was not placed, it was already a great milestone for our club to have reached the Divi-sion S Contest. My dreams for this club is that it will continue to inspire more members to be groomed to become a District 80 speech champions or perhaps one day, a future and promising world champion in public speaking.

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Day 1 by Sivakumar Gopalan

24th and 25th May 2013 held an important event for all District 80 Toastmasters. It was the 2013 District 80 Annual Convention, a grand event with amazing workshops, gala dinner and the glitterati, taken place at the Grand Pacific Hotel, Singapore. It was a fabu-lous job of the organizing team to organise and bring to reality such a wonderful event. The entire conven-tion was well received from the toastmaster fraterni-ty, each one of them taking some goodies and great experiences back home.

On 24th May, a grand opening ceremony was con-ducted. Flag Parade and the marching-in of dignitar-ies, including outgoing District Governor Patrick Oei, DTM, District Governor - elect Pradeep Kumar, DTM, and other senior toastmaster members, kick-started the proceeding. Dist Governor Patrick Oei gave an inspirational address to the audience which was fol-lowed by the address by Guest of Honour Ms. Denise Phua La Peng, a Member of Parliament for Moulmein-Kallang GRC.

The keynote speaker of the day was Kevin Shepherd-son, a mind-set and transformation expert, master practitioner in Neuro Linguistic Program (NLP) and Neuro Semantics, Hypnotherapist and also an excel-lent speaker. His topic mainly focussed on the theme, “Do not watch Horror Movies” which mainly empha-sised on how to train your mind to be more positive and also make your children feel more positive about themselves. At one moment, as a hypnotherapist, he was holding the whole audience under his control, by his ability of being hypnotherapist. There were lot of valuable and inspirational points to take from his speech. Then the event continued with the plenary address by Sharon Connolly, who is an image consult-ant. She gave an emotional and soothing speech on the different facets of life, taking examples from her own personal failures and successes.

Lunch break followed, provided the opportunity to build network and interaction with toastmasters from different clubs.

The afternoon ses-sion was even more interesting and intri-guing. There were workshops conduct-ed by three profes-sional speakers, who captivated the audi-ence’s attention and made them glued to their seats. The first in line was David Lim, the leader of Mount Everest expedition from Sin-gapore and a certified speaking professional. He gave an inspiring, enthralling yet motivating speech on Leadership and Team Building from his own life-challenging experiences while ascending the tallest peak in the world, the Mount Everest. The topic was ‘Lessons from Everest : Leading yourself and others’. Lawrence on the topic ‘Be a Runaway Success – How to go the full distance in your race of life’ continued to awe the audience. Thaddeus is a speaker, trainer, author and founder of Runaway Practices. His speech was about the individual’s ability to go that extra mile and achieving things that are wanted. His ability of brining in humour at the required junctures made the speech an interesting and entertaining one. The third and last in the workshop series was conducted by Nishant Kasibhatla, yet another certified speaking professional. He is popular for being the only grandmaster of memory in Singapore and a Guinness record holder for remembering numbers and se-quences. From his speech “ How to develop a razor sharp focus”, the audience was totally satisfied with the tips they collected.

The evening session included the gala dinner fol-lowed by the Installation night of officers for District 80, for the term 2013~2014 and awards presentation. Yokogawa Toastmasters Club was honoured the title of President’s Distinguished Club and the Outstanding EXCO award. And representing the club, club presi-dent Anthony Lim, ACS, ALB, received the pins on our behalf.

Reach for the Stars Annual Convention

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Yokogawa Toastmasters Club was honoured the title of President’s Distin-guished Club and the Outstanding EXCO award. And repre-senting the club, club president Anthony Lim, ACS, ALB, re-ceived the pins on our behalf.

Every Year, two days of this annual convention are most eagerly awaited by the toastmaster fraternity and this event too satisfied the expectations of all the toastmasters. Now all of them are again eagerly waiting for the semi-annual convention coming later this year.

Day 2 by Aruna Kasoju

It was the second day of convention, time for the divi-sion champions to compete in District 80 – Singapore and Thailand’s International and Table Topics Speech Contest. Contestants flew from Bangkok and contest-ants from Singapore were very excited and enthusias-tic to take the stage. The audience was also equally energetic on an early Sunday morning to applaud and enjoy the show.

International Speech Contest

There were lots of great stories and the audience loved them all. One contestant talked about how to fight your fears using his simple experience with his kids on a trip to Disneyland. He feared of silly things in life and because of his kids he was forced to try a roller coaster ride and finally conquered his fears. What impressed me most was the sincerity of the content, a bit of humor here and there, and how the contestant made use of expressive gestures to convey their message to the audience. This story touched me in all ways as in real life many of us are not ready to take that extra step to fight our fears. What we may lose is nothing much, but if we are able to get rid of that fear, what we certainly will win is a big step of self-improvement.

I remembered there was a speech about jam, deliv-ered by the Toastmaster from Bangkok. He described his love towards jam, his collection of different types of jam, yet somehow there was no perfect jam which suited his taste. There was something missing. When

he visited his mother in law in Mongolia, he found the perfect jam when he tasted the breakfast the mother in law prepared for him, simple bread with jam. He immediately went to market and bought many jam jars to bring back to Bangkok. During breakfast the next day he tried the jam but to his dismay, it didn’t taste as good as he had it in Mongolia. He wondered what the problem was. Then he tried all the jars and they were all not perfect. One day his mother in law visited him in Bangkok and he discovered the secret of the perfect jam. It was not the jam but the bread. His mother in law used rye bread instead of wheat bread. The lesson learnt was oftentimes we overlook the actual problem and keep searching for the solu-tion of the wrong problem.

All the speeches were dramatic and slowly gave us a bigger picture - how we are not brave enough to try something new, fight our fears, look for solutions for the wrong problems, etc.

Table Topics Speech Contest

The topic was “Nobody can hurt me without my per-mission”.

For me it seemed more of a spiritual topic. I was ex-cited to hear the responses from the contestants when they had no time to prepare but to bring their own guts and their true personalities to the speech.

They all had different perspectives. Some agreed with the statement, some did not. Some thought that self-esteem can set the boundaries, forming a protective barrier for yourself. Some took history as an example that people like Nelson Mandela, who stayed with his goals and did not let his spirits down even after stay-ing for 27 years in prison. Some were more down to earth and realistic. They said we got hurt all the time by others even if we didn’t want to. What we could do was to pull ourselves together after getting rather than shielding us from getting hurt. The contestant gave his own example of having been fired by his for-mer employer. He was hurt and depressed, and there was nothing he could do about it. But he fought that and rose with more will and power and he finally be-came successful and achieved new heights in career.

I personally agree that we all are normal human be-ings - we are not Mahatma’s, Gurus or Spiritual lead-ers. We take life as it is, not need to make it so com-plicated, so much trained, we are not robots to have no feelings.

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Hall of Fame 2012-2013 by Anthony Lim ACS, ALB

Yokogawa Toastmasters Club became a President’s Distinguished Club as of April 2013. We congratulated four members who achieved their Competent Communicator Awards and they are Bhavani Bhaskar, Crom-well Arriesgado, Aruna Kasoju and Sivakumar Gopalan. Remarkably, Bhavani achieved her Competent Com-municator Award within 5 months 19 day, holding the second fastest record to achieve it in our club history, after Neha. Besides being congratulated for achieving the Advanced Communicator Silver Award on 21 March 2013, I was delighted and felt that in coming back to attempt the Advanced Communicator (Silver) projects, it has markedly improved my story-telling skills to entertain the audience. On 26 July 2013 and 29 November 2013, we congratulated Mathivanan Sundaram and Jhelyn Mabelin Suan respectively for attaining their Advanced Leader (Bronze) awards.

Four Competent Communicators

One Advanced Communicator Silver Two Advanced Leaders Bronze

ABBREVIATIONS & EXPLANATIONS

TI :Toastmasters International

YTM :Yokogawa Toastmasters Club affiliated to TI

TM :Toastmaster, an individual who is member of the club

CC :Competent Communicator, an International recognition of indi-

vidual who completes 10 speech projects under Communication Program.

ACB :Advanced Communicator-Bronze, an International recognition of

individual who is CTM & completes 10 ADVANCED speech projects.

ACS :Advanced Comminicator-Silver, an International recognition of

individual who is ACB & completes another 10 ADVANCED speech projects.

ACG :Advanced Communicator-Gold, an International recognition of

individual who is ACS & completes another 10 ADVANCED speech projects.

CL :Competent Leader - Lead meetings in various roles.

ALB :Advanced Leader Bronze - CL and Club Officer.

ALS : Advanced Leader Silver - ALB and District Officer.

DTM :Distinguished Toastmaster, highest achievement and internation-

al recognition for individual who is ACG and ALS.

DCP :Distinguished Club Program

For more details on Toastmasters International Recognition and minimum

requirements, please refer Toastmasters Documentation or visit-

www.toastmasters.org

Bhavani Bhaska Cromwell Arriesgado Aruna Kasoju Sivakumar Gopalan

Anthony Lim Jhelyn Suan Mathivanan Sundaram

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(cont.) We gave our heartiest congratulations to the 8 primary Executive Committee members serving for the term 1 July 2012 to 30 June 2013, for being awarded as Dis-trict 80 Outstanding Club Officers We were awarded pins for being the committee member in helping the club in achieving the President’s Distinguished Club in a short time, before 30 April 2013.

The 8 District 80’s Outstanding Executive Committtee members are from the 10th Exco team and they are:

10th Club President : Mr. Anthony Lim

Immediate Past President : Mr. Sivakumar Venkataraman

Vice President Education-1 : Mr. Patrick Chan

Vice President Membership : Ms. Jhelyn Mabelin Suan

Vice President Public Relations : Ms. Amber Nguyen

Secretary : Ms. Lwin Lwin Tun

Treasurer : Ms. Aruna Kasoju

Sergeant-At-Arms-1 : Ms. Win Nitar Swe

During the term 1 July 2012 to 30 June 2013, the club also achieved the following membership building awards for recruiting 5 new members during the specified periods of two months and they are

Smedley Award (1 August 2012 to 30 Sep 2012) Talk Up Toastmasters Award (1 February 2013 to 31 March 2013) Beat The Clock Award (1 May 2013 to 30 June 2013)

The following members from our club also won the 1-plus-1 contests pins for bringing in guests who later became members. They are Sivakumar Gopalan, Jhelyn Mabelin Suan, Aruna Kasoju and myself Anthony Lim.

Two tireless members were recognised for their dedication and hard work in serving the club in the 10th term’s Exco team are Sivakumar Gopalan, awarded Toastmaster of The Year, and Win Nitar Swe, awarded the Excellent Service Award.

It has been a very successful term as together we have achieved the prestigious title President’s Distin-guished Club. I hope all members will keep promoting the club, practising their speeches and participating, by proactively taking up meeting roles or becoming a committee member, to make Yokogawa Toastmasters Club a President’s Distinguished Club every term from now on. I give my best wishes to the incoming EXCO to achieve higher goals and be better communicators and leaders.

Register now! Yokogawa Toastmasters Club

Please contact Vice President Membership Patrick Chan at 98240597, [email protected]

Our meetings are held on every second and fourth Thursday of the month, from 11:45 am -1:00 pm. Yokogawa Engineering Asia Pte Ltd

5 Bedok South Road Singapore 469270 Tel: (65) 62419933

Yokogawa Toastmasters Club

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