Most Impressive Group of Speechcrafters !

Our leader, Michael Rodrigues, had requested me to help out as a language evaluator at Cluster A2 yesterday. When I am in a group, it is always my principle to oblige for I understand how difficult it is for a leader if his members do not cooperate with him.

I decided to try a new route ...instead of taking bus No. 67 and connect via MRT at Kallang Station, I decided to take the bus to the Bugis MRT as I reckon it would be faster! There are more buses to Bugis MRT. To my surprise, Bus 980 was not quite the right one and I decided to alight at Beach Road, and dashed all the way to Bugis MRT. I messaged Elaine to give me ten minutes grace to arrive at the Tanah MRT Station where she would give me a lift.

My clothes were drenched with perspiration. On the way to Changi Prison, I asked Elaine about her group members and she told me that this group of inmates have a fairly good command of English.

Elaine was right. I enjoyed the well-delivered speeches. The speakers had put in a lot of preparation and effort and I had a difficult time selecting the best speaker. The Table Topics Master wrote down 15 movie titles, and his topics were connected to each movie title! How innovative.! I was even more surprised when I heard that he was asked to take over the role from someone who could not be at the meeting! Fast thinking on his part!

Saint Thet (our member from Myammar) was sensitive and asked me whether I would like to be a project evaluator as well, as she knew I wanted to have more practice on evaluation of speeches in preparation for my forthcoming contest.

We had a new volunteer, Nick Chua. It was timely for him to join us as we would need more volunteers. Nick was excellent in his speech evaluation and was voted the best evaluator!

I was impressed when I gave them the words of the day...."versatile and panache". The toastmaster-of-the-evening could spell the word for me after I had given them 3 letters and the rest for them to fill in. So far, he was the only one who knew the word!! This is quite a rare and bombastic word as it originates from French. As it would be my first and last time in the group, I encouraged them to press on with their language learning by reading more. I confessed that I had not watched any of the 15 movies on the board, because I had only been to the cinema three times in Singapore. I prefer to watch shows in Chinese, Indian and Malay on the television. However, I would make it a point to visit the cinema more often after my next birthday, as I would only pay $4 for a ticket as a senior citizen! I encouraged them to make full use of their time and opportunity to read as much as they could. I said that should I ever be thrown into prison one day, I would make the most of my time reading and perhaps watch more movies. These are luxuries which many of us cannot enjoy due to time constraint.

As usual, I receive much more when I give. I learnt so much from my friends and inmates yesterday.