Sunday, May 20, 2007

Our 30th celebration was a SMASH!!!










As LionCity Toastmasters Club turned 30 on 26 March 2007, the attendance was smashing! Our bash held at the Pines played host to its existing pool of members, guests and even ex-members who found time to grace our birthday party, bringing back some tints of nostalgia.

The distinguished guests included Mr Dayal (D2 Area Governor) and Mr. Poh Kim Siong (District 80 Governor) who encouraged the LionCity club by presenting a set of advance manuals to encourage members to do more advance projects and also a special PIN, spurring us to achieve 10/10 DCP Goals, to attain the "Distinguished Club" Status.

Guest of Honour, Mr. Ong Sing Tion, Division D Governor, was invited to present the 5 and 10 years award to outstanding members and dedicated members.

Special Thanks went out to Ms June Tan, our witty emcee, and also Ms Dharma and her husband who came in early to decorate the venue! Thanks a lot for making the evening a huge success!

Check out http://www.flickr.com/photos/lioncitytoastmasters/ for pictures captured!
Look under "LionCity Toastmasters 30th Birthday Bash"

The entire speech made by LionCity Club President during the celebrations.

"For those who have known me for a while would know that I have no cash and no class. So, when I heard that we are celebrating our 30th birthday, I only have 3 wishes in my mind. They are – Wine, Women and Song.

If you ask any men like me, what makes them happy? They will say wine, women and song. So, I got a few people to sponsor some wine for tonight. Thank you Mr Dayal and Seng Chuan for the wonderful wine.

Then, I thought we must have the songs, so I suggested to our VPE that we can have some karaoke to make it fun. I know we don’t have a Superstar like SRC Toastmasters Club has, but I am sure there are Singapore Idol wanabes in Lion City. Among us here tonight, our ex-member, Ronald is a great singer and he married a song bird who can sing better than our local superstar, Sun Yan Zhi. Ronald where are you? Seng Chuan and myself play the piano, Hwee Min plays the guitar, Chee Kheong is a singer too, he sang during his wedding, So, Mr Dayal, there is no shortage of talents in Lion City, one day we shall have a talent contest.

But the karaok idea was turned down by the VPE, because she thought, Karaok is chessy. But I must agree, KTV entertainment is for dirty old men.

So, I thought, how about lucky draws to add some excitement? The treasurer told me we don’t have cash to buy prizes so I said. Well, its not the prizes but the fun that is important. I have a brand new toaster to give away and we can name the prize – Breakfast for two at a 5-star hotel. Or we can say win your dream car but we give them two dollars worth of TOTO ticket. Or a romantic candle light dinner for two but we gave them two packets of instant noodles and two candles. The VPE didn’t agree and said that we will cheapen the affair. So not to make our club go bankrupt in other ways, I went to buy 4D on Wednesday in the hope that I could ask the god of fortune or Ti Gong to sponsor us good prizes. I bought our club number. Anyone know what is our club number?

Its 2086.

I wack 10 big 10 small out of desperation. I screamed on Wednesday nite when I watched teletext, it came out 3rd prize! But when I look carefully, the number was 2096. 2096! Wa piang! I was so close to winning $10,000 dollars.The number 8 becomes 9. So, even Ti Gong didn’t support me, if not tonight you will be eating sharks fins and winning holidays to Bangkok.

Ok, forget the lucky draw but what about the women? Luckily, here at Lion City, we have no shortage of women. I think we are blessed with ladies luck! Just look around, do you see attractive ladies among us?

Do you remember other ladies that were once in our club? – Audrey and Sophia? Sophia is here with us tonight and I am very happy to see her, Sophia can you please stand?

Then some of us would remember Cynthia Zhang from China and not to mention the numerous gorgeous ladies who walked in on their own as guests, and also guests brought by ex-member Mark Chow, Mark was running a model agency so we got constant supply of eyes candies, I also remembered a few guests brought by Boon Huat and also our charming member Chern Chou .

Mr Golam can confirm this, after meeting us at last week’s contest, he decided to join our club. Mr Golam, you can try dating any of our female members, but make sure you hand in the cheque for the membership dues first.

Finally, I stopped any further attempts to make it more cheesy. I went to sit under a tree and pondered over the reasons for celebration.

What is the reason for celebration?

We celebrate because this is a club that is powered by passion, united by the spirit of volunteerism and governed by the principle of to give is to receive. The VPE is not paid to plan the program for each meeting, to plan education segments for you, the evaluators are not paid to give feedback to fellow speakers, none of us are, whether we play the roles as an audience, a speaker, a timer, a tme , a table topics master or, an evaluator we are not forced to do what we do. We do what we do because we know that only by doing, and by helping others to grow, we can then grow and excel.

So, why are we celebrating? I say, it is because of you, you the fellow members. There is no home without a country, there is no club without its members.

You are the only reason why it is worth celebrating. So, Happy Birthday to you and happy birthday to Lion City Toastmasters club.

Here is a MTV created by Hwee Min, dedicated to all of you.

Toastmasters of the Evening...."