A well-dressed, handsome young man at the Toastmasters meeting in the Sheraton Towers Hotel, Singapore. Notice the royal blue shirt with the colours on the collar and sleeve edges. Photo by Angela Lansbury.
Problem
What to eat first in Singapore, Eastern or Western? What was your favourite childhood food? That was the question asked as an opener to visitors at a Toastmasters International meeting in the Sheraton Towers Hotel. The responses included chicken rice (a Singapore favourite), ice cream, and assorted Asian dishes.
The Sheraton Towers Hotel plays host to the Toastmasters Club of Singapore the first three Mondays of every month. Most meetings are open to members of the public and for twenty dollars you have an evening of entertainment, coffee or water and a savoury snack from the buffet before the meeting starts, more water with lemon or coffee and more of the savoury food plus some kind of sweet snacks and fruit in the interval.
The food choices rotate. Sometimes you get shellfish. Today something of everything, rice, noodles, cheese sandwiches, Indian flat bread, avocado sauce, an Indian fried dough circle (a bit chewy) and watermelon, so refreshing.
Next Monday is the club's AGM and not for visitors. Occasionally a meeting is postponed for a holiday or other reason. So it might be in your interest to check it is being held. Use Find A club and email them the day before.
Toastmasters has about 250 clubs meeting in Singapore. I attend one almost every day. If you want to save money, you could go to one of the many clubs which don't charge visitors a fee.
So why go to the events at the Sheraton Towers Hotel. What is the advantage?
The Sheraton Venue
You will meet professional people who are not short of twenty dollars. You get to see the magnificent Sheraton Towers hotel. I never tire of looking over the balcony and admiring the indoor fountains. So long as you don't mind risking a shellfish buffet occasionally (I am allergic to shellfish) you will mostly find something good to eat and drink.
Sheraton Towers Hotel Toilets
The toilets are elegant and plenty of toilets with seats, orchids in the toilets, music. (Toilets at the other venues, Community Clubs, are a bit unpredictable, often have the toilet paper outside the cubicles, and only two or three toilet cubicles of which one will be a hole in the ground.)
Even the lifts are elegant. The stairs are carpeted. On the upstairs landing are seats and before or after a meeting you can sit and stand undisturbed enjoying the elegance and calm.
Why Choose Toastmasters Club of Singapore?
If your evening is Monday, then this is the biggest and best club. I have visited more than fifty Toastmasters clubs in Singapore (plus others in the UK, China, Czech Republic and Thailand). The two big and bustling clubs are AIA (American Insurance Association) and TCS. AIA is Thursday. They are an in-house club for the business, and like most in house clubs, you are expected to be invited personally by somebody who knows you and you have to give up your identify card for inspection at the entrance to the building. They have one meeting a month in-house only, the other open to guests, most of whom are members of other Toastmasters clubs or Toastmaster VIPs.
What does TLC do well? Huge numbers of people. They might have 30 guests. Plus of course their own members. (Other clubs can vary from ten to twenty-five attending, except for the Xmas party which generally attracts a crowd.) TLC has a stage. The screen is set up and the two flip-charts are to hand for anybody who needs them. (Unlike clubs in church halls and pubs in London, England where you are told, "If you'd asked me, I'd have brought the screen and projector and flipchart. Do let us know next time.)
Impressive Organisation
At TLC and AIA everything is set up. AIA is even more technically organized. They start the meeting by playing music and marching in with the club banner. One technology expert sits with his laptop writing the names of speakers and projecting them onto the screen.
You can imagine my surprise the first time I attended AIA when they announced the table topic (impromptu speech picked from the table) and saw my name on the screen. They had typed my name into the laptop, and projected it. Easy enough to do, if you are a techie expert and do it all through the meeting every time. But hardly any other club does it, except on special occasions such as contests and awards nights.
By the time the Sheraton meeting ended I was on a high. The last two meeting I won the ribbon for best speaker. This time I did not get to speak. But I networked with several interesting people before the meeting and Hotel during the interval.
During our meeting at Sheraton Towers Hotel when a novice speaker spoke quietly I was distracted by laughter and chatter from another event. What was it? I shall reveal all about the food delights of chocolate and unusual ice cream in the next post.
Author Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
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