Cut Coughs And Colds With Fruit: How To Help Yourself, Your Speakers, And Your Audience

I had a streaming cold, constant sneezing and the cough that goes with it as the body attempts to deal with the phlegm which stays inside and drips down your throat.

You can buy masks from pharmacies in Singapore (not all branches - usually only the larger ones). Or pick one or a few for free from mask dispensers in a medical centre or hospital.

You can wear a mask to stop your germs spreading to others onto surfaces or into the air when you cough or sneeze. However a mask restricts breathing which is already difficult when you have a cold. You cannot stand up and speak to an audience wearing a mask.

Fruit Cured My Cough
At a meeting of a Toastmasters International group, Focus, in the interval I ate the fruit provided as one of the options. (A food court was downstairs.) I ate melon and pineapple. The effect was instantaneous. My problem was cured, which was good as I had to stand u and speak as Language Evaluator at the end of the meeting.

Next monring I woke feeling dreadful, same symptoms as previous days. I had fruit for breakfast. Again, instant cure.

Pineapple In Pizza
At lunchtime at another club at Gemalto, we were served pizza. It contained pineapple, just enough to get me through being the Test Speaker (giving a speech for others to evaluate).

Afterwards I walked with the other visitors back to the MRT station One North. The weather was hot, as it always is in Singapore. I felt seriously dehydrated.  I bought three pieces of fruit from a stall and felt much better. Less sneezing, no more need of paper tissues (good for the environment as well as fewr germs being spread around to others).

In the evening I went to Kampong Kembangan Community Cub to their Toastmasters International speakers club. I gave a speech. (And later won the ribbon for best speech.)

Before the meeting and in the interval we were offered chocolates and chocolate biscuits. I love chocolate biscuits. Especially when speaking. the energy rush is what I want for the moment I stand up and adress the audience.

A member told me that the Kembangan Community Centre gives the club a free room (albeit a small room) and even supplies free biscuits. One member had supplemented the supply with more biscuits from M & S.

How I longed for some fruit! Refreshing fruit. Vitamin C. The benefits of apples have been known for centuries. Hence the rhyming saying: An apple a day keeps the doctor away.

You can add lemon to water. It is supposed to be bad for your teeth, to ea away at the enamel. I drink lemon water followed by plain water to rinse my teeth.

Whilst you are shopping in a supermarket, if you are not sure whether your evening meeting will include any savoury food or protein, a banana is filling.

I had to cut short my Language Evaluation because my nose was starting to drip and I did not have a tissue to hand. I had removed my jacket with the pockets in order to look more streamlined and elegant. How I longed for a piece of fruit.

Size Of Sample
I am only one person. Now, what works for me won't necessarily work for you. I could have an allergy to milk or gluten. You might not have a cold. I am only a sample of one. It's possible that psychological factors were involved, stress, hunger, eating too little, eating too much, drinking water.

However, my own experience was that eating juicy fruit made a huge difference to my comfort. The whole room benefited because the fruit reduced the amount I was coughing which interrupted other people's speeches when I was in the audience.

Concerts And Coughing
For years I have known about the effect, the disruption, of people coughing at concerts, noticeably in the intervals, sometimes during the playing. Now I have seen the effects of coughing affecting speakers and members of the audience. More importantly, I think I have found a cure.

If you are organising a meeting, please provide water and fruit for the speakers as well as members of the audience.  If you can influence the people providing food, please ask for fruit.

I made a request in advance for water and fruit. I got the water. I should have asked what kind of refreshments would be provided. I am now making myself a list. Of course, some venues change the food and drink at every meeting depending on the size of event and budge, the person ordering, and the caterer. Nonetheless, a few place consistently provide fruit as policy. Others don't. Here's my list:

The star rating is my rating for the supply of fruit and water. Items in brackets not necessarily at every meeting.

Sheraton Hotel - Toastmasters Club of Singapore *****
First, second and third Monday evenings of most months except for public holidays such as Xmas, New Year, Chinese New Year, Easter, Singapore National Day.
Fruit provided. Fee of $20 for visitors includes the fruit, other food, water, usually lemon slices for  you to add to hot water to make your warm lemon tea or cold lemon water, and coffee.

Sheraton Hotel. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Sheraton Hotel viewed from gallery where you eat outside the conference room before the meeting and during the interval.

Useful websites
singaporeair.com
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2122064-you-should-be-eating-10-pieces-of-fruit-or-veg-every-day-not-5/

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. I have many more posts on hotels, Community clubs, and Singapore. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Where and Why To Attend Speechcraft And Gavel Clubs Worldwide For Students Learning Public Speaking

Angela Lansbury presenting How To Structure A Speech workshop. Photo from Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

I presented a workshop on How To Structure A Speech to students at Singapore's ITE technical college. The college teaches students of engineering, hospitality and management. 

Speechcraft is a condensed course on public speaking, intended to attract students or adults to commit

to attending the Toastmasters International programme, which is usually held weekly for one evening. (Sometimes schools and businesses meet in the morning or afternoon, or later afternoon after classes.)

What Is A Gavel Club

A Gavel Club is a club for under 18s. Such clubs are usually started in schools and colleges. Why are they separate from adults clubs?

1 Students at school or college like to be with their friends and their own age group. 

2 The group can be run by their teachers and / or outsiders.

3 The students are taught in their familiar environment, their campus, no stress or cost of travelling.

4 The activity can help them confidently write and construct their course work. 

5 It can help them pass exams.

6 It can help them present to classmates in lessons. 

7 The training helps with speaking at work meetings during work experience, job interviews, and confidence in their first job.

8 It helps with confidence during the stresses of adolescence, a new school or college, gaining confidence to make friends and start relationships and pep talks which help optimism before exams and coping with the ups and downs or breakdowns of romances.

9 Why not just send students to adult clubs?

Children and students often attend adults' clubs. 

a) Babies and Toddlers Welcome At Jauhari Toastmasters Club

One club, the Jauhari club, a bilingual English and Malay speaking club, where you can present a speech in either English or Malay, is a family club. Mothers and parents with babies and tiny children can be bring along children, so children are familiar with the idea of public speaking and young parents or grandparents do not have to stay at home childminding. 

This tends to disrupt the meeting and distract speakers and the audience. However, the people who run the club like it that way. The system works well for them. The management team includes last year's district winner (winner in a contest of all the 200+ clubs in Singapore).

b) School Age Children Welcome

You are asked to call the club and inform them if you are bringing along school age children. This helps the organizers and speakers adapt their material and language and activities. 

An otherwise formal meeting with formal language can be adapted. 

The children can be acknowledged and welcomed at the beginning, their names learned by the Toastmasters Of The Day.

An interactive table topics session for impromptu speeches can be lengthened so they can all participate.  Subjects can be prepared with topics they will know about and on which they can have opinions. 

If possible, the toastmasters of The Day, or the Topics Master, will start the meeting by asking, Please, everybody, tell us your name, your current or last school and your favourite subject. When it gets to time for table topics (impromptu speeches), for example, instead of a long complicated question on the 'intervention of government', they could be asked, Do you like wearing school uniform?, or Do you prefer weekdays or weekends? or What Is Your Favourite Sport or Do You prefer to Watch Sport or Join In?  The topic can be picked from what they mentioned in their self-introduction. 

I imagined that the international organization run from the USA was concerned about the dangers of under age pupils being molested. Just one accusation could damage the reputation of the organixation and its members worldwide.

What if the organizers, who were teachers and already had police clearance, accompanied the children during the meeting and during the mid-meeting toilet break. Supposing the parents delivered and collected the children or accompanied them?

You still could not vet every stranger who turned up at a meeting, nor get their name and address or identity, nor check anybody who walked in late after it started.

Equally, adults might not want to have their pasts investigated. A visiting politican or other VIP guest or speaker might fear the risk of being wrongly accused of molesting a youngster, whether because of mistaken identity, malice, misunderstanding or any other reason.

In the UK one committee opened up the question of whether under 18s should be allowed to attend meetings. Totally different concerns arose. Speech Subjects.

Censored Speeches

Four Letter Words and Language

One speaker wanted to be able to use a four-letter word in a specific speech - or any speech. He also wanted to be able to deliver a speech discussing the use of four-letter words, which would have to be spoken or written on a board. 

Speech Subjects

Other speakers wanted to deliver a humorous speech about the difficulties of conceiving, or a humorous speech full of innuendos, which would cause at least embarrassment, at most objections, if children were in the audience. I have seen humorous speeches about underwear, and speeches depending on puns. Even a speech on  innuendo in Shakespeare's plays might cause a speaker to self-censor and lost a contest by ending too soon, if children were unexpectedly in the audience.

Now we understand the assorted reasons for a Gavel club, a junior club or cadet club, what is a gavel?

10 What is a Gavel?

The gavel is a wooden hammer used to strike the lectern for attention to open the meeting, and again at the end to signal the end of the meeting.

How to Pronounce Gavel

The word is pronounced 'gav=all' or gav-ill not gave- ell. Short 'a' as in hat, not hate.

You can visit 250 or more adult clubs for speakers in Singapore, and more in the USA, UK, Europe, Arab countries, and most countries of the world. Most clubs are for English speakers, but there are clubs for speakers of French, Spanish, Polish, Chinese, Malay, Tamil, Arabic, and teaching materials in several languages.

More Information From

website toastmasters International

toastmasters.org/find-a-club 

Travel Information

Singapore Airlines

singaporeair.com

Author

Angela Lansbury is a speaker on language, travel and other subjects, the author of books on wedding speeches and quotations, travel writer and photographer. Please share links to your favourite posts. Contact Angela if you would like a workshop on business English or any other subject for a college or business.

Why You Should Pop Into The YMCA In Singapore

Problem
Everybody knows it but how do you get to it from Dhoby Ghaut station?

Answer
Follow the signs or ask for the correct exit at the station's former ticket sales office which does not sell tickets any more - you have to use the ticket top-up machine. When you come out of the station you see the YMCA but no way of crossing the road. Just follow the people walking in that direction until you come to a crossing. Allow extra time. You know that crossings can be designed to regulate traffic. As far as I could tell, on my last visit, the system is designed specifically to thwart me. Pedestrians are made to wait whilst the road is completely empty. It must be designed to impart or inculcate meditation on stoicism.

At the entrance to the YMCA is a handy rack of brochures, more than I saw at Changi airport on arrival. Everything from hop on hop off buses and boat tours to children's activities, discovery centres, Peranakan (Chinese mixed with Malay) culture and more. Venture further into the  YMCA and you will discover that the YMCA also sells travel novelties.

A folding hanger. A strip of clothes pegs.

Souvenirs Including A Book
A teddy bear to take home to somebody as a souvenir. An adult or child.

A book on public speaking by Ernest Chen. You are likely to meet him at Toastmasters meetings held upstairs. If you buy his book, you should remember to ask him to sign it for you with a message of goodwill.

Courses
If you are from overseas, maybe you can stay there - but book well ahead because the YMCA's in central areas are often fully booked weeks ahead. There's also a cafeteria and you can sign up for courses.

Toastmasters Meetings
I go there for Toastmasters International meetings training speakers. Guests are welcome and a small charge is usually made for the meeting which includes food. The annual cost for a course includes a reduction on the parking fee. The meeting starts and ends with a short prayer for your well-being and success.

Author
Angela Lansbury

Why You Should Follow Briefing And Instructions When Public Speaking And Selling

Problem
I was at a meeting of public speakers recently and was in two minds about whether a speaker had done well or badly. When I heard his speech I thought it was brilliant. He was asked to choose a character and tell a story whilst acting the part of the character. 

Photo by Jacog Windham from Wikipedia on Santa.

He chose to be Santa Claus, complete with a wonderful outfit, and told a humorous story, with a series of engaging slides about the health problems and job disadvantages of being Santa Claus.

His speech was funny. It was original. You can imagine my surprise when the evaluator conceded that the speech was well researched with the numerous funny slides, and entertaining, but did not follow the objectives which were to be in character, in effect, being an actor, convincing us for a moment that you were the character, rather than just reading out the speech.

This happens a lot in Toastmasters. You have a speech you want to give, or get an idea when you first read about the objectives, then you hope that you will be judged on the speech, not the objectives.

I used to think that the point of the objectives was to teach you a new technique. If you had not learned all of it, but only fifty percent, the only person to lose out was the speaker. So long as the audience enjoyed the speech, never mind. I agreed that a speech project demonstrating vocal variety which had none, had not fulfilled the objectives. When I did the vocal variety project, I picked a subject to fit, accents around the world.

Then I got to think about how you would be in real life. Supposing you were a salesman in a shop selling washing machines and you were told to tell the customers about washing machines. If you are demonstrating a food cutting machine, and are an actor, you might indulge in a lot of banter with customers while you do the cutting, ending with offering them free samples of food and asking them to buy the cutter, or blender, at the special one day only now or never price. That speech has to end specifically, after the entertainment, with the sales pitch and the call to action.

Now let's talk about a more common situation, the average seller of washing machines in a department store. The boss says, "your job is to sell washing machines." that's the brief. If the customer doesn't know which product the salesman is selling, and is entertained to a bit of character acting and jokes, but never a call to action, the boss will be cross. The salesman has not filled the requirement.

A similar situation of mismatch occurs in a restaurant. The customer wants the order the way he likes it. The chef says, "No. This is the way we do it. Today's offer is scrambled eggs. Your kid wants boiled egg. You asked for boiled egg. Too bad. I don't take orders from customers. I do what I want."

 Who is eating and who is paying? The customer. The boss or restaurant owner has the brief or objective, customers on seats, food on plates, happy customers pay money.

If you are employed as a speaker, your job is to find out what sort of speech the boss thinks will sell. When the customers turn up, the speech has to fit the customers.

When visiting a foreign country, you have to find out the usual house rules. What time are the opening and closing? What is the dress code? Is it just a guideline and flexible, or is it all or nothing?

You may think that a shopping mall is a public place. But in the UK a restaurant is private property.
You may be asked to leave and the restaurant owner doesn't have to give a reason. (He's better off not giving a reason. Telling a drunk that he is drunk will probably lead to arguments, escalating insults and possibly fights.)

Let's go back to the speech. If you joined a speech training programme just to make friends, you might be happy to muddle through. If you joined to learn how to make speeches which are understood, useful and welcome to all kinds of audiences, to people from all over the world, speeches given all over the world, then stopping to read the instructions, thoroughly twice, and to follow them, is a useful lesson.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.