As the word chosen as the Word of The Night, “Scrupulous” means “diligent, thorough, and extremely attentive to details”, and scrupulously and scrupulousness are two variations from this word.

On top of how I understood this word in the past, today my fellow Toastmaster upgraded my understanding about this word.

As the Toastmaster-of-the-Evening, Alicia had scrupulously prepared for her show tonight. She started off the chapter meeting by cracking a joke which she recently came up with, and defining a more lively way of handing over the stage: a hi-five, instead of a hand-shake. This creative opening instantly brought smiles across the audience. Then, she brought us into an entertaining learning journey of Toastmaster evening.
Her innovative linking between speeches, along with her enthusiasm and expressiveness had brought to the audiences a stupendous performance. She successfully lightened up and maintained the atmosphere each time she took over the stage.

Chinab, our table topic master, ventured into his creativity through his topic questions. He had scrupulously chosen 10 pictures to be displayed, and then tasked each table topics speaker to talk about anything related to the picture they choose to release.

Our Advanced Project 1 speaker, Andrew grabbed everyone’s attention through his storytelling project and left everyone in the room in awe. His scrupulousness was reflected through his great vocal variety, appropriate gestures and visual aid when delivering the Indonesian folktale, and he engaged the audience by asking questions at the end of his speech.

Not only Alicia, Chinab, and Andrew, but also everyone else had shown their scrupulousness in their preparation, be it as a speaker or an appointment holder. A scrupulous preparation by each person would make a chapter meeting a success.

This chapter meeting taught me the importance of everyone’s cooperation and preparation. I learnt how to create a comfortable ambience for everyone from our TME, Alicia, from the topic master, Chinab and from many others. Besides, I also learnt the importance of creativity for not only tabletopics questions but also speeches, for example, Andrew has taught me how to engage the audience. As a Language Evaluator of the evening, having listened scrupulously to all the uttered words throughout the meeting, I now truly understand the meaning of the word I proposed.

Written by:
Ardina, Su Yanping
Editted by:
Yu Wenxi
29th Sep, 2015