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A "recycled teenager" learning to blog.

Aug 18, 2009

Seniors Ambassador of Tsao Foundation 做个活跃的乐龄大使


Miss Cheung Po Chu (張宝珠小姐), the first speaker at the Tsao Foundation "Seniors Talkshop" Oral Presentation Evaluation Session on 17 Aug 2009. She kindly consented to film the video clip of my presentation which was uploaded to YouTube. Acknowledged with thanks.

I went back to class on 15 Aug 2009 and 17 Aug 2009 to learn how to be an active "Seniors Ambassador" (做个活跃的乐龄大使).

The "Seniors Talkshop" (乐齢讲堂) course in Mandarin was initiated by the Tsao Foundation at their training center at 298, Tiong Bahru Road, # 15-01/06, Central Plaza, Singapore 168730.

This is another new and creative activity of the Tsao Foundation. (另一项曹氏基金会的创新活动).

The TSAO Foundation is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to enhancing the quality of life for older people by alleviating the hardships of ageing through its community health services; promoting successful ageing; and pioneering new approaches to ageing and eldercare throughout Singapore and the region.

The 2-day course was conducted by Ms Serene Seng (盛雪靈年轻老师), an experienced and bubbly bilingual teacher in public speaking.

I plucked up enough courage to enrol for the course and scored several "firsts":

* First time to attend a public speaking training course in Mandarin;

* First time when the fire alarm was activated abruptly in the midst of a presentation;

* First time I created a YouTube account to post a video-clip of the course assignment for a 5-minute presentation here.



I thought the video-clip was quite funny and would like to share it on this blog.

Can you spot at which point during the presentation the fire alarm went off?

The Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Celebration in Singapore in 1953. Decoration of banner at the Hongkong Shanghai Banking Corporation Building opposite the seafront at Clifford Pier.

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5 Comments:

Blogger Lam Chun See said...

wow not back you managed to make the entire speech in Mandarin. I notice my Sporeans like to mix English into their Mandarin which is quite irritating. Well done.

Can pls tell us what is the course all about and why you speak about this topic which you blogged about previously.

August 18, 2009 at 3:47 PM  
Blogger Lam Chun See said...

Alamak! What happened to my typing? I mean "Not bad ..."

August 18, 2009 at 10:56 PM  
Blogger Thimbuktu said...

No worries, Chun See. Not bad means quite good, and quite good means very good....hahaha self-praise is no praise :)

Thank you for your compliments and words of encouragement.

Frankly, my spoken Mandarin still need a lot more polishing and I am glad to have the opportunity to practice the language during the training.

Yes. The topic I spoke is similar to what I blogged, with slight variation on the emphasis. Whether spoken or written, I only had to do it once for convenience.

We type faster than we think and so typo errors are bound to occur. I often re-edit my blogs several times as and when I come across these mistakes or when readers pointed them out to me. I write intuitive English, not grammatically correct English every time. Blogging gives me good practice...so I blog to have more practice to express....hey, what am I talking about?

In fact I had just discovered that instead of typing "pluck up enough courage", I typed "plugged up enough courage" in my earlier draft. The error has been corrected as I write this.

Actually this blog topic is posted to share about my training experience and the fire-alarm incidence rather than the course module per se.

For those who would like to find out more about the courses and activities available, please click on the link to the Tsao Foundation website.

I understand that the electronic sensor in the building was hyper-sensitive and if someone were to just puff on a cigarette in the building, the alarm would be triggered. This happens so often that the tenants and office workers are unperturbed whenever the alarm sounds. This is something that the building maintenance team need to fix.

Nonetheless, I enjoyed the training course alot. The young trainer is very energetic and there was never a dull moment although some of the training material is heavy theory stuff.

She introduced games, interactive role-play, brain-storming spiced with lots of humor that we forgot we were not really that young :)

It doesn't matter if ball throwing game is meant for the young. We enjoy playing it as much as when we did it during our childhood days. The games are not played aimlessly out of boredom...we learnt that we could learn something while playing these games. Very meaningful after the trainer explained the rationale to us. Cannot tell more... or else I will deprive students who have not attended the course, the thrills and surprises of these training games.

Cheers!

August 19, 2009 at 2:51 AM  
Blogger Victor said...

I listened to your speech on YouTube. Wow, very impressive.

By the way, I didn't manage to detect when the fire alarm was activated. That is such a shame as I just took a Fire Safety Manager course.

Oh the fire alarm must have been activated by the smoke detector in the building. People are not supposed to smoke in the building. It is not a case of the smoke detector being too sensitive. (This one I know.)

August 20, 2009 at 1:04 AM  
Blogger Thimbuktu said...

Thank you, Victor.

The fire alarm sounded about 2 to 3 minutes after i started speaking. You will notice the guy in white shirt rushing out of the room.

I would have felt safer if you were there as the Safety Manager : )

August 20, 2009 at 6:55 AM  

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