The last few weeks I have been preparing for this competition at Ngee Ann Polytechnic, and its called Speechcraft, which is a public speaking competition supported by Toastmasters International.

Preliminaries

I started off with my preliminary rounds of Speechcraft in iSpark Studio (School of Film and Media Studies) at Ngee Ann Polytechnic, and I met different people from different faculties and schools. People from all walks of life comes together to achieve a single purpose; to speak and to share their knowledge and thoughts.

For the preliminary round, a speech can only be 3mins max, and must be at least 2 minutes. Any topic for your speech is fine, as long it does not touch the controversial subjects.

(Another participant presenting their speech; the archives did not have any of my photos )

My speech had been an interesting one, frankly I only prepared my simple speech in less than an hour for the preliminary round and I felt that I did badly initially. If you are interested, my preliminary speech can be found here. However, I kept practicing my speech over and over again in my mind and executed it on stage, luckily it was delivered with no obvious flaws.

The judges were pretty serious and at the same time, really supportive and smiled when there were pauses or times where I couldn’t remember some parts which I am supposed to.

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Semi Finals

The preliminary rounds were over, and I was notified that I had to be in the next round, the semi finals. The format is slightly different, the time limits were increased and the minimum presentation time of the speech is bumped up too. In this slightly different format, which is also held in the same venue at iSpark (School of Film and Media Studies) at Ngee Ann Polytechnic. All participants will be held in a holding room and will be transferred to a waiting room, which the Speechcraft Organising Committee will show the speaker 5 topics which they can talk about. And will be given only 5 minutes to prepare their speech contents. Which they will than be transferred to the speaker’s room where they will speak to their heart’s content.

I wouldn’t say that I spoke the best, but the lack of preparation is really a killer, I don’t have much objectives in mind and I spoke whatever that came hitting in my mind, which is not a really good experience, but I managed to overcome it by coming up with a simple agenda during my speech; not during the preparation which I was busy making my mind up.

I ended up speaking about this topic, out of the 5 topics on the paper:

“If you were able to rewind time, how old you want to be, and why?”

I spoke about rewinding time back to a primary school student, where I won’t have to make teachers angry, and to get their trust and respect. I also discussed about building stronger friendships when I am young and stop being so playful and careless. But the general idea is, if you keep dwelling in the past, you will not see any improvement in your life but to apply them practically in your current life, which reflects more and more on my character. I have also discussed that all the things in the past isn’t perfect and our brain only selectively remember the happier parts. So why not build a better future, it sounds like a brand new fairytale but I hope I had proven my point of the history is just the building blocks of the future.

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Trainings

Probably one of the most interesting and interactive lectures where everyone talks and shares their opinions on debates, argumentative and ethics. Everyone speak their minds out and presents their thoughts and findings to everyone else.

Many language skills were picked up, in this Rhetoric lesson, its about Argumentation and Debate with Ms Rajoo, one of our club advisors here at Ngee Ann Polytechnic Student Toastmasters Club.

Debate is process of inquiry and advocacy ..

Friends around me smiling happily. Well, me too.

Who told you what you believed was always right? See this example ..

Discussion in progress about ethics; is it right or wrong? What differentiates?

Further discussion about a case scenario, who is in the wrong? It’s not always the person who commits the mistakes that are in the wrong, what leads up to that?

Mr Bala speaks about speech techniques, how could one’s speech be more engaging and visually entertaining, not only in the form of speech. How to build up their spirit of the audience, and to bring out the sway the opinions of them.

The event started from late afternoon till 11pm, it was a great lesson which I still remember details off, not your usual history lesson that is.

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Finals

Probably one of the largest events that I had prepared in weeks, the finals ain’t something that easy. As usual, the time limits were bumped and the venue had changed to be a theatre with a public audience.

Each competition participant will be making a speech based on ONE of these themes!
1) The Social Media and The Singapore Elections
2) Ethics are taught or caught?
3) Money is the currency for incorruptibility.

Some preparation, among all the finalist of the competitions. Some words of reminder.

I did a simple mic test before we started the competition; so the people controlling the audio equipment get a better view of what would happen during the competition itself.

As the competition is about the begin, the timers sits near the stage and will show us flashing cards so we would keep within the time limit of 6 to 7 minutes, with the minimum of 5 minutes per speech.

To start off the night, our very own NPSTMC (Ngee Ann Students Toastmasters Club) members Nabilah and Aaron kickstart the night by being the host.

The open category, which is for Year 2 and Year 3 students from the school had performance extraordinary well, and they have really interesting points.

Next, the freshman category, which is fortunately for me, where I fall in. And we have a team of amazing speakers which could really talk.

And of course, its not complete without me, so since you are reading this blog about me, I have to take at least some space at this blog. In case you forget that you are reading Jeremy’s Weblog

(Yes, I was talking about Social Media and Singapore Elections and my speech hit the 7 minutes mark, almost hitting the time limit)

After the freshman category, everyone get a 20 minutes break while the judges were in discussion. So we get to see a few performances.

There was entertainment during the break times where everyone had fun and such. I would love to put the videos here, but its currently in processing.

There’s a prize presentation ceremony right after that.

And yes, thats me!

That’s the entire speakers team from Speechcraft 2011!

Thank you everyone, hope that this is really interesting and an eye-opening experience for you!

And thats the start till the end of the entire Speechcraft 2011.

J.

I know that there will be some people which just refuse to click ‘play’ on the video itself, so I will just provide a small jist on what it is all about.

So are you interested in the video now?

Go and watch it now.
(Shameless self promotion brings me to no avail)

Thanks to my whole class at 1T04 of Ngee Ann Polytechnic – School of InfoComm Technology for making this work out.
Really appreciate it, even though it could be quite appalling at times.

Alright.
That’s it, bye!
I am going buy a proper cake for myself, damn!

J.

Bed to Sofa Tutorial
Just for the record, if you like to change your bed into sofa. You just have to remove the orange cover on the top.

Than just try to ‘pull’ the bed open. As in try pull the bed from one end to open the enclosed end.

Cool isn’t it. The sofa is now a bed and not only that, you can use the orange sheet as your blanket which is ultra thick and warm / fuzzy inside.
Moving on!

The kitchen is really cool as well, it comes with a fridge (not those mini ones), a microwave oven, a door to the backyard of the house (not the balcony), a sink and just a bar counter.

Now heading to the bedrooms, this is our first bedroom, it comes with 2 beds, a locker and wardrobe (at the side of the first bed, not in this picture) at the side of the beds. The beds also come with a bedside table at the centre and 2 power plugs.
I kinda noticed that all the beds are super single sized. – The beds are slightly bigger than single size.


Let’s take a look at the master bedroom, it comes with a twin double decker bed with a bed facing beside a balcony which is really awesome. It’s just the balcony which doesn’t comes with a curtain, so you will most likely get the hot sun in the morning. But fear not! – there’s a curtain behind to block out the sun out and since the sun rises from the east, you are safe!
The Master Bedroom comes with a toilet and a large drawer to put your valuables.

The balcony allows an eye opening view of the entire Bukit Timah view, the PIE expressway (along the flyover) and a church.

The toilet comes with anything you might probably dream off – except for toiletries, so remember to get that. But don’t worry, they provided toilet paper.
I will not review the second toilet – it’s so stalky! (I remembered someone was using it)

The third bedroom comes with 2 beds, a locker and a safe box, to put all your valuables in it. (As in its literally a safe box, and its fully digital)

I hope I had provided you a really good insight inside theloft@94.
Now go out and play!

Have fun lofting!
Jeremy

FYI, something I found out was, there is actually hot water supply, but you need to activate it by switching on the switch at the bottom of the kitchen sink.
Remember that!

PPS:

I didn’t know that the security system at the loft is running on 4 Eveready batteries.

PPPS: You could always refer to Ngee Ann’s SDAR website about theloft@94.

Alright, I tried to write this article to the best of my ability, if you wish share some of your knowledge, please do in the comments section.

J.

J.

Alright, lets move on to this promotion that Burger King had, I have to say that I am almost out of breath when I saw the devastating queue, it was so long that it took up more than half an hour of my lunch time just for queuing up. (One coupon is only valid for one physical person only)

You probably might think this is no big deal, by looking at this single photo, you should probably look at the photo below from the other angle.

That must be something crazy, right.

Alright, so after that long queue, no one actually cares about waiting for good food, isn’t it.

That’s the packaging for the burger, its looks kinda fine right.

Inside the burger contains some lettuce, the flame grilled patty, tomatoes and mayo.

Which would than look something like this!

Anyway, in my point, this is fairly interesting, leveraging on social media technologies which is crowd sourced to bring your product out to consumers.

I got the additional whopper and fries anyway, I skipped breakfast, so a heavy brunch.

Go ahead and try it and here’s my homework for you, once you are done with it, tweet me @jeremy89632 and tell me how is it!
Yum.

J.

Opening Hours:
Chinese Garden: 6am to 11pm
Japanese Garden: 6am to 7pm
Apparently there is a Japanese Garden, which I did not have time to get to, but you can visit there yourself and share with me your experiences there, which I can help you to link to your site if you do put up something cool.

I hope I gave you a cool perspective of the place and hope you do have fun there. Do share with me if you have any photos taken there.

Leave a comment if you have something to say!

Jeremy.

Don’t get me started on my dance.
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(A view of Ngee Ann Polytechnic)

I really have to apologize that this is a late update of the blog, since its Christmas, I believe that it’s good that everyone could do some digital cleanup of their media devices. Nevertheless, all the content here is taken from March 2010, which is pretty recent, just a few months back from now.

We arrived in school, and the good thing is that there is no school on that day itself. We are visiting the media faculty of Ngee Ann Polytechnic’s – Film and Media School. Which is going to interesting and fun. For those media inclined that is.

I still remembered why I took this photograph, picture tells a thousand words. We are the class which always takes the last bus, its like all the classes had already left the transport bay, we are still there waiting for a bus to come. This is the day which happened that we were one of the first classes that took the very first bus. As a matter of fact, we were 30 minutes early, and had enough time to hit the canteen at the polytechnic.
Our programme is held at one of the lecture theatres, which is spacious and obviously air conditioned. Here for some career and education planning talk.

You dive straight into the differences between the tertiary institutions paths, either JC or Poly. Which is either way, you could go. As in, literally they are showing the cards on the table to you.

There’s this professor which is telling us the advantages and benefits of their poly instead of the others and how poly operates as a whole.

After that we head over to the Film and Media School, which is a place where we’re touring today!

On our way, we saw some interesting places, one of which is Makan Centre. Which is their uber stylish canteen, air conditioned one that is. I heard that this is their biggest air conditioned canteen building which serve to the majority of the students in their campus.

So this happen to be our destination, the film and media school. On the first floor, which is the news broadcasting studio, we get to see some really cool stuff on air. They also have a studio apartment for dramas and television shows.

This is how it looks like in the control station in the news broadcasting center. When broadcasting, a typical setup would be 2 guys mending the control station.

All the prearranged cameras which is ready for shoot. Camera’s will be arranged to the best location when needed, it could also be moved live, with the director switching to the other camera, of course. Picture from the newscaster’s view.

After going up the lift to some high level, we went into their television and special broadcasting studio. Which is really cool, the computer is showing all the lighting positions in the room which we are going into. This is just the control station. It also shows all the available camera’s in the room so the lighting tech could adjust accordingly.

This is also part of the big control station in the television studio. This shows all the available video streams in the studio itself, so the director can choose the right scene in the right time for audiences to see.

This is the television studio itself, which is really nice and very bright. It’s really hot too, especially with the spotlights which generates lots of heat. Luckily the air condition is really strong. So it managed to subdue the heat issue.

This is just the entrance of the studio, its filled with headlights and its really bright. Again, the heat issue.

This is one of the mixing studios and controlling stations for the broadcasting centers, which is basically like an editing station. In brief that is.

This is the audio recording studio, which basically have this giant mixer full of line in’s, which is .. mindblowingly huge for just an audio production. A normal mixer would just need 5 to 10 line in’s.

This is Ngee Ann’s Poly radio called Radio Heatwave, which is their own in-house radio station.

J.