'wo men shi gong jiao dictators.....'

somehow debates seem to be the only thing that keeps me blogging on. well 280204 would go down in catholic high history as a milestone for our debating team, or the gong jiao dictators here and beyond as fengyao would 'eloquently' point out. for the second time ever, and second time in a span of 2 months, catholic high debating team clinched another debating championship, the NUS challenge shield, although it was ironic that there wasn't any shield so as to speak, the shield's reserved only for the JC teams. so here's how it went: team 1, with their chronic morning sickness didn't perform as well as they could have although they did manage to ward off mgs' challenge for a grand final spot. so a platform was set up to pitch 2 schools with diameterically opposing names: Catholic High vs ACS I. here's a slice of history to justify the diameterically sounding name. catholic high was originally known as Sino-English Catholic High School while ACS I simply means Anglo-Chinese School. so if the precedence of 'sino' in cat high's former monicker should suggest its china-fied culture, and the precedence of 'anglo' over 'chinese' in ACS I exemplifies its anglo-phalic tendencies, then in the wise words of xander while pondering the result of the grand final ' something is wrong the day Cat High thrashs ACS I in an ENGLISH debating tournament'. That was exactly what happened soon after, a uninanimous 7-0 decision to Catholic High, the motion stands, TH would grant free AIDS drugs to the third world. it is worth noticing that there were at least 2 ACS alumni on the panel and the impartiality of the adjudication is indeed commendable. mark emerged as the best speaker for the final while kwek, in 'the surprise of the century' came in as the overall 4th best speaker! the only person on the team in the top 5. now talk about the power of love. robin emerged as the overall 2nd best speaker. he really has immense potential. let's hope to see him on the national team. so many dreams have been shattered before, but this moment, certainly exorcises part of the restless collective cat high psyche that yearns for glory. as we all agree, this is but the FA cup, the focus is on winning the Premiership (JGs) and THAT, is what we have worked so hard for years for. Team 1 faces anglican high for the next round this coming friday, another team with a somewhat diametrical name to Catholic High. they are by no means push-overs. in fact they won the last round. we will not leave anything for fate to decide.
went out with sow chen and ruth in the evening to catch Big Fish. catch big fish...hmmm, pun unintended. pretty entertaining, infinitely better than Mystic River, but it leaves me with a somewhat ambiguous sadness. upon deeper thought, it was perhaps the emphasis on the need to relate to the past of a dying individual and to actually really really get to known someone before he/she passes on. well it may not seem neccessary prima faci, but despite my every effort to deny the presence of an absolute moral code, i can't help to realise the callousness and superficiality of mere consolation without the actual desire nor action to probe deeper. a person may have passed on, but in each of our own world, memories keep them for eternity. i am certainly guilty of that. but just how can i talk to my aunt? i may never know, i may live to regret, i may perhaps eventually become non-chalent about this. we make our own decisions and we have to live with it. there're no consequences, just varying results. we just live with it, life moves on. in the long term they assert, where all factors are variable, the only constant is change and we are not even in the equation. live for the moment. cheers.

the fifth SAF core value

fighting spirit that is. epitomised today first by cat high, then by arsenal, now that's why i call a great weekend. spent the first half of the day at nus watching vice-chancellor's shield debates. here comes the uncanny comparsion, like the gunners who conceded a early goal against derby rivals chelsea, cat high lost the first debate against the bishan derby against ri. the gunners went on to win the match 2-1, so did cat high winning the other 2 debates against chinese high and nygh along the way. what's worth mentioning is the 3rd debate against nygh. THBT the government has no role to play in its citizens' sexual behaviour. chs prop nygh opp. while chs did a clinical job, humor was by no means lost. when u have someone like kwek who challenged the opp to claim that they do not enjoy sex, or mark, of all ppl to reveal the team romps during case set claiming ' indecent sex is enjoyable, i should know it, we just tried it during the case set'. not to be outdone on the er-xin-nometer, nygh proved equal to the task with firstly their 2nd speaker describing the intricasies of anal intercourse right down to its climax (literally), and then with a 3rd speaker who questioned the house on 'why not have sex with the table, chair or lamp' and then 'sure we all want to read about the president having sex with a dog'.....now some years ago there was a rumor pertaining a certain 'adventurous' nygh student and her boiling tube..... now i really dun think it is as absurd as it appears then lol. well all in all, chs broke into semis as the 2nd best team just behind acsi and will be facing mgs in the semis. next, met up sow chen, kianz and ruth. wanted to watch dogville but it wasn' to be, that should teach us the need to internalise our latent singaporean traits and start being kiasu, in buying movie tickets way beforehand at least. decided to go home early only to reverse the decision and watch monster with ah tan. here's the interesting part: GV with their usual anal rentitive corporate ethos, simply refused to let us buy the tics on the grounds that we are technically not 21 yet....it's RA by the way. it a classic example of circumventing checks and balances, we ask some stranger to help us buy the tics and we eventually strolled into the cinemas.....i am an evil genius whahaha. well monster, it was a rather disturbing show in fact. what was hopelessness, traumatic experiences, loss of faith in humanity may all drive an essentially beign person to malevolent deeds, hope, and the fear of the loss thereof can too be a catalyst to crime. essentially, in my thwarted sense of utilitarianism, it is not so much the nature (or even the supposed presence) of the conscience that is the main yardstick for morality. like what chs argued early in the day in the now infamous debate regarding moral subjectivity, the conscience can be pacified not by doing the morally upright things, but rather it is the justification to oneself that the course of action was correct will exonerate whatever tinge of guilt. u shape your own morality. do whatever you want, if u think it's right to yourself, just do it. no one can ever judge u on your own morality, u are your own judge. the end justifies the means. and the end is what u feel and perceive. there is no objective world. we all live in our own matrices. the world is simply what we perceive it to be. osama and md atta are heroes in their own eyes. u can assasinate them, u can bomb the daylights out of them, but can are not very likely to discredit them in osama's realm embedded under the turban inside his head. perhaps that's why half of asia is still awaiting japan's apology on the 2nd world war, perhaps that's why we all want saddam to apologise, perhaps truth and reconciliation as a closure for victims may not be that lame an argument after all. perhaps i should be a religious guru. perhaps the junyi who wakes up later would never understand what junyi now is typing. perhaps there isn't even a need for rationality, perhaps u shld never bother about the cause and effects of things. perhaps we should just soak up in the feeling we have for the moment, and for each subsequent moment independently. perhaps, perhaps i shld just go to bed.

julia gabriels: round 1

match day 1. opening day of the season. for the second year in a row, the first round of JGs are held in acs br again, an immensely beautiful feat of architecture. so it went, the first debate between team 2 comprising bryan chan, fengyao and shaun goh vs mgs 1. competitive debut of a team comprising 2 sec 3s and 1 sec 2 vs 1st team of the defending champs, whipping boys they seemed on papers. THBT the cost of space exploration outweighs its benefits....deja vu? think the inaugural JGs back in 99'.....mark gabriel must be running out of ideas for motions.... so it went. team 2 were the epitome of guai lan, choosing not to mince their words, perhaps not out of choice but rather lack of rhetoric, opting to use terms that bordered or even threaded the fine line demarcating personal attacks....totally un-cat high. but beyond the farcial choice of vocabulary, the future looks promising nonetheless. bryan let his nerves got the better of him, but did a fairly ok job nonetheless. fengyao sounded like a super-chao ah beng, yet apart from his ill-decorum, arguments were pretty well dealt with, well spotted and given each a multi-level retort. shaun goh, for all his pseudo-intellectual slurs and pomposity, looks to be a very promising third with a keen sense for rebuttals albeit the lack of structure. if that is to be the future of cat high debates, it looks pretty decent indeed. yet there's much to work on though, more than the essentials of argumentation itself. firstly the last thing we need is such an atypically antagonistic team with a less than formal style of debating that borders on bitching. secondly, and more importantly than winning debates, is the need to build team dynamics. they lost eventually, but in my opinion they can hold their heads high having done themselves proud minus the personal attacks. what me and alex were really really pissed about was the fact that there was this minor episode of the blame game between fengyao and shaun after the verdict. now there is much more to debating than to win in itself, seriously. it's is the idea of having fun, building friendships and bonds together with developing the intelletual maturity that quintessentialises debating. and placing the blame on your team-mates is most definitely not a way to develope either of the three. they needed some fucking so they got it. we just had to tell them smack in their faces that personal attacks are neither applaudable nor intellectual, next was the idea of unity and personal responsibility. i told shaun and fengyao that firstly u stick together as a team no matter what happens and accept the result together as a collective entity and not individuals and from a your own point of view, do not walk out of a debating knowing that you let the team down but not performing up to your best. well, shaun and fengyao did eventually apologise to each other, but i'm really not sure if they really bought what i said. they are a promising team. they have a bright future. i hate to see all this crumple just because of individual issues. it had to be nipped in the bud, or it will just keep festering beneath. well on the otherhand, the bright side, at least they showed great determination to win and not to settle to be the whipping boys. the disappointment of losing only underlines the passion they have. and at the end of the day, it can be said to be the 'william hung' spirit, being able to say 'i did my best and i have no regrets'. now that is truly the spirit of future winners.
team 1 fared much better of course, defeating rgs today. and surprise surprise, kuek with the power of the big F clinched best speaker. well it's good for his morale, he needed it and i gave him my encouragement too. but besides all that, i questioned him whether he could have done the same if he were the 1st opp instead. he agreed that he still has much to work on and is willing to improve....now that's the kuek we never knew and would have wanted to see much much earlier. all in all a happy day and it's the first battle completed, the war is still on.

a better tomorrow

well well.......the pain's a little more managable now. so let's see, i've been stuck in front of the comp for the past 3 days. haven't indulged in the unmentionables for the past 3 days too. and here i am, blogging away to the beat of the break beats, an mp3 compilation purchased sometime ago from the friend neighbourhood pirate. it's really cool, they've got gatecrasher, timo maas and even the swordfish ost all in a cd....and gatecrasher alone probably costs 40++ (hmv quotations), kudos to the evil genius who invented mp3s. sadly but surely it seems, this blog has detracked away from its initial purpose of serving as a cathartic experience documenting the inner thoughts and grievances otherwise unmanifested in the real world....yet now it seems like just another routinal logbook about the mundane events everyday.....just check out the past 3 entries. ok perhaps the immense boredom from slacking around at home has gotten to me....mitigating perhaps, but still worthless entries nonetheless. found some of my older diary entries the other day, written circa 2000,2001. now that would be interesting. perhaps i'll just do a back entry of my previously, sporadic journals.

ouch......

pain may bring pleasure, but pleasure should never be pain. and i'm superbly smarting now. arggggg.... my wisdom tooth extraction....worse than the last time. i may have gotten 5 days att c....but the pain...it's almost unbearable..... glad i watched the movies i wanted to watch before this.....lost in translation and 21 grams though the former lives truly up to it's title. i can barely open my right eye......ouch..........used a mirror to see the state of my cavity just before the dentist sewed it up....it's one hell of a deep hole. and now my right tonsil's hurting too.....argg... think i need morphine.......if not a longer att c would do just fine....