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.