destiny, it's all about being in the right situation at the right time

just came back from a trip back to my hometown in hainan island and guangzhou. to actually see the environment my forefathers grew up in, really makes me appreciate how fortunate i am. if my father remained in hainan, i probably wouldn't have the luxury of blogging away in my air-conditioned room now.
there are of course, many others who are even less fortunate. my heart goes out to all the victims of the pan-asian tsunami. without sounding flippant, the pictures that kept flashing on channel news asia really resembled scenes from The Day After Tomorrow. life is just so fragile.
i'm just too lazy to upload the pics and blog about the china trip. will do so after i return from KL. got a train to catch in a few hours time. and some sleep for that matter.

what would you give to feel young again?

whew, a rather placcid end to a rather hectic week. the following week's gonna be the final week of my stint as the coach for the dictators. looking back it at it all, i really dun know if i've been a good coach in helping the dictators improve themselves. i would love to believe that i've done a satisfactory job in helping the team become more competitive in what's an already competitive circuit, but at the end of the day at the end of my tenure, the single most important thing that i would like my dictators to realise, is that any improvement they made in their debating was never my credit but rather testament to the huge potential they have intrinsically. all i did was to simply motivate them to achieve what's all along within their reach. like i always tell them, they're so much better than their seniors were at sec 3. what really sets them apart from their seniors is in fact their attitude. it would really be a huge pity if they falter and look back at an under-accomplished debating career only becos' they failed to put in the neccessary effort. i've no idea how am i gonna do it, but the last thing i have to do before i leave is to drill this perservering attitude and sense of self-belief into them. i must say, it has truly been a dream coming true for me to lead my alma-mater into a debate competition as a coach. and for that i really wanna thank my juniors for making this possible. hanging around the dictators really make me feel young again, that long eluded sense of vitality and passion. they're not just juniors, but rather like younger siblings in an extended gong jiao family. how i wished i could follow them through their entire debate campaign. i dream of the day, when the cat high can once again grace the hallowed speakler dias of the julia gabriels grand final and finally stake its claim to the champions trophy, putting an end to 6 generations of heartbreak. and when that happens, i will be on the first flight back to singapore, to witness this magical moment. championship or not i'm still proud of my dictators and i will forever cherish this memory as a former coach of catholic high.


the motion for that fateful semi-final round


dictators - post semi-final exit. we may have lost a battle, but the war is far from over.


the impish andre kua enjoying an alcoholic cocktail courtesy of yours truly. i actually had to show the waiter my IC claiming that i was the one who ordered the alcholic drink when they made a fuss about how it's illegal to serve alchol to underaged kids. they actually gave andre the kids meal menu (who's 14 this yr btw) which sorta explains their outrage when they were told to serve the alcoholic cocktail to him. robin in the background looks unbeliveably *ahem* paedophallic. i fear for andre...


joel (of living with lydia fame)who'll be leaving us for the njc integrated programme. regardless of where he goes, he'll always be part of this 'dictatorship'



four generations of debaters: fengyao, robin and me. below: mark and amoz. the true strength of cat high debates lies not in our debating prowess, nor our trophy cabinet (which until this year was virtually non-existent), but rather in the fellowship and strong bond between seniors and juniors. this sense of kinship - above all championship trophies - is the true prize.

we had many friendly debates for the past week, against acsi, ri and a quadrangular involving nanyang, st nicks and scgs. what's worth mentioning is the quadrangular held in scgs, in particular the last debate of the day with the motion TH would legalise the gay marriages. there were 4 teams (including CH) so the 2 debates were held concurrently in 2 connected rooms. we're against st nicks while nanyang faced scgs in that final debate of the day. the air-con in our room stopped working then so we opened the connecting door to let some of the cool air flow into our stuff room. that's where we heard some very interesting arguments brought forth in the other debate. apparantly somewhere along the way, their debate digressed into somewhat a discussion on foofy's (our 3rd speaker) sexual orientation when one of the nanyang speakers declared that she would 'rather marry fengyao EVEN IF he's gay' or something to that effect. now an 'even if' argument is a classic debating technique used to facillitate clash with one's opponent's case, though i dun think i can say the same for this rather unique 'even if' argument. for that matter, the girls seem to think he's gay cos bryan (our sec 2 prodigy) sat on his lap. i would defend fengyao's dubious act no further than offering michael jackson's classic retort: simply that 'it was a lovely gesture'...
interestingly, fengyao's pretty hot stuff in the debate circuit. some girls from another girls' sch (which i will not mention for propriety's sake) called his handphone ostensibly to discuss discrepancies in the tabulation of lunch money when the crux of the question they directed seemed to be less of the money but rather 'when will we see you again'. apparantly it was one of their senior who made the call on behalf of a junior who carries a torch for foofy who vehemently denies in the background wanting the overcharged lunch money back, admist a loud chorus of sheepish girly giggles when foofy answered the call. sigh.. the ludicrity of teenage crushes. the debate circuit was so boring and un-scandalous during my time. alas those pristine days....haha. i thought of a new nickname for foofy, and he shall henceforth be known as HDB or Hearthrob of DeBates. it was fucking funny when kenneth kang in a eureka moment declared his theory about fengyao's popularity hinging on the fact that his team mates (kenneth himself and shaun goh) are 'weird, retarded and ugly' hence being in comparison, foofy's team mates accentuates his charm. to which shaun goh immediately retorts to kenneth 'i'm weird and retarded BUT NOT ugly...YOU are ugly'. this, is cat high 2005 for you. they're the maddest and most retarded bunch of debaters ever in the history of cat high since me and xander's batch and thinking of it i think they might well have beaten us to this dubious title. sigh...i'm sure gonna miss them.
back to foofy, in fact, he's so popular that i actually have 3 google referals to my blog from google searches involving 'fengyao' 'debates' and 'blogs' in various permutations. perhaps someone who carries a torch for foofy is now scrutinising this blog in hope of more personal details of their crush. well all i can say is that, fret not, fengyao's as likely to be gay as michael jackson is straight.

just got back my results for sememster 1. it was a pleasant pleasant surprise. 3 distinctions and a higher distinction. i really couldn't ask for more. while i'm slightly disappointed about my political science grade, where i got 79 missing a higher distinction by just a single mark, it's more than compensated by my macroeconomics and financial accounting where i got 70 for both - right on the borderline of a distinction grade. it expected to do worse than that, especially with my fracas in the final paper for financial accounting. it was a close shave, and i'm determined not to leave things to chance again. the war is over - for now. the procrastination armed forces has been defeated. readcon 1.

reasoning for failing to achieve climax in the finale: EDD - Erratic Debating Disorder

my worst fears came through, my virgin foray into debate coaching ended up with a semi-final exit. we were up against nanyang girls in the semi-finals, with the dictators proposing the motion TH endorses the assasination of terrorist leaders. this performance was a far cry from the dismal performance last week. from a side that could hardly identify the correct issues for a debate, and one which actually contemplated using the joo chiat neighbourhood conflict as an illustration of 'localised conflicts' to becoming one which can formulate a coherent case setup and give rebuttals with increased sophistication in analysis within the span of a week. they've shown there was never a dearth of talent, just a dearth of hardwork. and when they actually put their hard and soul to it, they can achieve great things. and for this only, and despite the result, i'm very very proud of my dictators. a special mention has to be made to bryan chan, the only sec 2 debater in the team. he did an excellent 1st prop speech, clearly structured, presented the setup impeccably (albeit with some rather ridiculous suggestions in their 'implicit' policy like getting UN mandate for assassinating terrorists) only to be outdone by his very own superb reply. it was a reply speech worthy by any standards and even his senior mark couldn't have done better than that even when he was in secondary 4, and bryan is only in sec 2 now. he represents the future of cat high debating.
the debate was really a closely fought one, and i personally felt it could have gone either side. the adjucation was testament to this. it was a 2-1 split decision. the dissenting adjudicator gave the debate to us by 1.5 marks while the other 2 gave it to NY by 1 and 1.5 marks each. interestingly, it seems strategy didn't seem to feature high in the verdict making process. despite advancing their substantive arguments into protected time, not accepting any points of information during their 2nd and 3rd speakers' speeches, and bringing in new arguments about the legality of the assasinating terrorists in the 3rd opp speech (which bryan rightfully pointed out in his reply 'do the opposition expect me to give a rebuttal on the new arguments brought up by the 3rd opp in my reply speech?'), nanyang wasn't penalised for their strategic flaws. well i guess different adjudicators have different judging styles, and that not all judges place such a high premium on strategy as they would to pure argumentation. lesson learnt: sometimes, it might well be better to just bite the bullet and deal with the arguments.
while watching the grand finals between nanyang and st nicks, reality and the bitterness of losing started to hit upon the dictators. it could have been them instead of nanyang or st nicks sitting in front of the audience, defending their seniors' title. the trauma of defeat seemed to have shaken them to their senses, (or could it be just a tokenistic outburst of frustration?) this culminated in the passing of what i would term as the 'Treaty of Marine Parade'. under this 'treaty', the dictators (fengyao and kenneth's batch) pledging to 'win every tournament from the 4th of December 2004 onwards' which is then ratified and witnessed by the seniors including myself. well in debating jargon, i guess it's not so much the feasibility but rather the principles of wanting to achieve this feat that really matters. with truly a conviction to make a clean sweep of all titles in mind, and of course, the elusive hardwork from these (hopefully) reformed slackers, great things will be achieved. i hate losing. especially in things that really matter to me. but if defeat is a good wake up call to shake the dictators into realising their potential. then it would be something i'm willing to endure.


the original copy of the treaty of marine parade. maybe i should laminate this and put it in our debate room for posterity's sake. it's an agreement between the juniors and seniors, and failure on the dictators' part to achieve the terms stated on the treaty will result in the relinquishment of all rights by the juniors to be subjected to jacking by the seniors on any hard object of the seniors' choice (aka tree/lamp-post)

speaking about jacking, we perpetuated the cat high tradition by ending the tournament by jacking kenneth kang against one of the pillars outside the LT. what we din realise was that this happened in full view of the vjc principal...yikes. but fortunately it seems she (the principal) was pretty cool with that especially after robin explained to her that this is part of our society's tradition. apparantly according to alex shieh, she once threatened to tell the whole VJC to boycott suntec city in retaliation should the suntec management complained about the unofficial vjc mass dance held there. she's da man. but i couldn't say the same for the vjc teacher in charged though. after finishing with kenneth, we turned our attention to feng yao, the one person NO ONE ever succeeded in jacking. we chased feng yao round half of VJC until the vjc teacher intervened shouting something in a chatising tone telling us to stop it. at the risk of getting banned form the vjc invitationals, i responded with a laugh and a huge smirk on my face, and a tokenistic 'sorry about that' to her. haha, yes we may have tarnished the kind of professional, dead-serious reputation ben tried to uphold during his reign as the coach, but i'm not the least guilty of it. gong jiao debate society is more than just debating, it's about brotherhood and having fun. besides, much as i try to tell them, the dictators themselves dun seem to care about what ppl think about them. think shaun goh and his lying on road and grape throwing antics which eventually got himself banned from several debate gatherings. or the retarded things kk and fengyao say in public all the time. at the end of the day, it's the hedonistic imperative, fun supercedes everything - EXCEPT results.

a certain personality codenamed 'laisex' has further entrenched itself as the pariah of the debate fraternity. bad fashion sense aside, 'laisex' actually tried to help its (notice the use of it connotes firstly a desire to give anonymity to the pariah and secondly to emphasise the androgenous nature of its look) juniors in a one hour impromptu case prep. highly unethical. shame!

the grand final was unbelievably boring. well perhaps it had much to do with the motion which really, had inherent potential to create a messy debate. THBT material power is the only currency in the international arena. ny propsed and st nicks opposed. as a gesture of good faith in support of our sister skool, the dictators cheered on for st nicks though nanyang eventually won in a 3-2 split.

after the whole thing, i brought the dictators down to fish and co at the glasshouse and treated them to dinner. it was a credible effort and for that they deserved a little reward. fuck, going out with the dictators can be pretty embarrassing with all their stupid antics. first andrea kua (the petite little sec 2 junior) who seriously looks 10-11 yrs old ordered some green alcholic cocktail. when they order came, they waiter asked who the drink was for and asked for identification and so i had to show my ID to them claiming that was my drink. then it was the usual suspects like kenneth and shaun who started placing their orders and flirting with the waitress in very super retarded sounding mandarin like 'wo yao sea monkey freeze....' in a damn 'teh' voice, or 'wei so mo ni yao or men order oysters?? or the ultimate salvo from shaun goh who stopped the waitress and asked her if the fish drinks (which is just some fanciful name for a series of mocktails whose concoction is explicated on the menu) where actually 'fish blended drinks' meaning drinks with fish meat blended inside....i strangled him there and then. then again, the waitress taking our orders was damn annoying too, she kept insisting that we should try the oysters which none of us like. so when she repeatedly questioned us why we din like oysters i simply told her 'oh they (kenneth and co) are already retarded enough, oyster is an aprodisiac so for your sake, i really dun think they should eat oysters.' but it was good fun nonetheless. for the past 2 weeks, it has really been my honour to coach the dictators for a competition. it's more than just an cca. they're like our younger brothers now. it's amazing to see how time flies. in like 4 days time, nick poon will soon be enlisting. before long, it would be aloy, tat and robin's turn. damn, i really wish i could be there for the debate chalet. now it seems i might have to give that a miss since i'm probably going to hainan island. sigh...

later that night, went to some super ulu hotel at mt emily for a birthday party of chris' fren alvin. it's pretty decent place, held in the balcony of the hotel. din drink much though, cos i had diarrohea for the past 2 days. it's been such a tiring week. now all i wanna do for the rest of today is just to sit home and nua, and at least for now, i'm living it that way.

beyond virginity: in search of the toe tingling finale

by a stroke of good luck, the virgin undergraduate's first foray (or should i say foreplay) into debate coaching yielded some rather unexpectedly pleasant results. last saturday, the dictators broke into the semi-finals of VJC invitationals. what was even more interesting was the fact that catholic high - with 2 wins and a loss - was in fact 2nd on the tab, just behind St Nicks (3 wins, the last one at our expense), and just by the skin of our teeth, in front of Nanyang and Anglican High both with 2 wins each. considering the abscence of other more experienced teams in the tournament, it would have been fair to say that breaking should in fact be the minimum standard we expected of the dictators and that results attained in this tournament is by no means an accurate postulation of performance in the julia gabriels championship. but still, a break is a break, and for that let's not take the credit away from kenneth and gang. months of hardwork paid off, and for that, they got what they deserved - not without a good round of hard fucking though.
the day started off with the prepared round against scgs where we proposed the motion THW mourn the death of yasser arafat. and especially because it was a prepared debate, the dictators' performance was apallingly atrocious. first of all, at like 20 mins before the start of the 1st round, shaun goh dropped a thermo nuclear shocker telling me that he lost his debate book the day before and was waiting for kk to pass him a copy of his speech. a first prop speaker without a speech....if it wasn't for the fact that i needed him to deliver the speech, i would most certainly have kicked the balls outta him there and then. *breathe...*
next, despite the fact that we spent so much time rehearsing shaun's entire speech, and going through every single muthafucking rebuttal and identifying every argument which the opp eventually did bring up, our performance was a major disappointment. malapropisms, not spotting strategic flaws, failure to offer even a functional rebuttal to some of the prepared rebuttals. *breathe...* for the record, shaun goh actually went up to say things like 'we cannot judge arafat on the basis of whether he contributed to an 'emminent' solution to the conflict' when he meant 'imminent'. or how 'israeli troops are able to launch military strikes into refugee camps 'without impunity' when he simply meant not being punished. it dun make no sense when u try to speak with double negatives, what are u? a nigger?? AND how he actually said how arafat is a 'bi-partisan leader' when the argument is actually about how arafat cannot be expected to compromise the interests of the palestinians in making peace with israel. incompetance to read out a prepared speech and inability to rebut aside, shaun goh also has the dubious honour (he's sec 3 this yr which means his friggin' 15 btw) of single-handledly disgracing the entire catholic high linenage of debaters by throwing grapes at passerbys at some secondary debaters gathering and lying flat down in the middle of the road in full view of the debaters from some girl school. this guy has issues. he craves attention. unless he can make a significant improvement to his attitude, i really dun see how he will have a future in the team. that aside, kenneth and foofy din identify the fact that opp 1 missed an entire chunk of shaun's substantive, and offered really dismal rebuttals to prepared rebuttals like arafat's rejection of peace proposals etc. at the end of it all, it was too much to bear, i pulled the 3 of them to a corner outside the classroom and gave them a good hard fuck. i kinda lost it then and there. all i could vaguely remember was hurling profanities at them, telling shaun 'you can't rebut, u can't even present a prepared speech, WHAT THE FUCK CAN U DO!!' and something along the lines about how they have let themselves down and the only redemption they have is to make the appearance at this tournament less of a disgrace to themselves. somehow, at least the fucking knocked some sense into them, for the first time i saw some sorta conviction in kenneth's teary eyes. at that point of time, i seriously believed that we lost the debate. interestingly, we won in a 2-1 split. it was a huge relief to the dictators. they knew how close it was. objectively, it was nothing to rejoice about, considering how scgs field a fairly young team, the dictators won primarily on experience rather than pure merit. if not for the fact that the onus was on opp to cast reasonable doubt and how they probably lacked the experience to deal with some of the more significant issues, scgs could have easily won the debate.
next we were up against anglican high, opposing the motion THBT the 1st world should do more to combat AIDS in developing countries. this time, i dropped shaun in favour of bryan a promising sec 2 as 1st. again, we were lucky that anglican had a pretty bad setup which this time, the dictators identified. anglican failed to give a proper suggestion of what constitutes doing more than the status-quo, at times proposing education , at times proposing more quantities of medication (which hardly is an improvement from the status-quo). there were several quotes of the day from this round though. like how the anglican 1st claims Africa is a nation 'countries like Africa need more help' or a emotional appeal by the anglican 3rd questioning the dictators on 'what kind of human beings are they??!' not to be outdone, kenneth gave his uncreative rendition of kwek's now classic opening in a similar AIDS debate at the NUS final 'i'm not saying this because i have to, but because i hold dear to my heart the plight facing the 3rd world AIDS victims'. we won it unanimously.
the 3rd round was a derby. we were up against st nicks. we share lotsa historical affinity. firstly, how st nicks and catholic high are sister-brother schools, 2ndly, how benedict - a founding benefactor who rescued both schools from debating obscurity was once a coach at both schools at different points of time, and thirdly and most significantly, both teams were on 2 wins a piece after the 2nd round and how victory here would assure a good semi-final pairing. St Nicks proposed the motion THB in 3rd party intervention in localised conflicts. clearly, st nicks was the better team of the day in terms of analysis of arguments and rebuttals, although apart from their superior performance, i also found their setup questionable. prop 1 set up defining 3rd party intervention in the form facilitation of negotiations through regional organisations in conflicts pertaining to countries within the same region. they then expected opp to propose with an alternative solution to their policy. whether or not the opp is expected to take up the burden of proof to propose an alternative solution is highly debatable. but to the judges, they felt it was necessary for opp to do so. what i felt was somewhat unreasonable was how the definition was somewhat squirreled to that of equating intervention with conflict mediation. now i personally feel that intervention should carry a connotation of some pro-active action to physically step in and put an end to conflict. so building upon this, we a prop defining 3rd party intervention as 3rd party diplomatic mediation, and expecting the opp to come out with an alternative policy, do u seriously think any opp worth their salt would propose an alternative policy of physical intervention? the issues would then be reversed with prop proving diplomacy and opp proving intervention, a rather ridiculous scenario wouldn't it? besides intervention and diplomacy, i really cannot think of a 3rd alternative to conflict resolution short of letting the factions battle it out till one gets annhilated. when i asked the adjudicators if a definitional challenge in this case would be justified, their reponse was that the definition was fair and that intervention per se can emcompass a diplomatic connotion. hmmm....i dun think i can agree with that, but at the end of the day, the dictators neither bothered to challenge the definitions, nor did they stick to the parameters set by the prop, and much less did they engage in the main determinent issues. so it was a justifiable loss, a unanimous defeat.
it's gonna be another week of hardwork before the semifinal/final rounds on saturday. we'll be facing nayang girls' in the semis. we MUST PREVAIL.
it's great to see the culture of continuity within the catholic high debate society. with old hacks like me, xander and sow chen coming back to help, and with the younger seniors helping out with the spars as well, it's this spirit and the fun times we shared that in the final reckoning will outshine whatever glory or championship title we achieve. but since the spirit is already there, let's just focus winning the championship. next hurdle semi-finals and beyond.


dictators at work, from left: shaun, FooFY and kenneth.


kenneth, bryan and FooFY..look at that slacker pose...sigh...we need more DISCIPLINE!


kenneth and his paddy chew (deceased AIDS activist) moment