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