Slippers

Training has been gradually getting more and more tense. Less hard, true, but more focused on things that we'd find opponents using: takedowns, leg grabs, one-armed drop throws. It's very worrying, to tell you the truth - I find it a lot easier to deal when I'm focusing on my own techniques - not theirs - plus I've got this perpetual sweater on me throughout training to lose weight.

Yes, you heard right. I'm on a diet. No carbs at night, lots of running in the evenings, aerobic exercises. I lost 3 kg in 2 hours the last competition, but those two hours were spent running with four layers of clothing (one of which being a garbage bag cut out Flintstone style). And I'm not allowed ice cream. Or cream buns. Or donuts. (Okay yeah I did eat one UFO, but that doesn't count because it was in the afternoon right right right?!)

As I received the parental release forms at the end of training today Sensei looked up and frowned. "This is your first Nationals, isn't it?"

"Yeah ..."

"Right. There are two things you have to remember bringing. Very important."

"Uhhuh ..." I leaned forward. Have to admit I was thinking of painkillers and romance novels and protein shakes here, but that's beside the point.

"Two things, ya," Sensei said, counting them off on the digits of his hand, "1: Shoes. 2: Slippers."

I blinked. "Slippers."

"Yes."

"Uhr ... why ... again?"

"Oh, for the contest arena. Then you can get on and off the mat easily, without troubling yourself with shoes. We all wear them."

And for a brief instance I had a flash of a huge stadium, glaring downlights, and lots and lots of black belters by the sidelines.

Gulp.

Nostalgia

There are a few incidents I remember in debate, apart from the losses. One of them was after the inter-secondary debates in 2005. It was my first year debating and I was 3rd for Aaron and Aldrin. I was the wildcard in the team.

Shortly after losing the St Thresa debate I made my way to the toilets. I remember pushing past the crowd that had gathered outside the classroom, ignoring looks, catcalls and the general hubbub. Amanda was still there, she was talking with Jacintha outside in the corridors, I looked the other direction and walked past them. This was the first of many defeats to come in my debating career. I did not talk to anyone on the way down.

There are a few faces there that has remained in the debate scene. Nicholas was debating for the second time for Gapor, and Justin was the 1st speaker for Green Road. Today Nicholas (and his teammate Abraham) are still debating, and Justin is one of the senior debators for Swinburne.

I made my way back from the toilets.

The crowd had dispersed somewhat. The other debators had come to watch us take on St Theresa, then the reigning debate champions, and most of them thought we had won. The St Theresa teachers were looking very worried as Aaron wrapped up our case. When we lost the room had exploded into disappointed noise.

Nelson stepped in front of me as I made my way down the corridor. "Hey," he said, "I didn't know you were debating!"

I shrugged. The lump was still in my throat, and it felt even bigger now in the match room. "Yeah I'm third." I said, gathering up my palm cards.

"How many times have you debated before?"

"This is my fourth debate."

"And you're returning next year?"

"Yeah."

"Wow. Shit. You're good. Okay." And then he laughed. It was a nervous sort of laugh, the kind you make when you're not sure if what you're hearing is a good or bad thing. I grinned at him, and we walked out of the room together.

It was moments like this that had kept me going on in debate. Despite the defeats. Despite the biasness. Despite telling myself every year that I was not going to debate ever again. The little moments when somebody came up and told me that I was amazing and that I had done a good job, even if we had lost as a team.

Those moments made me feel high.

So I kept at it. I kept working on my ability to see angles to arguments. I read up basic philosophy and child psychology and I followed up on global politics. I started learning about systems of governance and I started laughing at Malaysian politicians. I remember snorting at Rene Descartes's Animal Machine theory, and I remember laughing with Aldrin and Cikgu Orlnda over utilitarianism.

At that time debate was for me an ego game. I remember Aaron humiliating the hell out of Amanda in 2004 - I friggin loved it - and I remember thinking to myself: "One day, I'll be able to do that." And it underlined my entire attitude towards debating: as a third speaker it became my aim at every debate to humiliate at least one speaker, to trip them up and make them look stupid and to fumble their speech. In my last interschool debate I humbled all three speakers from the opposing team.

We lost, but at least I had my moments.

There was just one problem with this whole approach to debate. I didn't want to be humiliated the same way I tore others apart. So I went over my team's cases like a hound, making sure the other speakers wouldn't say anything that I couldn't defend. So I wouldn't look stupid. I knew I wasn't Joash, who could present even the most daft of cases and make them stand. And I definitely wasn't Kong Fook Ann, who at the time seemed to me to be saying stupid things for the sake of saying stupid things.

That was how I learned to case create.

I'm recalling this only because it's a lot nicer to remember things you can control over things you can't. St Thomas's didn't do very well in the Swinburne debates.The highest speaker ranked was Johnathan Sim, a risk I took that was supposed to backfire. And Jared who was ranked in the top 10 last year didn't even make it past 40.

I was supposed to debate. I was supposed to be in St Thomas A. We were supposed to go further this year, because hell we had training. Not proper motion preparation, true, but training nevertheless. We had Aldrin and Ravin and Paul coming back to teach and everything seemed perfectly fine until I received news that the National Judo Competition was one week after Swinburne.

I had to choose between two loves. I had joined both sports at 16 (okay yeah I was in debate meetings at 15, but that doesn't count), and they were both obsessions. But in the end it was my obligation to the state that won out - so St Thomas's debate teams suffered from my exclusion.

I am to blame. I made strategic mistakes during the competition in both team setup and case setting, and I wish I can go back in time to rectify them. It was very painful for me to see other teams with less training win. It was even harder for me to see them grow, because I wanted to grow too.

Yes, it was a better time, that 2005. When I had first started and I was wildfire and I had two pillars to lean on. When Orlnda was the team coach - not me - and I had only my rebuttals to worry about. When I was up there speaking and I knew everything I said to be true and strong and kick-ass.

2005 was a time when I was still new. And I want to go back to it.

The Sukma Selections 2008

There are just some things you don't want to talk about. This is one of them. There a few people I've to thank - the first being the original five Thomian judokas who brought me out for lunch after the comp. And also to a very special friend, who taught me optimism isn't overrated after all.

And yeah. Here are the snippets of the best throws in the comp. Joash has done an amazing job with the vid (hey if you're reading this man: great choice of song!). I'm in there from 0:28 to 0:42. And. Yes. I was yelling.

Step Outside Your Clique

It was an uncomfortable moment. I was seated between two people, one of which I'll call N, and the other I'll call D. Both were clamoring for my attention, on two very different topics. I had no idea how I got to this position (actually I do have a fair idea how, but the alternative was to get up and go down to the track again and take pictures). And so here I was, on Sports Day, seated between two people who had no group to belong to.

N was looking for people to sell posters to. I told him to wait for D, whom I was pretty sure would be interested in fierce-looking helicopters and F-21 Raptors. I chased him off, and I sat looking at the athletes warming up on the track. It was very peaceful, this morning, the sun still low in the sky and everyone bathed in solid orange.

D found me soon after. He was trying to evangelize to Jason, who told him promptly: "You're weird." and went off to Hock Lee. D sat down next to me. He didn't look particularly miffed at the remark, but he did explain what he was trying to do to his friend, and then he asked me if I wanted to hear his sermon.

I said yeah, no problem.

D proceeded to hit me over the head with theological terms I had not heard since I was 13 (and that in confirmation class). "What is the two greatest promises Jesus has given us?" he asked, and I frowned, trying to recall what I had learnt long ago.

"Err, love your neighbour as much as you love your-"

"No, no - that was the two commandments. His promises, not the commandments. And there is the great commission. Know what the great commission is?"

"Not reall-"

"All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them -"

The words faded away in my head. I stared at Mr Choo down at the field, who was making sure all the runners were in position, and it struck me that I was in a highly ironic situation.

Before this year I had always a group I could go to, high in the stands, with a novel or a gameboy or a new handphone to distract myself with. Or I would sit and talk with Garrick and Paul and we would laugh at things we remembered, or decide that the entire thing was too boring and we should go somewhere else for a drink, or that the sun was too hot and too blinding and we should entertain ourselves by dropping ice on the kids several floors below.

But now I didn't have this group I could sit and talk with, so I settled in front of the tabulation room, watching the crowd and the events for stories I could tell later on, in The Square. I was sitting alone. I did get up, occasionally, to buy burgers and drinks, greeting half the school on the way down in the process, but it was the light, touch-and-go kind of greeting. I don't open up to many people, and while I am friendly to them, they are not my friends, in the true sense of the word. I was alone. Alone in a crowd.

And then I realized that these people: N and D and no doubt countless others in schools all over the world - the odd people - felt like this every single day. They had no group they could call their own, no clique to sit with and to talk to and to go buy stuff together (which, by the way, I do not understand - what's so great about going shopping in groups or following your friends to the toilet? Must be a girl thing). They yearned for people to listen to them, and I was very unfortunately sitting dead centre in the middle of the stands, right above the principal's chair.

I listened to N and D for a good part of Sports Day, talked to them, made them feel welcome, and I realized that they weren't very different from you and I. They might not be able to socialize as well, nor navigate the treacherous social world that is High School, but they have interests and ideas and thoughts that are pretty damned cool, once you got to know them. And I wouldn't have known them if I had stuck to my clique, if I had spent my day laughing at athletes and beating top scores and throwing ice. I would have been happy, true, but I would also have been oblivious.

Often it takes a change to move you out of your comfort zone and view the world through the eyes of the unpopular. But as Sports Day came to a close I was reminded of why most people didn't stick around them long enough to truly listen.

I was coming back from a shoot on the track and N stopped me. "Ced," he said.

"Yeah?"

"I feel ... so ... relieved." And N was panting, mind, heaving gasps of joy.

"Wha - why?"

"I just watched a blue film!" This had a note of pride to it.

I didn't know what to say. So I stuck my hands in my pockets, turned around, and headed back out into the sun.