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.