Pelajar Cemerlang

My skool wanted four guys to compete for the pelajar cemerlang prize, and this being Malaysia, they wanted one form every race. Basically this means one Malay, one Chinese, one Indian, and one Bumi.

So what happened was this: our school didn't have any malay dudes who got straight As for the PMR, so we had Aidan, who is basically a Iban/Chinese mix. And then we had Bryan, who's a Ceylon, and Byondi, a bumi. I was having one of flu bouts, and so was slightly confused and uncomfortable with standing out in the corridor with my nose threatening a Hiroshima-style explosion any second.

"Why so many people?" I asked (try to talk with your nose closed and you'll find out how i sounded then)

"We need Bumis," said teacher.

"I'm not Bumi," I said, and tried to make a dash for the class, where i knew a nice table and lots of tissues awaited me.

"Eh," Teacher stopped me. "We need one chinese."

When i looked through the form later on, i was appalled. There were blank spaces where you were supposed to put in competitions where you had joined, either school, zone, state, national or international levels. Half slobbering with flu, i told Paul that i didn't deserve this in the very least.

"You were the only debater who will be pulled on to next year." He said dolefully.

I pointed out that both Kenny and him were in it too. Kenny had leadership qualities, was class monitor, and attended leadership camp along with other hopefuls from other schools. Paul was troop leader and head of the entire scouts organization of St Thomas. I quit BB years ago, so didn't have anything (although my link and target badges are still lying nicely in my drawer).

Paul still looked doleful. "You were the only one among us that can speak. Very well."

I was just about to pursuade him that both of them were better than me, when another sneezing bout overcame me and i had to stop. By the time i recovered, it was time to go home and teacher was shutting down her Mac.

I slobbered back, half proud that i was chosen, and half disgusted with myself, since i didn't deserve anything like this.

The Inter Secondary Debate

I am tired, worn out, and, most of all, ANGRY. But first, let it be known i'm writing from a piece of paper, coz i'm just too done for to boot my PC.

The inter-school debate is a freakin unfair, useless and biased competition. Understatement of the century. There are judges who don't even know what to look for in debate teams. There are prejudices, discrimination and lame excuses.

St Thresa beat us.

But they beat us bad.

We put up a grand fight, covering all the bases and tying down arguments. In fact, we did better than all of them, since they didn't even have a stand! So when the debate went to the opposition (them) there was a collective murmur of confusion. They won? How?

The judges gave us lame excuses.

"Oh you were confusing about the health thing." Hmm? They confused you because they just couldn't get the difference between maintained and blessed health.

"Aaron didn't POI" Oh? The third speaker (me) was the POI guy for the team. He just passed his to me. Aaron wasn't EXPECTED to POI. Not in debate rules. Ever.

"You were on dangerous grounds when you said that success and education weren't the best things in life (their point). They could've said that 'Why are you in school, anyway?"

I couldn't shut up.

"As defined by the Oxford Reference dictionary, best means most desired. Education is not the most desired thing in life because according to the said study by Focus on the Family, backed up by Harvard and Yale, the top three most desired things in life is love and acceptance, good relations and health. But education is not in the top three, therefore it is not one of the best things in life."

The judge couldn't answer. She just laughed it off. Nervously.

And the real kicker is that Abigail went against 3rd speaker role and repeated her teammate's points. Read: she summed up for them. This is exactly what made us lose the thomain marion debate, in which i lost track completely of my role and did the reply speech. But when they did it nobody said anything. Consedering Helen Chua, Varsity debate judge made those comments (and helped us improve, as well as putting me through a baptism of fire), HOW DID THEY CONVIENTLY FORGET?! One of the judges was from St Mary, and she saw heard the comments along with the rest of us. So?

I summed it up with "We fought a good fight; we lost to a good team"

Kenny summed it up with "This year St Thom lose everything"

*

On the way to the toilets (i had been holding for the entire debate), Nelson, a guy from Sg Maong i met, lamented whe we lost.

"You know, i bet 5 bucks with a friend that St Thom would win."

We talked, laughed and parted ways. I walked dejectedly down the slope, jacket over shoulder, to the carpark.

It was the end of Aaron's debating career.