So of course it had to come and pass.
I arrived at the English room at about 8 and found the room in a healthy tangle of cables and laptops and papers and people. (The tangle meant that these random objects were thrown together, not that the people were tangled around each other).
Ben was watching Heroes on Tay's laptop. Tay was playing minesweeper on the desktop, with the projector for a screen. Tay's ipod was hanging from a speaker, blaring out a Nicholas Teo tune (I requested ... Must. Stop. Noise. Pollution ... ). The rest of us were doing whatever it was that mattered to us.
SMSing, for instance.
Or reading debate books.
Or just plain posing.We started late, with Cikgu Orlinda's Powerbook (Stupid Macs! - she says, waving her hands) failing to connect to the projector and forcing Tay to resort to creative measures to get everything up and running. Shang is forced to fight for time for the rest of the workshop, forever asking us:
"Am I going too fast?"
"Do I have to elaborate this slide?"
"Oh gosh, we don't have enough time, do you want me to do the 2nd example?"
And of course we all nod our heads (or shake them) allowing him to speed along at a just-slow-enough pace. Which means fast lah, for those of you who can't catch.
Ravin was pissed by the end of the workshop, though. He thought that the younger students just didn't understand what Shang was doing for us - by actually taking the time and coming over and teaching. I don't think you can blame them, really - the brilliance of what he talks about is only apparent in its entirety with some basic debate experience.
But what amazed me most was Shang's passion for the sport - it's like something I'd do ... but for Judo. I never regarded debate as something I'd blog and shout and talk about ... it was always something that yes, I was in, and no, I couldn't get out of.
So maybe it did teach me a lot about critical thinking ... but not at the level Shang operates. His passion takes him out and away, reading books I've never even heard of and expressing complex concepts in a few sentences - in words that just seem to fit together. That's one skill I think we can all do with - what we've got is a lot of brilliant minds in the Thomian debating team; the only problem? We can't seem to express the ideas that pop up in simple enough English.
Urm, what that means is ... the Thomian debating team sucks.
And it's true. A major flaw in the 2006 team was the lack of intra-team communication - rebuttals are solely by my ability, as is recording the opponent's cases (and almost anything and everything else, really, like input during the writing of the speeches, or going over them). Things were a lot easier when Aaron was around - he'd delegate and we'd operate, and the components would just click together.
No idea how he does it.
Okay, okay, better stop on the analysis. We had a demo debate, with unexpected results. (Read: terrible).
I think it's the worst debate among all those workshops Shang has conducted.
Okay, maybe the worst debate Shang has ever seen.
No, make that the worst debate to ever grace the English room (and that's saying something, considering its history).
Motion: 'The house would abolish the death penalty.' I was gov, with Samuel as first speaker. He was new and he just about broke every first speaker rule there was. No stand, vague definition, no case allocation, and 6 blaardy points of information that was absolutely amazing to watch.
Amazing means laugh out loud funny.
Amazing also means desperately awaiting divine intervention.
Then Jacob came up. If Sam made us laugh (and die inside), then Jacob made us die of laughter outside. He walked up to our table in the middle of his speech and asked,
"Actually I'm waiting for more POIs. Got any or not? Mr Bong?"
*
Thing pretty much went downhill after that. No formal time keeping, no formal adjudication panel, and we were losing the audience like the disciples had Jesus. The only good thing out of it were the comments (which also weren't very good because we weren't very good to start off with). But Shang was really nice about it, and the only speaker who was anywhere near a competent level was Joash. I made my speech fizzle out, and I was shaking (something which hadn't happened since my first debate).
I am officially losing it.
What did I take out of this whole experience? Hrmm. Shang said that overall the 3rd speakers were okay, but that's just him being nice. There were the major points of contention of the debate, which we failed to address in our speeches and there is this whole Government case which we thought was smart, but turned out too smart to be on the verge of stupidity.
Okay I have officially lost it.
What I've learned today will probably fill a booklet. This worskhop was great ... it showed me that there is good yet in this sport. That there are whole levels of thinking out there - whole vistas of clash and reasoning and doubt.
And that there are individuals completely crazy about travelling the world ... and disagreeing with everyone they meet.
Thank you, Shang, thank you.
Oops wrong picture ... there.
