GEBPSDCs 2nd round

Hi all,

(Word of warning: This post will most likely not be counted in my blog post count, because of its obvious length problem. So don't say I didn't warn you.)

You must all be wondering why I left early on April's Fool. The reason is actually quite simple: To watch, once again, the GEBPSDCs, but this time, it was the round of 16 and the quarter finals. So, I left early to prepare 8 classrooms within 1 hour. Well, this would have been easy, assuming that current conditions were perfect, but as you know, there's no such thing as utopia. Some problems we faced were uncooperative seniors (no offence) who didn't want to clear out of their air-conditioned classrooms and had to make every Sec 3 debate senior positively furious at them before clearing out of their classrooms. Then, there was also the problems of seniors who wanted to return to their classrooms during the debate. We also had a very hard time persuading them to clear out. After these problems were resolved and after the debates themselves, we had to put back the table, and as fate would have it, the table arrangement was wrong, and which table belonged to who wasn't the priority. Who said that fate didn't want us to have our revenge? :)

More into the rearrangement process. We had to move arrange the tables in a fixed format and we had to place bottles on every speaker's /adjudicator's table. To do this, the Sec 1s formed the organisation called "Saikang" Warriors. "Saikang" means, well, doing dirty work and its a hokkien word. In fact, if I were to break the word up, "Sai" means human waste(euphemism :)), and "kang" means work, so well. Anyway, we carried the bottles up three stories (oops, am I giving you too many clues which classes these seniors were from? Haha) And we managed to finish the classrooms just before the inquisitive Primary School students rushed into the classrooms to enjoy the aircon.

Now, into the more interesting portions: the debates! Well, basically, the two debate motions read, "THB in a 4-day work week" and "THBT child sportsmen should not be allowed to turn professional". The 4-day work week motion was a little screwed up, because Prop and Opp define it the same way and both them stuck to their definitions. The Prop says that a 4-day work week refers to the 40hr work week being shortened to 32 hr, while the Opp says that its compressing 4ohr into 4 days. Seriously, what was lacking was to attack each side on their own ground, example being, "Even if we go along their definitions of 4-day work week, their case still holds no water, because..." That would make things easier a BILLION times. I was shadow-adju-ing (an unofficial adjudicator) Clementi and Casuarina for the 4-day work week motion. Apparently Casuarina's first speaker was a MediaCorp child actor, he looked vaguely familiar at any rate, but yeah. The Casuarina team was so cute! They were ending off their speech with (They were Opp), "now, my dear Proposition, let me ask you a question: Do you still believe in a 4-day work week?" and the Prop 1st speaker was like smirking and vigourously shaking his head. However, Clementi won in the end, even though both had really good style. I had the feeling it was the reply speaker of Casuarina (the child actor) who lost it. He was basically saying the Prop hasn't actually showed anything and that's all. It's like, I can immediately assume that, because he didn't say it, Opp hasn't shown anything as well!

So anyway, after this, we had the second debate. This time, the quality was obviously higher, because this was St Hilda's vs RGPS. Do you know that I could have gone to St. Hilda's, but didn't? But that's a story for another time. Anyway, i was a little biased towards St. Hilda's, cause I know their speakers casually, and I have two good P5 friends who are boys, just in case you were wondering, there. Anyway, this particular debate went on OK, and I felt that the debate should have gone to St. Hilda's not because of the fact that I was biased, but the JC judges felt that St. Hilda's was too stiff and inflexible. 

After the debates, the "Saikang" Warriors had to help carry boxloads of water and stuff to a Humanities Programme classroom (I'm not stating where this classroom is and the classrooms that we used for the debate were not HP classrooms) .

Yup, so that's all. It was an interesting experience, but I am none the wiser about how to be a good adjudicator. However, I don't think I'll die.  

Cheers,

Darrel