n00b Confessional

Been a while hasn’t it?

A trend I’ve noticed when it comes to my blog’s and I:

1. Posts are scarce and at best irregular
2. Most of them end up with “Been a while hasn’t it?”

Frankly, I do have stuff to write on, but for some odd reason that’s as far as it goes, it’d be like “Now this is something interesting to write about” and I draft whatever it is I want to say in my head, and halfway thru my train of thought, it’d be stored in a corner somewhere in that maniacal processing unit I have which is capable of remembering the oddest details and yet never seem to remember anything of great significance, I could tell you how much it the Galilean Proceedings cost the Catholic Church and yet couldn’t for the love of God remember your name.

For the past two weeks, I’ve been all the way down to Universiti Teknologi Malaysia in Johore for Iskandar-Debating 2010 (The name still cracks me up) as and adjudicator, and last week was at the International Islamic University Malaysia in Gombak for the IIUM Debate Open.

Yes, it seems apparent that debate has finally taken over, and it may be postulated that my social life is about to go downhill. It may further be deduced that I shall at one point in life have nothing else other than a bunch of “intellectuals” who constantly argue seemingly as they have a stand on the issue -whereas in fact they’d just as well be arguing for the other side, and that their beliefs on the issues being debated is determined by the tabs - on issues as if it would actually make a difference. If you had such thoughts forming in your head, this would be our reply “Slippery slope argument, SHAME MR SPEAKER!” :p

That being said, here’s what I’ve picked through the two weeks I’ve spent being at debate tournaments,

A n00b’s commentary on debate:

The thing I learned as an adjudicator is the fact that there is no one way of debating, and that you have to adapt your debating style to suit your adjudicators, some would be swayed to give the win to debaters with awesome manner (such adjudicators are scarce) others weigh their decisions based on role fulfillment, others - the ones who you never look you in the face, and are constantly writing the stuff you say word by word - these ones are the matter-heavy adjudicators. A common misconception is that so long as you are not a spectacular debater, you shouldn’t even think of dabbling in adjudication, though it may be true up to a certain extent, the one thing one appreciates as an adjudicator is the importance of a good argument and almost always not to come up with borderline ridiculous arguments. I now vow to almost always try to make sense during debates

Lesson learned: Read your adjudicators and give them exactly what they want.

For IIUM Debate Open, being placed in team 4, the team which where not much thought was put into, was initially paired with MC Stiff, probably because we were sitting next to each other, and was then paired with Atiq. Feeling like some abandoned child whose parents didn’t put much thought into (dramatic much? :p) paired with Atiq’s constant pep-talks meant to put some fight into this old jaded soul - being a social retard meant a permanent inability to respond to such social stimuli - team actually broke and was served an ass whopping by 2 relatively experienced debaters :p in the quarters. Most important lesson learned was; keep it real, always substantiate your arguments with on-the ground illustrations, something people almost always overlook. Keep it cool, as scary as Hafiedz may be jumping up and down trying to POI in your seven minute speech, which seemed like ages, keep calm.

Lessons learned : Keep it real, stay calm and collected. Life ain’t as crappy as you think it is :p

I have also embraced “Obama” and shall have to live with it

People say that perfection is impossible, I say screw you just watch me try ;)