Reminiscences on 9th National Inter-Varsity Chinese Debate 2003

today i will indulge in some reminscences after a stressful week of tests and endless pil lectures...:)

some of you who have been following this blog since 2003 will remember the time i joined the
9th National Inter-Varsity Chinese Debate (shortened to 'quan bian') organised by UM Chinese
Language Society as a 'gong wei' or committee member...at least 50 people - i kept count- asked me why i did it. there were a number of reasons, one of them being that Elizabeth, a good friend of mine from 4th College days asked me to join her and for the fact i wanted to break out of my
comfort zone, having never joined any such project before. i also saw it as a challenge to improve my fractured, fragmented Mandarin. hahaha, i know everybody had a hard time believing i was actually in this project, and that i attended meetings in 12th College faithfully...

yup, me and Elizabeth are known as 'bananas' aka Chinese who can't speak Mandarin or any Chinese dialect, for that matter. that's not exactly correct, i can speak Mandarin after a fashion
and Cantonese (i m from Ipoh after all...), Hakka (can't discourse on deep issues in Hakka
though) and i m picking up Hokkien...we had trouble following the meetings, Elizabeth used
to complain she would get a headache after trying to make out what the director of the
project was saying, while i would frantically try to piece the words together. and of
course, we never got the jokes. everyone else would laugh around us, but we would have this
utterly blur look...Ah Wee would obligingly translate for us later though. actually everyone
was very nice about helping us out except for this one guy who said i was a shame to Chinese
because i couldn't speak the language.

we started out in the 'mei su zhu' or art committee, but were moved to 'te wu zhu' or
special duties committee. that basically translated into a lot of running around, and odds
and ends sort of work. i used to prepare the debaters' and judges' rooms. the incident with
the coffee pot exploding was an accident...i still don't quite get what happened. all i know
is that my head and i had to mop up the mess and i swore off coffee for quite awhile...

to chart my experiences there, i kept a small notebook with comic sketches depicting my
feelings and thoughts then. one thing i couldn't get used to in a hurry was being addressed
in my chinese name instead of my english name. after awhile i came to like the sound of it. :)

then there was the time the chief judge of the UM-UNITEN round asked me for directions, and
i just stared at him blankly because he spoke way too fast. so i asked him to repeat his question in english...and showed him the way to his room. and i got to see Victor Gu, the host of the Chinese Who Wants to be a Millionaire in person, along with the 'bian lun ming xing' (debating stars)

and also singing christmas carols (finals was on 23rd december) while putting up decorations
with elizabeth...and eating rotiboy and Section 17 RM2.70 'chap fan' (rotiboy was one of the sponsors of this project)...and the 'wei lau yen' or celebratory dinner where i drank too much chinese tea and couldn't sleep as a result. i did produce a stream of consciousness poem on love as a result, though.

i really wished i could follow the debates because they looked very exciting...more so than
staid english debating. and because each debater was given 4 mins or less, they all spoke
very very fast. i couldn't understand a word, except for the one time when i heard 'Chinese
should face up to reality' and i understood it. :P

i came to learn how such projects were planned and carried out with great precision. hats
off to Lee Siad Huey, a law fac senior who was director and her committee members...she
really cared about all of us, and was extremely charismatic and capable. i have never joined
a project where the director was so concerned about our food and transport needs, and took
the time to speak to each one of us personally.

in fact i want to dedicate this post to Siad Huey, Yen Hwa (aka Harn's buddy, i ve always
looked up to both you and Siad Huey...smart, capable and kind people), Ah Wee, Li Si (my
direct head), Jia Wen, Weir Shin (better not to do the acrobatics on the metal bar outside
the library, you might break it), Pei Mang (go go 4th College!), Tze Her and Shu Jian
(thanks for being our 'designated drivers'), Shiau Liang (the reason why Elizabeth joined,
and later i did too) and all the wonderful people i met through this project...you guys were
the greatest!

i learned so much and i had a lot of fun, despite coming back at 315 am on the day of the
finals and having to rush my constitutional law assignment due the next day, during which my
friend's computer chose to break down causing me to delay finishing it until 445 am.
consequently i missed 3 lectures the next day, but i managed to hand in the assignment,
enjoy the open house in my fac cafeteria and pack to go home to ipoh for christmas...those
were the days...:)

well, what more have i to say...this saturday is the finals for the 10th National Inter-
Varsity Chinese Debate 2006 which will be held at Wisma MCA along Jalan Ampang, and UM is going against UPM...Go for the Gold, UM! and great going, Shu Jian (this year's project director) and co...:) sorry i couldn't be part of the team this time, but you know i have always and will always support all of you.