Well, we, meaning me, Ian, Gerard, Daniel and Rebecca participated in a Singapore Secondary School Debate competition on Friday. The speakers were me, as first, Ian as second and Gerard as third. Rebecca and Daniel were reserves and I had to do the Reply Speech. Just before the debate, we were really nervous so a short prayer was said. We sat down and just talked for about 5min while waiting for the other debate to end. When the debate ended, we entered and took our seats. I was so nervous when the MC was introducing the debate. I took a sip of water and stood up when my I was called up to speak. I stated all my points and definitions with no problem at all cause the ACS Barker debaters did not POI me at all. I was so happy when the 5min bell went which signalled an end to all POIs. Marc, our debate coach, distracted me with the hand motion to conclude and i stopped for a while, lost my trail of thought. In the end, I managed to finsih it with no problems and 15sec to spare. Next speaker was Ian. He did a good job rebutting and stating his points. He too was not offered a single POI. The same went for Gerard. After all the speakers had spoken, a 2min interval was given for me to prepare my reply speech. I was totally stressed at that point. First of all, I did'nt know what to say, and second of all, I was confused with the points. Mr Anandraj had to go to the extent of calming me down before i managed to deliver my Reply Speech. I think I did'nt do very well in that due to the fact that I said expression of speech instead of expression of choice. Anyway, I was happy that that was over and that we won! To celebrate, we went to Serene Centre for Mc Donald's. My dad sent some of us there. There we met David Menon, Ben Teo and Tim Lim. We ate Mc's then i cabbed home. What a tensed day. First one in and last one out in the debate! And it was my first competiton.
Monday, February 18