This house believes that debate is a rewarding experience for high school kids!

Group picture during Cedric's farewell potluck...it's truly great knowing you guys!

This post is long overdue...

I thank God for today...

The pressure of building 70 cases and preparing 210 points(at the very least) PLUS 22 policies...that can only mean one thing...IT's back. "What's back?" you ask. Well...SAY HELLO TO THE SWINBURNE WSDC 2009, PEOPLE!

Just a little background for those of you who are reading this and have no idea whatsoever what i'm crapping about...

The Swinburne WSDC(World Schools Debating Championship) is an annual event and this is the fourth year they're holding it. The tournament is hosted by the Swinburne University of Technology Sarawak Campus and is organized by the Swinburne Debaters' Club.

The tournament is run as such:
Each participating team gets to debate in 5 preliminary rounds, in which no one gets knocked out. Instead, points are accumulated and based on the number of wins, each team gets ranked. The top 8 teams 'make the break' and go into the quarter finals where the knockout starts. Oh, the tournament is divided into 2 categories:
a, Junior category (teams in lower sec)
b, Senior category (teams in upper sec)

We had a practice round this year (which we didn't have last year due to lack of time) which basically is so the debaters can familiarize with the style and all seeing as the style is a little different from the style we use in the Inter-school Debate Competitions. In the prelims, the first round is a random match. This means...ya la...clear what. Random matches la. After the first prelim, they do what we term 'power matching', meaning they pitch winning teams against winning teams, based on the each team's margin of win. A close margin then goes up against a close margin, a clear margin against another clear margin and a thrashing against another thrashing. In the prelims, the will be instances where a junior team gets pitched against a senior team. They will only be split into two categories when the 'break' is announced. Then it goes on into quarter finals, semis, and finals.

My school's team(we only sent one team) broke into the quarter finals second from the top in the senior category. Individual speaker ranking-wise I ranked 7th. Not too bad, as I think debate is not exactly my niche. In fact, I spent quite some time in between the matches and waiting for verdicts talking to other music-crazed debaters!

I will not upload any photos on the Swin WSDC. There have been too many picture-posts on it already. If you still want to see some, go to http://purpledoi.blogspot.com.

I will just put the next part in here too instead of doing a separate post, since it's debate-related.

We had a farewell for our trainer, Cedric, since he's leaving(or has he left??) for KL. Initially it was supposed to be at Pizza Hut or something, but we ended up having a farewell potluck(which I think was a better concept...economic recession...save cost! Haha) which was hosted by Aldrin and Felicia(thanks guys for opening up your home to us!).

Since we're all debaters right...it was a nutty night. We even got to see Cedric play the piano! Then again, I left early, so I missed the fun debate they had...all in all I think it was good that at least we got together to appreciate Cedric. After all, what's one night to compare to all the time and effort he's put into training us, listening to and adjudicating our practice debates.

Cedric, I can't think of anything else to say but thank you for your counsel and guidance throughout my high-school debate life.

Paul, thanks for your guidance and advice. It was really neat having you to help out despite your busy schedule.

Sam, thanks for being the captain. And for the drive to go further. All the best in the upcoming inter-school debate!

Alex, thanks for just being on the team with me and for the little conversations that we had along the way. PMR this year, gal. I know you can do it. Continue to be faithful in all you do.

Teresa, Sasha and Felicia, thanks for tagging along to Swin with us. I hope that all you've seen will help you guys to prepare for next year's Swin WSDC.

McDougall brothers(and sister), thanks for the nuttiness and the spice you guys added to the experience. You guys turned out to be such great sports! Thanks for the the briefs y'all shared when we broke, thanks for the tubes of Mentos you guys unselfishly gave of, and thanks for all the support you gave us.

Garrick, thanks for the photos and for putting up with us. LOL.

Thanks also to the music-crazed debaters I mentioned earlier in my post, it was nice having met you guys, who are all as nuts about music as I am, and maybe even more! All the best to you guys in your music lives...and debate lives, I guess. Lol.

Last but not least, a big thank you to the Swinburne Debaters' Club for organizing the event which brought us all together.