Muahahahaha! We are the CHAMPIONS!

Yup yup yup! The secret is out!

What secret? You never mentioned anything about a secret...

Oh yes I did... Remember the 'thing' that I was hinting at in the past blog entries? The one where I said I was counting down, but then it was postponed etc etc? Well yes. Now that it's finally over - and the tension and pressure is off, phew! - I can finally blog about it! The reason why I didn't blog about it before is 'cause I was secretly afraid I'd 'jinx' it. Silly of me, I know...

Anyway, what happened is this:

In the last week of July 2007 (just about a month ago lar...), I participated in the Yayasan Sarawak World Style English Debate 2007 as a team member of UNIMAS B. This was the second time I'd joined this competition, the first time being last year, which saw my team then failing to make it to the semifinals. This year, with my fellow worthy teammates who shall be henceforth be referred to as Quay and Wani in this here blog of mine, the competition was hosted by Inti College Sarawak, and personally, the thought of the competition kept me awake for quite a number of nights. Yes, I was that nervous. Anyway we joined the debate competition, and just for the fun of it (and to pass the time in between the debate rounds) I decided to join the Public Speaking (henceforth referred to as PS) competition as well. Imagine my surprise when on the final day (after 4 rounds of preliminary debates) of the preliminaries we found ourselves through to the semifinals, and they liked me (or rather, my speech on "Seven Ways To Have A Son") enough to send me through to the semifinals of the PS competition as well. Of course, we were ecstatic, cos we were hoping we could make it through to the semis, at the very least. So then, imagine our further surprise and happiness when we found ourselves through to the Finals! And, if you can, try to imagine my horror and fear when I found the nice judges liked me (or rather, my speech about how "Life Is Like An Umbrella") enough to gimme a ticket to the finals of the PS as well. Why horror you ask? Well simply because I wasn't expecting it at all (remember I joined just for the fun of it?), and now I had two highly stressful things to do on the same day: be part of the UNIMAS B debate team in the finals, and the PS finals too. So there you have it. What started out as a walk in the park transmogrified into a living nightmare, Doc Jeckyll transformed into Mr Hyde. Like, wow.

So then, as is of course the rule of nature, time passed quickly enough. Before we knew it, one month had passed and yesterday arrived. Gee that sounds a little odd. What I meant to say is... Oh, you know what I meant to say! Anyway, yes, our kind and generous officer-in-charge-of-us treated us to a really nice lunch of briyani rice at this place called Tok Janggut Cafe. Then we arrived at Inti College at about 1 p.m. I think Quay and Wani were probably the best dressed debaters that day. Or at least the ones who got the most compliments. What we did was try to 'coordinate' out outfits for the finals. Quay wore a jeepah (is that how you spell it, Quay?), and Wani wore a black cheongsam. Sure interesting right? I wore my usual green baju kurung. So there we were, at the finals, trying our best to fight off the deluge of stress and tension and pressure. It just so happens that UNIMAS emerged as champions in the debate competition for the past 2 years, so yeah, we were really hoping we could retain the trophy (and the title, 'champions' has a nice ring to it). But we were up against some really good teams, and when it was time to draw lots, we ended up being the Closing Opposition team, which by the way (and it's something of a secret... so far) was my team's personal favourite. So far, so good. Then they released the motion: "This house wants teachers to teach and parents to discipline." Talk about a really tough topic! This was really confusing for us. But I'll spare the reasons why (it might get a little too technical). Anyway to cut a reeeeeeeeeally long story short, we won. Yup you read that right. We won the debate competition. We're the CHAMPIONS... Again! So this is 3 years running that UNIMAS have conquered the trophy. And apparently because of this, the challenge trophy is ours. Yup, it's official. We don't have to give back the pretty trophy anymore. It stays... In UNIMAS! Muahahahaha! And on a further note, I won the public speaking competition too. That's right, I'm the champion of the public speaking finals! I guess they really really really really like my speech - "My World Is Orange" (why do I always get the weirdest topics?). I won! I won! I won! I won! Muahahahaha! My entire university's happy, my debate family is happy, my team is happy, I'm happy! And today, our faces were plastered in all the local newspapers. So far, that makes it the Borneo Post, the Eastern Times, the Sin Chew Jit Poh, the See Hua Daily News, the Utusan Borneo, and the Utusan Sarawak. Quite a bit of publicity I know, and I know a lot of people are squirming even as they read this, but really, please try to understand it from our point of view... Some of us have never seen ourselves in the paper, so yes, it is a big deal for us. Sad I know, but that's okay, at this very moment, we're all really happy people.

And how did I celebrate last night?

I had 2 packets of curry-flavoured instant noodles.

A can of ice-cold Coca-Cola would have made it perfect.

See? I'm really just a simple person. The simple things in life make me smile. The memories of Wednesday, the 29th of August 2007, are gonna make me smile for a very long time.

Cheers!

P.S. Will post up pictures as soon as I get my hands on them... End of P.S.