Musings

Since I was writing recollections of my extra-curricular activities the week before last, here’s another entry on debating at NTU. The Australasians tournament in Melbourne ‘95 was an eye-opener, and from that point till 2000 I got involved training polytechnic, secondary school, and JC debating teams, and also adjudicated in several other local and regional tournaments.

The highlight was in 2000 when we headed to Sydney for the World Universities competition. This competition is the largest of its kind, and unlike the World Schools, the participants at World Universities span the age range. In Singapore at least, undergraduates tend to be those compacted around either the post-diploma/’A’ levels/NS age group. Elsewhere from the world, and certainly so for Australia, there were a number of adult debaters who were also post-graduate students. And with that age came a more mature understanding of content matters and tenacity to boot when delivering their speeches.

The host university this time was the University of Sydney, and this institution isn’t merely regarded as one of the top institutions in Australia. Their debating team has on more than a few occasions won the competition. The tournament saw participation from more than 100 Universities around the world, and NTU as I recall it sent three teams, with three motherhens, whoops adjudicators; two staff and myself. No, at that point I was no longer a student of NTU (I was legitimately a student of Curtin University at that juncture), so I registered as NTU-Alumni.

We were housed on campus, and the building I stayed in was St. Andrews’ College, and there was an incredible feeling of history and heritage as walked through its corridors. I wish I’d taken more pictures of the place. The NTU teams fared well too in the tournament, though they were eliminated from the competition during the advanced knock-out rounds. The championship was eventually taken by Monash University.

The thing about these tournaments ultimately isn’t about debating, but about meeting people doing the same thing as you are but in other parts of the world. I certainly enjoyed all the social functions, and this picture here never fails to make Ling a little green-eyed. The lovely ladies are from the Tokyo Woman’s Christian University. No, that’s not me getting drunk during our Championship Dinner event (I’m teetotaler!), but me blushing furiously.:)

I’ve got a longer writeup at this link here, which I remember I was writing and updating on the fly on a daily basis at Sydney’s Internet cafes. And you have to keep in mind that this was pre-Internet blogging days.:)

I wrote this entry several weeks ago to post up when I’m too busy to write current entries. So here it goes.:)

A student blogger on the other blog I write for was noting how quickly time has passed in his course, and how in the matter of a few months he won’t be seeing his classmates, lecturers, and school anymore. His whole cohort will be starting on their 4 – 8 month industry internship program.

Truth to tell, it’s the student experiences when I was in school that provided the most memorable moments. Ok, so I don’t remember every nugget, but my memory is still reasonably fresh of my bachelor degree days at NTU onwards. So, following up from an earlier entry, one of the activities I was heavily involved in was debating. I went from being on the reserve list as a freshman to captain for the faculty team in my second year, then captain for the university team in my final year, and adjudicator just before I convocated.

The first competition I adjudicated in was the Australasians Intervarsity Debating Championships, which was hosted by Monash University in Melbourne, June 1995. NTU sent two teams of three student-speakers each, and being older and just finished my final year examinations, I was the trainer-mentor-chaperon aka Mother Hen during the trip.

At that point 13 years ago, adjudicators while still students like myself were very uncommon even though they are the norm in current competitions today. In fact, adjudicators then were University teaching staff. So, to get selected and then represent NTU as a adjudicator while still a student was a bit of an achievement. The tournament didn’t use adjudicator panels in the preliminary rounds then (and that’s also changed for some of the international tournaments too), so I was all alone to have to listen to six persons debate extempore style for each of the seven prelim rounds.

The debaters themselves spanned quite the range. I remember that the Philippine teams were always passionate. Many also had an attractive timbre in their debating voices. The local i.e. Aussie teams all spoke the language fluently and exhibited comfort levels in employing quips and humor that weren’t common in other teams. The Malaysian and NUS-Singapore teams were hard to differentiate given how similarly we speak English. And there was that running joke about the NTU teams – whether we were a Singaporean or really an Indian national contingent given how dominant was Indian scholar representation on the NTU teams.

I was blessed enough too to emerge relatively unscathed in the rounds I adjudicated too. And boy, do complaints fly like wild during these tournaments. How so? Well, bear in mind there is always a winner and a loser in a debate, the loser does not like losing, and the losers still comprise each University’s brightest and most eloquent students to have made it this far. Put it together and you get complaints galore. So, maybe I took meticulous notes. Or I was just persuasive. Or more likely I was just super loh-soh i.e. long-winded in my verbal assessments that teams readily accepted my verdict just so I’d shut up and they’d be able to move onto the next round.

And all that is just the debating part of it. We had time during our 9 day trip to hit the sights, and that was where the fun really began. The 1995 trip was my first to Australia, though at that juncture I of course had no idea I would be a frequent traveler to Australia 8 years later during my doctoral studies. We went on day trips up and down the coast. We walked. We hit their local cuisine.

And that wasn’t the end of it. Because on the very last day, the NTU team checked out late from the hotel despite my stern reminders the night before that we would be paying an extra night’s stay if they weren’t timely. They got a terrific earful from me, especially because I was the one footing the additional hotel bill for their slovenly attitude. The Student Affairs Office at NTU promised to reimbursed me for the bill, but I never got round to it – bleh.

But all these are memories, and great wonderful ones at that. The two photos here; one is with my other fellow adjudicators. Notice how old and wizen they look compared to my youthful appearance. The other is with the University of the Philippines that I’d adjudicated and became friends with thereafter. I started work about 5 months after the trip- I had to return to national service to fulfill three months of training that I’d deferred. And while there’s been many great memories at work over the 13 years I’ve worked, it’s been student memories that’ll brighten my day.

So, yep, I know how Ling felt during her recent Venice trip mother-hening her choir girls.:)

Truth to tell, I didn’t always want to be a teacher. Heck, growing up with a family where nearly every person on my maternal side was a language teacher, I wanted to be anything but a teacher.

Why I eventually became a teacher is a long story, but this entry isn’t about my turning academic. It’s about what I really wanted to be when I was young. And in no order of merit, it was…

• An opera singer. Like the late baritone Hermann Prey. My idol. I dreamt of singing the part of Figaro in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro. In fact, when the selections from the opera play from one of our classical music CDs in the car, I’ll be singing in Italian. No clue if Ling is amused.
• A classical pianist. Like the great Russian pianist, Vladimir Horowitz, who played only on Steinway & Sons grandpianos. I dreamt of performing Mozart piano concertos, e.g. like the really beautiful No. 22 in E Flat, at Carnegie Hall.
• A cellist. Like Jacqueline du Pré. Of all the orchestral instruments (the piano doesn’t count), this is the instrument I love listening to the most. There’s an incredibly sexy and rich timbre to the string instrument.
• A vigilante for The Weak and The Oppressed ™. Think, cape, mask, cowl, and jumping off roof tops. No kidding. Lucky I didn’t. Maybe reading all those comic books weren’t exclusively all beneficial.
• A lawyer. This one was a late-adolescent thing, and it largely came because when I was in NTU and the captain for the faculty, hostel then finally University debating team, I had so many friends who’d ask why I was in Computer Engineering and not Law. Could be because I was a vicious debater who said very angry, rude, and unpleasant things when I debated. And I think my friends generally associated all those personal characteristics to lawyers.

And here’s a funny note: as recently as a few years ago, the videos of my speeches were still apparently used as training videos to teach new debaters at NTU. Or maybe those videos were used as negative exemplars to show unnecessary levels of viciousness in debates. In any case, those Indian debaters were like 8 years after I graduated and able to recognize me during alumni functions when I have no clue who they are. They all go “Mr. Yang, it’s such a pleasure to finally meet you in person” and I go “Erm, ok!”

So there you go. I really didn’t want to teach, but all that changed, well, 15 years ago. But it’s fun to think about such alternative life-paths.:)