Friday, November 30, 2007

Royal Debate 2007

Damn, it's been almost 3 months since I last blog here. Well sorrie for not keeping up to date due to the hectic schedule that I was suddenly dumped with. In addition, I was unfortunate that my faithful laptop, DurBy, was malfunction since then. However, that's all changed and things are looking good... :D

Just previously, I participated in the Royal Debate tournament that was held at Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) Shah Alam. It involves only with all of the public universities throughout Malaysia, and students would debate in either of the three languages: English, Bahasa Malaysia, or Arabic. Of course I opt for the english debate since that's the only language I would be more confident to speak. Anyway, UMT sent two teams for english: 1 senior and 1 junior team. The Junior team compromises of 1st year students: Aizat (1st Speaker), Manu (2nd Speaker), Wan (3rd Speaker) and Pahsia (Researcher). As for the Senior team compromises of 3rd year students: Me (1st Speaker), Sabby (2nd Speaker), Hanushia (2nd and 3rd Speaker) and Berry (3rd Speaker). Hanu debated once as the 2nd speaker and twice as the 3rd speaker. The UMT also sent 3 teams for the Bahasa Malaysia debate, but I'm not sure who's who in which team. Although I do know about Uzair and Kama, since both are my coursemates (yeah marine biology rocks!).

Overall, I wasn't satisfied with the 2007 Royals because it wasn't properly handled as compared to the 2005 Royals in UKM. Not to mention, UKM really made the event much enjoyable. The only thing I did like about what the UiTM have done is just the t-shirt they managed to produce. Other than that, I sure had a lot of fun memories from discussing about the physics of the human body with the UTM boys to the disapproval of the loss that the UM judge gave us over the motion "This House Believes That Genetic Modified Food is the Answer to Global Food Crisis". For goodness sake, there's no such thing as GM food to be much costlier than organic food.

Here's a short photo essay for y'all to enjoy:


The BM debaters practising by having a mock debate. I forgot what was the issue they were debating at the time.
That's Uzair, the man in charge of handling the BM debate and training the BM debaters. I wish I could understand what's he saying most of the time. Hehe..

On the way to UiTM Shah Alam, as ya can see there are those who are enjoying the time by having a good chit chat.


Here's a good junior debater at work, James, just busy looking for casefacts. :P


Of course other than chit chatting, there are those who would doze off and sleep in the comfort of the new bus such as here with Kama and Erni.

The new UMT bus that dropped us off at UiTM Shah Alam and picked us up from there to UMT. The bus and the driver should have been there with us throughout the whole time.

Despite our bad performances, I'm sure that everyone learned an invaluable experience that we will never forget. I do hope the juniors will take this oppurtunity to promote more on debate at UMT and that this would act as a catalyst to spark more interest toward the future students at UMT. With that Dear Speaker, I finish this blog by bid you a pleasant thank you.