There were so many times I almost walked away. But I'm glad I didn't. It's the people that made me stay on. The guidance of Rachel as a senior, Scott as a coach and friend and Joanne for tolerating my fickleness and encouraging me and accepting whatever my decision was.
This people are people who accepted me for who I was. I wasn't labelled a 'wet blanket' or anything like that just because I was different, fought for a cause, and tended to view the world in that manner. They tolerated my nagging at switching the air cons off, getting on Ryan's case for using clean white sheets of Sinar Mas paper for every training and his lurid picture on the front of his debate book, talking about styrofoam, etc. etc.. Up till the last moment when I whipped out WWF's Sustainable Seafood Guide and declared a table-imposed ban on bluefin tuna when we were eating sushi, they could laugh at me and play along. This group of dynamic people taught me to laugh at myself.
I will never forget Yi Ting's aversion to velcro, Joanne's aversion to UV rays, Ryan's aversion to saliva, Kenwin and Shawn's aversion to... well nothing which is scary in and of itself. Yup, we are a quirky bunch of people (:
Things don't die so easily. We are not defined by competitions. Things don't have to change. We can still exploit Ryan for food, have morning invasions of the s31 table, eat like vultures, and of course mug together (with the exception of Ryan)
Sometimes things we yearn to be good at don't yield results as we would like but undoubtedly, they generate 'spin off benefits' that will reverberate throughout our lives. I would like to think my passion for this cause was ignited by the awareness of issues and this yearning for knowledge can be attributed to debate. I don't like attention, and having to go on stage to talk about Earthwatch initiatives was a chore but debate helped me to overcome the stage fright that exists in all of us.
To Bryan: Though we're not on same wavelength, I think we have reached a stage where we can poke fun at each other, and still know that mutual respect exists at the back of our minds. Although you portray a flippant side, we know that deep down you're a softie and that kind of fans the flames of my hope in humanity :P Thank you for tolerating our nonsense, tardiness, pathological predilection for food and the like.
After these 3.5 years, my debate journey has come to an end. I say this because it didn't end at IHLs for me, it didn't in HK, it ended when your journeys ended as well. Selfishly, another reason I came today was that I needed closure. While you guys trained and worked hard, I found myself constantly thinking of you guys while I was studying for SATs during the course of the week. This 6 man team was special and I never left, even though I didn't take part in MIDCs.
I think the reason why I never left was that I had a team. In all sincerity, thank you team. I really love you guys (:
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