this following blog post contains certain sensitive topics so please read at your own discretion. i am being very frank here.

Interhouse debates today made yuzhou and i particularly emotional.

why so?
because some HIGHLY irresponsible, insensitive, unthoughtful, senseless people refused to cooperate with their house mistress, with their interhouse debate i/c, with the debate organizing committee, as they failed to adhere and set aside whatever commitments they had in order to come for today's 4th and final debate this afternoon. prior to this, my team (buckley 1) already had morrison 2 to agree to the schedule that we would give them, after they failed to have a full team present during the preliminary rounds, which was around 2 weeks ago.

they HAD to come down this afternoon as a full team in order for the debate to take place, but unfortunately for some stupid personal reasons of their own, they did not turn up. the debate i/c tried frantically to contact them, but none of them answered. just the day before, they promised that they would come down. ALL SIX of them. in the end, only 3 turned up.

here, you may ask. 'why not just have a walkover? that'll settle everything.'
well, we have aplenty of reasons to tell you why we don't want a walkover.

Win with pride - We want to win this debate fair and square (i.e no walkover), and we want to prove that we won the debate by skill, and not by a fluke.

Confidence - We are confident that we have a solid case, and have a possibility of winning them by a convincing margin. This point margin is crucial, as it will determine whether we have a large winning margin that is huge enough to guarantee us a spot in the finals.

Currently, hullett 1 is secured of a spot in the top two as they have won 3 out of 3 debates with a 4.5 point margin lead. others vying are moor 1 (2/3 wins, next debate with hullett 1), hullett 2 (3/4 wins, 2.5 point margin lead), and buckley 1 (2/3 wins, 1 point margin lead). Yes, we know the odds are against us, but we believe we can pull it off as we'd prepared hours and hours for this motion.

Highly rigid rules - The organizing committee insists that, although i can't find it in the interhouse debates proposal, in the event of a walkover, the winning team will be guaranteed a win. HOWEVER, it will win by a 0 point margin.

HELLO? so what's the USE of winning? you win and you get a 0 point margin? then you might as well just lose. and here's what the confusion sets in even deeper. initially, when buckley 1 had completed our first two debates, our next two debates faced possibilities of a walkover. that meant that if we were to walkover our 3rd debate, we have to win our 4th one in order to the 3rd one to be declared a win, vice versa if we lose. we decided not to take that stupid risk and went ahead as we wanted to debate all 4 rounds.

Unfortunately for us, we had to face the prospect of a morrison 2 having a few very irresponsible team members, and we had to have our debate POSTPONED AGAIN to next tuesday. and guess what? in the event they fail to turn up again, the round will be declared a walkover, and we will just have a measly 3 wins with a 1 point win margin.

TELL ME WHAT IS THE USE OF THAT? AFTER ALL THE HARD WORK, YOU MEAN WE ONLY DESERVE FOURTH OUT OF TEN TEAMS? JUST BECAUSE OF THIS RULING AND THE FACT THAT SOME PEOPLE ARE SO UNCOMMITTED AND IRRESPONSIBLE?

It's because of this few people that disrupts the entire process; It's because of them that so many people's times are wasted. Your house mistress feels lousy, your interhouse debate i/c feels bad, we as your opponents feel disgusted and upset, the organizing committee feels that they are being put in a spot.

if ONLY you people could WAKE UP and exercise some basic responsibility and COMMIT to what you promised to do for yourself and for your HOUSE, then this wouldn't even have happened at all. CAN'T WE JUST GET THIS OVER AND DONE WITH?

Why am i feeling so upset?

It's because prior to today, yuzhou and i and marvin and jiawei spent HOURS AND HOURS burning midnight oil JUST to get the freaking case done. we worked so hard, sacrificed so much time when we could've did our revision, and yet, you as our opponents do not even credit us the BASIC RESPECT to at least turn up for the debate.

i just feel terribly annoyed and upset by the actions of these specific people. if i see these people from morrison 2 (with the exception of those that turned up today), you all will be facing the music. all the best to you guys.

this brings me back to the point on basic responsibility. some people truly don't live up to their reputation! to think some people could even ask me 'whats buckleydf'07' when they had a part to play in the very first place! i'm sorry if you feel offended, but seriously, before you even begin to bear a grudge against me, think about it: What have you done to justify the leadership position you have now? Do you feel ashamed that the contributions that YOU have made pales in comparison to your credential?

that's all i have to say. i'm just exhausted for today. a little revision of physics, and off to bed.