It's a rush going to your head

I just came back from an awesome weekend, involving soccer, paintball and badminton. So.. who says students can't keep fit?

Now talking about paintball. One thing really riles me - the lack of the element of retribution. No, I'm not talking about revenge. Revenge is something totally different from retribution. Retribution is based on the golden rule of "don't do unto others what you don't want done unto yourself". Which means that if somebody shoots you within 8 metres even after you yell at him/her to surrender, you are very much welcome to spray the idiot full of paint, also within 8 metres. Then you get to walk away.

Retribution would make paintball so much more rewarding in terms of player satisfaction. As I bore witness at Oakleigh last Sunday, quite a number of players had sustained flesh wounds from close-range shots, even though the marshals had already cautioned us not to fire our markers when within 8 metres of an opponent. A number of them were disgruntled that the other players did not bother to obey the 8 metre rule. If the concept of retribution were to be implemented, I suppose that players would think twice before opening fire within the 8 metre zone, mainly because they would then know the pain of receiving close-range shots. This would thus reduce the number of injuries due to close-range shooting, I suppose.

Damn. I have ideas. Whether they work very well is another matter in practice.

Now back to work.

Rigged

How else would you describe a debate that has a sudden increase in the number of people supporting the Malaysian government's ideas? This shows that even in Australia, the long scary arm of Malaysia still lurks behind shadows.

The MASCA Annual Debate had a good motive behind it. Unfortunately when discussing motions involving government policies, a debate is not the best solution. People have varying views on the topic at hand; some fully support the policy, others fully oppose the policy, and there are many who fall somewhere in between the two extremes. A debate, being fully black and white in having "For" and "Against" teams, does not work well to support the full spectrum of views. Hence, I say that a good idea was tripped up by its execution.

I have other reasons to view the debate as flawed. Bad imagery on the program booklet and advertisements - are we really all monkeys living in trees? Not the best imagery I'd say. Furthermore, regarding the program booklet handed out, there is nothing inside regarding any of the 6 speakers or the moderator. No credentials, no photos, no details about what makes them suitable candidates for the debate. And why aren't there any engineers on either of the debating teams? Something to think about there, since some people say that "Engineers make the world go round, politicians come and stuff things up".

As for the handling of the debate itself, the moderator was not subtle when it came to reminding debaters about their time limits. Visual cues should have been given, or a less intrusive ringing bell would have worked.

On the debate itself, the participants had weak points overall. A single government policy does not always directly cause something, especially since you need to trace all the policies to get to the root cause of something. How do you know that the NEP directly assisted the progress of Malaysia?

Also, when it came to defining progress, I feel that the speakers could have used the following analogy: Progress is an upward-sloping line. It's not a flat line.
Thus, if you're anywhere below that line, then there is not enough progress. Really, we should be looking at natural progress as well as assisted progress. None of the speakers took into account natural progress, which would have been more meaningful.

Overall, I feel that the opposition speakers of the day are still making excuses for the Malaysian government, such as "We are still a young nation" [Young? Pfft.], "We don't want to be lapdogs of the USA" [Um. How do you progress if you don't want learn from the best?] and "If you aim for the stars and you miss, at least you still land on the moon" [Very comforting, I know, but useless when you look at the "cold hard facts", as their own speakers put it].

NB: The topic of the debate was "Malaysia has failed to progress since the inception of the NEP". Opposition speakers on the topic think that we have progressed, government speakers think that we have failed to progress.

I-Games

Fiasco sums it up. From organisation to execution, there was plenty of fail.

#1. Arrival - 20 minute walk from Domain Interchange tram stop to MSAC at Albert Park. Good job whoever planned that, when the 96/112 trams stop right at the MSAC doorstep.

#2. Games - Oh stuff was messed up, yessir. From late arrivals to non-existent soccer pitches, a lot that could go wrong did.

#3. Sportsmanship - I have no clue about the first 4 games [table tennis/soccer/badminton/basketball], but from what I saw at dodgeball, I would rate sportmanship to be non-existent when IC is on the field. Their dodgeball team got served when one of their girls copped a headshot. Thanks to their team's overall cockiness, they deserve what they got.

So, did I-Games achieve much? Yes it did.
It tells me that we have people who sign up to play and win, not to socialise, which is the first objective of I-Games down the gutter.
It tells me that organisation was pretty badly handled.
It tells me that execution was pretty well botched as well when everything was under control.
It tells me that being cocky makes nobody pity you when shit happens to you.
It tells me that we, IESS committee and subcommittee members, could have done much better to make I-Games work for us in our favour.

In short, I-Games did not achieve what it set out to do. True story.

Midway

It's the middle of some things.
It's middle of April now.
It's also mid-autumn now.
It's midsem now.

Feels kinda like any other time of the year, honestly.

Easter break

As expected, there were outings and food :)

One outing yesterday was to Springvale, for lunch, shopping and a haircut. And then we went up Mount Dandenong today for some fresh, cold mountain air. Pretty fun stuff.

Incoming!

ETA 4 hours 30 minutes.

Cue outings and meals with family :)

Scholarships

30 top SPM students get national scholarships

Since when did the government have so much money to sponsor so many more students under different scholarships? First we had the PSD/JPA scholarships, where everyone with strings of A1's would sign up and keep their fingers crossed that they would get a place in the scholarship lists.

Then came the Minister's interview, in which he said that students could go back to him for another hearing if they did well in their pre-uni course and secured an unconditional offer from top unis around the world. So we had the Ivy League scholarship programme after that.

And now this new National Scholarship. Yes, the numbers may be small [only 30 students are going] but what is the point of the whole idea? Why not just let them join the queue for JPA scholarships? I'm pretty sure they'd get a place. What if they don't want to study abroad in a fit of patriotism? How would you manage the extra seats?

On a side note, it seems that there are a lot of girls in the top 30, as well as a lot of Chinese and Malay names. I wonder whether this adequately reflects the distribution of brains in the country.