"Early birds get the best seats in the house, roasted chicken, such as me, gets to talk about punctuality."
Yup, of all the topics in the world. I didn't think I did such a bad job of it. All I had to do was draw a contrasting example from my personal life. I talked about the meaning of punctuality, the importance of punctuality and the real life instances when you have to be punctual.
The first one was easy enough, punctuality means setting your alarm clock/timer for every single thing that you have coming. E.g. Class at 8.30am, warning at 7.30am. Meeting at 12.45pm, warning at 12pm, date at 8.30pm, warning at 8.30am so on and so forth. Guess it was easy enough to comprehend that punctuality is adhering to the appointed time.
Then there was the importance of punctuality which was a no-brainer so I skipped that because most of the people in my class have been there since last Wednesday. So that leaves me with the real life examples. Hmm.. I thought of talking about the times when I simply am punctual, then I realized that there wasn't much to talk on that either. I could lie, but then most of my classmates have known me to be notorious in that specific area.
So close to two minutes which was the allocated time, I was punctual in ending my speech. I do have to say that even with my reputation as a debater, I still feel the jitters when I do public speaking. I wish I can be as natural as a truthful politician(truthful as in you can't tell he's lying), spread my oratory charismatic charm onto the unsuspecting. Can't see that happening anytime soon. Judging from my performance in last weekend debate, I still have a loooong way to go.
The first day was almost as bad as having a shower in an automatic car wash. Yeah, we won the rounds that we have to win to save our faces and lost a debate when we could've thrashed them. I felt so guilty being the new guy/gal in the team. I thought the pressure was just too much. In my head I was thinking whether I was really cut out for it.
And the boys were making efforts to be more supportive, it was so unreal. But it doesn't help the situation when you're trying to say something that might hurt my feelings when you're assuming that I am going to be hurt by it. Well, what they said kinda hurt but still, men can be so insensitive. They should have been more tactful, not condesending as if I'm too much of a girl to take it like a man. Anyway, I know that what they said is right and I will definitely improve myself. As for the part whether I might be hurt by the things they said, you'll never see me cry just because of some ill-formed words uttered by a toadheaded good-for-nothing sod and his partner, lizardtailed scumsucking neanderthal(yeah, I'm fine thank you very much).
We had one more round the following day before breaking announcement, and somehow the pressure was not upsetting me anymore. I was more together, more in touch with the happy-go-silly clan that I was able to laugh and focus. We managed to reach the semi but our motion was defeated by a majority of three against two. The team who won was part of the ASIANS champs. Well, guess we'll settle the score in Langkawi.
I'm practically writing an idiot's guide to debating with smart dummies. Those two nutheads are totally misrepresenting themselves, they aren't suppose to be that intelligent and persuasive in speech. To tell you the truth, they are gaining my respect more and more and it touches me so to see them trying to get me to be as comfortable with them as possible. Come to think of it, we have been through a lot. Haha.. (Private joke)
I am very much looking forward to brushing up my skills in debating, I hate to admit this but, I do have so much to learn from those two desert surfers, whatever that suppose to mean.
