Here ends my second, and perhaps the LAST diplomatic contest in my high school life, filled and stilled by tears of unsatisfactory. Things escalated quickly and bolstered me into heaven previously: I was sent straight to the finals of the Earth-Science competition and finished runner-up eventually, qualifying to the regional finals; I scored a record-breaking 990 in TOEIC; I am now officially the Chair of the up-coming conference. Prior to this day, my mind was mainly hoping these competitions’ dates better don’t crash into each other.
We were selected by the always black-jack-in-the-box qualifying process by the English teachers to enter this competition. Bush and I worked for the second consecutive year now as we are and always will be the best in class Senior 2B in terms of these kinds of foreign-related stuff. Wilson and the (brighter than my future) Mina also fought with us, forming a group of four, a group that would look like procrastinating normally but enormously effective when actually activated. I was initially not placing high hopes on winning a better position when entering even though I will appreciate if that is the case, this is particularly because of the failure last year. As time goes by the worry of directly dropping out enlarges. Twelve days prior to the competition, none of the script lines was written and zero out of five essays were completed.
It was at that time I was, for the very first time, impressed by Wilson and mina from class 2A. They were the ones who submitted their essays first and gave me a glimpse of motivation to do my own portion. The W-2 week was the school fair, owing from the fact that I’m not in any competitions in the sports day, I finally decided to actually work on it.
Two periods of time I was able to complete the fourth essay and the fifth essay, with another four periods of time discussing and paraphrasing, we were able to get all five essays covered. Finally, our essays are produced and now we can start to memorize them.
The production of the script came in even more late, with the W-2 week reaching Friday (D-8), I was still doubting whether I shall just finish the essay myself. I eventually produced a script that includes a row-boat game in Singapore, a local Singaporean, a Mandarin website, and four enthusiastic actors. During the time some script looked repetitive and meaningless, luckily many of them were cleared when everyone spent time working together trying for it. The w-1 week was a full week of hell endeavours. With only four days in the bag, we were to memorize a ~600 words essay every day or half while practising our plays and acting naturally. The pain started to emerge among us. Frustration, tears, failure to memorize “struck like a strong tide”. Yet we never gave up; we never would. With that samurai spirit been deeply inserted into the making of us, we started to dream that *maybe* we’ve got a shot to win…
It was the D-1 that especially made me emotional. Having been practicing for DAYS (Literally) I was bored to death and insisted on going back to the football training to breathe some fresh air, yet my dearest teammates came to persuade me back, and though I never said, I was exceptionally guilty when seeing that I need to be dragged back by a boy with a face of fatigues from numerous practices. My bad it was, and I really should’ve realized how childish I was.
Still, we tried, tried, tried. Once, twice, thrice, we made absolutely no mistake. We knew we were steady for the (rewarding) challenge (lah).
The day came and we marched into the hall confidently. “Same old,” I thought to myself, “This is going to be our year.” The first challenge was to play our script, and we need to be in top 22 out of 44 to qualify for the second phase. We told each other not to nervous. We did everything we could. 12. 13. 14... It was us, team 15’s turn. After we performed, it was no doubt that we’re heading back here tomorrow. Without any surprise, we found our names in the list of qualifying for the second day.
The night of that D1, I was constantly thinking of a way to get us through to the national finals. In order to do that, we must be ranked among top 6 in the 22 regional finalists during the speech delivery contest in the D2. Past history showed that well-known schools always get slight favours when being judged, so as a student of a non-established school, we need something special. I decided to gamble and use my special skills-- to speak in a poetic approach. I also decided that we must have a strong ending which includes demanding everyone a round of applause. Thinking of these back-and-forths, I wasn’t even able to sleep until 1:50 AM or later. Was it more of anxiety or excitement? I couldn’t quite recall anymore. The true challenging day came. We are the 18th order today to perform. After watching other schools, I started to feel extremely worried, for none of them seems to be inferior to our best performances in the simulations. However, when we went out for trying the speeches once again, I realized how much everyone paid into this competition-- everyone was speaking coherently and beautifully. “With my poetic tactic and our creativity,” I thought, “we really should HAVE WIN.”
It was our turn to draw our essays. After a few moment of non-scientific-at-all worshipping ceremonies (???) Mr Wilson drew the lot and got us essay #4, the one that we’ve prepared most. We shouted in joy as if we had already won, swept all our nervousness away, and feeling much more confident. We still had 20 minutes to organize our performances, and with each successful attempt, we felt the scent of qualifying for the nationals thicker and thicker.
Now it is our turn. Wilson opened the speech brilliantly. Bush stuck on one word for one second but did otherwise extraordinary, and Ms Brighter than my future didn’t become the weakest bond. It is my turn to conclude our speech.
“I messed up totally,” did you expected me to say this? Nah bro, I didn’t. In fact, I did just what I had planned to do. “May the odds, even,” said me, in a poetic manner, “be-- in your favour.” As I raised my hands and lead the audience to clap, I noticed that the judges did not seem too impressed. Bad sign. Yet I told no one.
We went down to speculate others and found ourselves deeply annoyed by many groups with “news reporter style” which consists of girls that memorizes everything and uses extremely high-pitch tone to deliver their clearly-devised-numerous-times-by-their-teacher’s speech. Yikes, it was my only time I ever hated girls so much. These girls ahh.... don’t deserve my respect. We even made a joke, “if they were selected to qualify and become a diplomat sometimes in the future, they might deny to an impromptu requested by our ally nations, saying “”oops, I didn’t memorize that speech, cannot tell you result now!””
Judges finally went out and started by giving advice. She talked about how much she hated the “overacting” by some groups and some weird “Taiwanese-exclusive” acts. I nodded in agreement. She was so in our favour and I really felt like we were on the verge to, for the first time in school history, qualifying for the nationals. Eventually, it was the time to announce the results. 22 teams remaining will have 6 teams going home with nothing and 10 teams getting the regional excellency reward that doesn’t send us through to the nationals. The first team of this was announced. It wasn’t us. Awesome. The second team was announced, and we realized this is announced in a reversed order. So we started to be intensifying nervous when the seventh team, team 17 is announced. The eighth team was team 16, phew!
It is at this point when our fate is to be decided. Four teams (3,5,7,15) are still to be announced, and two more excellencies are remaining. We had a merely even hope. “The ninth team to win the excellence award is, Nanshan Senior High School, team 15!” The camera was supposed to capture our happiness of receiving the award, however, none of us was happy about this. I merely had to try every means to prevent myself from crying. Hours of works had paid off into ashes, giving us a rank that was no better than last year. I hated myself, I felt empty. Everyone is completely attenuated into a puppet with their sense nullified. Oh boy.
No one talked about it when we headed toward the restaurant for lunch. Clearly, the teachers know for us, this is a sign of shame, not an award. No more dream. No more targets. We started to talk about schools and how bad some teachers are, even the teachers joined the conversation to criticize. Yet, we all know it is just a form of distraction. Are my homies feeling better? I do not know. Certainly, someone said they let it go, but they actually do care. As for me, calendar reminded me at six pm sharp, as usual. The next Tuesday, I am having my earth-science contest which might affect my whole life, I prepared enough but not completely sufficient because I devoted to this HDC so much; Hwa-chongian is coming next week, as a loyal logistic member and the fundamental of this program, I was treated like shit... All of these added up quickly, and by the time I reached home, a sense of emptiness crept over me. Ah... if I could know that judges still prefer the old-fashion speech... if we could try our show on more people and let more opinions improve our script, perhaps... Really, Perhaps, we could have won! Yet we didn’t. It was me the moron, I wrote everything and it did not work out! Regretfully, even the most intricate mindset of mine cannot resist the urge to relieve myself. I had to cry. Sobbing to intensifying crying in the blanket, I was the most helpless stray dog in the world. “Why am I tiring myself so much for nothing?” I pondered in despair. “It’s not fair!” Tired, I gradually fell asleep. A sleep that I wished I had never woke up from.
Still, I had to be grateful for everyone who assisted or took part in this endeavour. The first one to mention is really weird, but it goes to Mr Chong Hui who helped me ordered a hoodie of Hwa Chong (HCI) so I can use it as a costume during my screenplay despite me being so shit to him. I was so demanding yet he never pulled a long face on me. I really owed him so much and I am so fortunate that I had a friend as responsible, mature as Chong Hui while not losing his occasional naivete.
My majority credit goes to Bush who is so carrying. He tolerated my absolutely non-sense childish time that starts when I’m not being serious. He is the buddy who gives you a firm sense of security when he is around you. Being with him, I am always encouraged to try new stuff that I thought of, even if he himself had some doubts. Though he never said, I know he still cares about this competition and he will and did reach his full potential to try to win this. We had been working side-to-side for three different competitions, our last collaborate will be the NTMUN as for now, and I really hope it will be a successful one. Perhaps I am not being serious 99% of the time, but right now I am 100% serious about what I’m saying. You deserve a better result. I’m sorry my technic let you down.
Wilson and Mina (鄭驊妤) have TO BE CREDITED TOGETHER. Why? lmao, you know why. Naturally, I do not trust people from another class, yet, their serious working attitude that expressed throughout the whole preparation process gradually melted down my default defensiveness. I must say, you guys broke my stigma and now I feel like all two of you are supermen that I shall pay full respect to. I really appreciate your efforts and sorry that we couldn’t win together.
The teachers are to be appreciated, of course. Teacher Fish Roll and Mr Lai helped us made a lot of props to fructified our shows, then helped us put on the makeups to make ourselves looking better on the stage; Mrs Huang also assisted us a lot, though more in terms of English and “off the pitch” (e.g, she decided to help us file a dispute and see if the judge’s vote can be reversed, yet...) Though in deep frustration, I will still remember how awesome you guys are. If it was not for this strong logistical support, we wouldn’t have gone this far, only one step away from the nationals. Regrets... Regrets... it doesn’t fade, but knowing that so many people are helping us around me, I felt a sense of being blessed. Years later, I will not talk to people about the result of this day, however, the friendship we gained and bond during this process will never, ever, fade.
Thank you all again. I love you all. And thank you for reading so long down here. Thank you for giving a crap to my long depressing post.
Yang. Nov 17’
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