Friday, February 17, 2006

Pre-Friday: Francis, Sherwin, and I stayed up till 0100 revising cases. Sherwin fell asleep. I went to sleep at 0240. Who knows when Francis went to sleep.

My mom dropped me off at Dulles, and I navigated through to the gate SUCCESSFULLY for the first time alone! Yay! :D Manvi then joined me. Then the flights started to delay. We were supposed to leave at 10:40, but we ended up getting on the plane at 1400ish. Then we were delayed AGAIN because of the bad Boston weather/air traffic. So we waited for an hour. And then we took off. But damn, the wind was pretty bad.

During the lovely long wait, I managed to read my research. I swear, I had a zillion examples of court cases/scenarios for aff/neg. It was great. And I used nearly all of them in rounds too. ^^ In one case even against my opponent's example. Ouch. Anyway, after I finished reading that, I tried to sleep, but I couldn't, so I read about Mao for HUM.

Manvi and I went to pick up our baggage, and we met up with Mr Williams, Rohit, and Francis, who were all on the same flight. We rode by taxi to our amazing hotel (Hilton Hotel at MIT). Since Manvi and I were the only girls on the trip, we had our own room and our own beds. Yay.

By the time we all checked in and settled down, it was dinner time. -_-;; Everyone else was delayed too, so the policy kids + Girish flew in pretty late. Teddy, Ben, Manvi, Rohit, Fran, Mr Williams, and I went to go eat at Harvard Square in the Uno's Pizzeria. The food was okay.

Basically, everyone else stayed up pretty late preparing for debate the next day. Oh, yeah, our toilet flooded. That was interesting.

Saturday, February 18, 2006

Woke up. Varsity had already left (they had 4 rounds on Saturday). I joined the boys, and we left for Cambridge Ringe and Latin School (our meeting area). Wow. Talk about way crowded. Apparently there were about 360 each in JV and V for LD alone... add that with the forensics competitors and the policy debaters. Yeah. Well, anyway, I asked this girl if we could sit down at a booth, and she let us. According to Ben's communist system, we were in the first state. Or something.

Round 1, Negative ~ Nova JB ~ 0-1, 28

IMO, the main point of this round was whether or not it was just for the government to act as the party involved in seizing property (i.e. aff basically was for private enterprises seizing property privately without gov. interference). I think I won that point. The judge, however, thought that the main point of the round revolved around whether or not there was consent involved in ED. Okay, so I conceded during CX that there wasn't consent. Well, OBVIOUSLY. Why would there be ED if there was consent? So I lost the round on that. If my opponent had pushed that point more, or explained it better, or made it a little less abusive, I probably would've agreed. Sigh. Anyway, at least it was a low point win.

Round 2, Aff ~ Saint James SM ~ 0-2, 57

Wow, this was an amazing round. Shika (my opponent) broke too. So this was definitely the best debate round I have ever had in my entire debating career. We had clashes almost everywhere, Shika actually brought up intelligent/non-stock arguments against my case, and it was just a great round. It was extremely traditional too, and I think if we had been progressive our judge would've just stopped us, since he claims we were all over the flow. Shika managed to pull off the argument that justice was supposed to place the group over the individual. She also brought up things like safety and kept pushing blight. Our judge disclosed, but I can't say I'm disappointed with the loss.

Round 3, Neg ~ Lower Merion MP ~ 1-2, 84

This round basically sucked. My oppoent thought she was supposed to be in Varsity too. Sheesh.

Anyway, so we (JV LDers) had gone to Felipés (Mexican) for lunch. We went to the Greenhouse Coffee Shop for dinner. It was a nice dinner. When we returned to the hotel, Francis, Girish, and I went to the fitness room. I multi-tasked (treadmill + bio chapters, hell yeah), Francis just treadmilled, and Girish went through a bit of everything. By the time we all retreated it was around 12ish. I went to the business center, I think, and I talked to peeps about personal things. *cough*

Sunday, February 19, 2006

Three more rounds. For the record, I never got to debate on Harvard campus. Sucks. =\ I was in Baldwin (some elementary school nearby) for my first four rounds, and I was in the Arts school of CRLS for the last two. Girish and others got to debate in Harvard. Marrrhhh. Me jealous. Oh, yeah, I was spread several times while on Aff. =\

Also, I made some new debate friends on the WACFL circuit. ^_^ Walt Whitman XZ (Xiaoqi). WT Woodson JK (Joseph Kim, who broke). Apparently Joseph knew me. oO Weird....

Round 4, Aff ~ Walt Whitman EN ~ 2-2, 101

I hit Ellen Noble, who won 1st on JV at WACFL IV. I was trapped twice during CX, but I managed to save myself during rebuttals. Thank god for my BS skills. Anyway, she asked me about taxation and capitalism, and whether or not I thought they were just. Taxation, because it's the similar seizure of property (capital) for "public use". And capitalism because it also put the poor at a disadvantage. So I BSed my way out of those traps... but yeah, they were pretty interesting. ^_^ What a fun round. Oooh, also, CX was great. I got Ellen to concede to my definition of justice, which basically won me the round.

Round 5, Aff ~ Carolina Day SG ~ 3-2, 128

Before this round I basically reviewed every possible neg argument against my case and all neg arguments with Mr Williams, Teddy, etc. It helped me greatly. This was the round where I used my opponent's examples against her. She dropped more than half of my case, which I thought was kind of strange. She read off cards during her rebuttals, which caused her to lose time. She cited the Norwood vs. Horney case as an example of when you can bring economic prosperity from eliminating blighted property. Unfortunately, she didn't realize that in this case, a study funded by the government falsely reported that the area was blighted because there was a great diversity of owners. Discrimination. My side of the flow.

Round 6, Neg ~ Great Neck South AS ~ 3-3, 155.5

My judge Scott Kominers is a freshman at Harvard. He's majoring in math, and his only debating experience was mock trial. He told us he was only judging because he wanted money for his trip to Princeton to visit a friend. Um, okay. Anyway, I should've prepared more for this round... I was so worried about losing my aff in the previous round that I forgot to worry about neg. =\ My opponent ran an interesting case -- her first contention basically said that society had no rights, so we should focus on protecting the rights of individuals, and her second contention was why utilitarianism was bad. Considering I was running utilitarianism on neg, that was pretty bad. My judge says I won the standards clash. Yay. And during CX when I was asking my opponent what she defined as rights, she said the rights in the social contract. My loverly debate knowledge nailed it down to Locke, and thanks to Mr McC I turned it against her (Locke's whole right to property is the most important right to protect). So I won that clash. But damnit. I only lost because I forgot to include just compensation in the definition of eminent domain. Garrr!! *kills self* So close to breaking!

Afterward, while we were waiting for break rounds to be posted, Francis, Girish, and I hung out on this secluded walkway upstairs connecting CRLS and the Arts school. Francis and I did some chem. I still can't believe he made me go through the whole stupid redox process to balance an equation that Dr Jones said "no need to balance!" on just because he didn't think that the charges balanced. Well, DUH. Then I got bored and walked around the Arts school. Listened to random policy debaters. I realized they're really assumptive and all about impacts in their rounds. I should do that more when I hit progressive judges.

No one from TJ broke (policy and LD). Mr Williams, LDers (except Teddy and Manvi), and Mrs Field went to some Malaysian dinner place. I should've ordered bubble tea, but I didn't feel like it. We heard some interesting stories about pre-Class of 08 and Mrs Lodal's first year.

We returned to the hotel for a great session of CHARADES! TJ Debate tradition. Due to some personal things, we only had 3 vs. 3. =\ Bryan Chun, Keshav, and Colin were on Policy's side, and Ben, Fran, and I were on LD. So for the record, policy fails. Some good/funny ones:

hack//sign (dot hack sign?) ~ LD ~ I had to act this one out. When I first saw it, I was like WTF. I mean, how are you supposed to act out a //, you know? Anyway, when I did "dot" I made a dot. Francis was like "POKE!" So we got nowhere.

Sex Talk with <name> ~ LD ~ Yeah, Ben had to act this out.

The Pelican Brief ~ LD ~ Ben acting as a pelican. Fabulous.

Random 2 Things ~ Policy ~ Gar, I don't remember what they were, but they were both Keshav's. Haha. He got so frustrated, he had to bang his head against the wall at one point.

Keshav: *making motion for crying*
Bryan: Death? TERRORISM? NUCLEAR WAR?

Keshav: *making motion for kissing and engagement*
Bryan: TERRORISM!!!

King of Queens ~ Policy ~ Colin was acting this out. Ohh, man. So they got up to the King of part:

Colin: *motioning with crown and pointing at me [only girl]*
Bryan: Queen!
Colin: *motioning for an extension of the word*
Bryan: Queenize? Queenation? QUEENER!!
Colin: *shakes head, motions again*
Bryan: QUEENER!!!!!!!!
LDers: *dying of laughter*
Ben: Time's up!
Colin: QUEENS!!!! --;;
LDers: *dying of laughter again*

Monday, February 20, 2006

Left with Ben's mom to go to the airport. So I was successfully on the airplane again. It was a bigger airplane this time. I saw John Goodwin too. Interesting. Slept the whole way.

Other memorable events:

*talking about Francis and his rounds*
Me: Francis is doing really well....
Mr Williams: Do you know why?
Girish: I think after he got 1-3, he was like "I'm going to kick butt!"
Mr Williams: *eyes widen* Drink? What drink?
Girish: No!! 1-3!!!
Mr Williams: Oh!! I thought you meant Francis was drinking!

Me: *on the phone w/ someone*
Manvi: *from inside the bathroom* Oh, shit!
Me: Manvi, are you okay?
Manvi: *comes out* Um... could you call the front desk? Our toilet's flooding.
//later
Me: *calling Rohit* So yeah, our toilet just flooded....
Rohit: Oh. I'm sorry your toilet flooded.
Girish+Fran: *huge laughter*

Pictures

Here's some of them:

Rohit, modeling the Cthulu hat.

Manvi modeling a Cthulu backpack.

Girish being a fob.

Keshav being "perverted with the shocker hand sign. =O" (Deng, 2006).

Me, Girish, and Rohit being fobs. When Keshav took the picture, he was like "God, Lulu, you're so PALE!"

One of the famous Harvard gates.

Part of their amazingly huge library. When I saw the building, and I saw books inside, I felt myself die inside.

Our awesome hotel blankets.

Our awesome hotel pictures. (It's supposed to be some differential equation diagram thinger of a falling body.)

Our awesome hotel elevators.