Back from Vancouver

After a long Worlds, a longer flight back and a brief stopover at Vancouver, I'm back to the pleasantly warm climes of Singapore where SMU's insane schedule of work awaits me. But who's complaining. I had a wonderful trip, some amazing fun and of course, a bit of success as well. I shan't bore you with arduous details of the competition and the motions and other such rubbish, there's apparently people a lot more bored than me over at the World Debate Website to do that for you.
However, allow me briefly to toot my own horn.

In which he Blows his own Trumpet

It really was a tournament exceeding my expectations, given that it was my first Worlds. I took on and beat teams from Oxford, Cambridge, Sydney, Melbourne, Birmingham, Bristol, LSE...a very long list basically. My team, me and Joey ended up 21st out of 340 teams, and thus qualified for the knockout rounds, where we put up a good show, but went out because well, that's the way the cookie crumbles. We were the only Asian team to make it to the knockout rounds, and hell pretty much the only non-white team as well. Individually, I was the 50th ranked speaker in a pool of over 600, and the highest ranked Asian/Non-white speaker. So basically, yeah. I had one hell of a good tourney.

Thoughts on the Tournament

After the worlds, I was actually pretty glad I had chosen to study in Asia rather than White Man's Land. While there is "Social Development", and "Equity", you get the sense that its more of a nice disguise than anything else. Do what you like, racial discrimination does exist, not only in the tournament where any and all Asian teams had to not just win their debate, but had to do it so convincingly so as not to give any of the judges even an iota of doubt to allow them to give it to a western team. You also have to put up with comments like "You guys got lucky this round, because it was an Asian themed motion", never mind the lot of us debated rubbish like "This house supports the independence of Quebec.
DIVERSION
(Quebec is this little piece of shit state in Canada that's taking part in the most timid and insipid independence movement in the entire world. In a movement spanning 60 years they've managed to kidnap one fellow and killed another one by mistake. One wonders why the Canadian government hasn't just told them to stuff it and shut the fuck up given that they're totally dependent on the Federation for monetary and social aid, but instead they've been granted constitutional rights greater than Kashmir, and have made Canada bilingual by force, because they refuse to learn English like the rest of the world. If you haven't guessed by now, these people are French.)
BACK TO THE POINT
You also have to deal with teams inside debates saying things like "All South East Asian nations are human rights abusers, and thus will never condemn violations of human rights." Yeah, and Guantanamo Bay and Abu Graib of course never happened. So my point is basically this. I'd rather study and live in an Asian Developing Nation than a Caucasian Developed one. We may not be as well off, but who cares. We're not quite as screwed up either and the women are so much hotter.

Thoughts on Vancouver

Vancouver is the most stunningly, breathtakingly beautiful city I've been to. Okay, so I haven't been to a lot but trust me on this one, this really takes the cake. It has...everything around it. There's a bay overlooking the pacific ocean. There's a riverfront, with an amazing view of the Downtown big city skyline. Just off the river and only a 15 minute drive from the city center is grouse mountain, the most picturesque snow capped peak I've seen. The view from the city is breathtaking. On a clear day, you can see the Canadian rockies in the distance, with clouds bobbing around them and snow capped peaks in tow. The houses all look the same. A good way to describe the city is that its like some high level gamer's Sim City creation. Everything just looks and feels brilliant. The public transport is efficient and the cabbies are entirely, and I mean each and every single one of them, Punjabi. They're mostly fresh from the Pind so all speak Punjabi, and aren't remarkably surprised if you do so too. One has to remember that there still blossoms an active Khalistan Movement in this city, and the Akali Singh Sahib Gurudwara here is one of the biggest in the western world. The buses don't seem to require payment. One of the days we were traveling, me and Harneja bought a ticket for the ferry and bus, it had a nice and fancy magnetic strip thingummy on it, which we presumed was to swipe and allow ourselves on board. Instead, we just pretty much walked into the ferry, and walked on board most buses. If we didn't have change to pay the fare, the bus driver just told us to forget it, and we got a free ride. Weird.
At the other end of the governmental spectrum, the taxation in Vancouver is insane. There's a 14% tax on pretty much everything sold, which automatically raises the price of everything. Very annoying.

I now have work to do, but have plenty more to write about. My thoughts on the Genius of Snow, Skiing and why it proves that white people are insane, and why you should always stay in a Suite will follow, along with assorted photos of said events.