We won! We won! We won the 15th Mindanao Parliamentary Debate Championship! Never mind the 24 hour bus ride to Surigao, never mind the cramped 8-person prison-type-bedrooms, never mind the haggling and begging for the canteen food worth P1100, never mind that we did not get a trophy save for the revolving “cup” that we’re supposed to relinquish the next champion (cross my fingers hope it’s us!), never mind that Davao’s Andrew tampered with the tabs and cheated us out of one more team in the quarters (hah, karma baby, not one of their 3 breaking teams reached the finals), never mind, never mind!
We won! 🙂
Here are some pics of the event:
Looking all pretty for the elims. I wore a low-cut blouse. I thought maybe my boobs would cut into the eyes of all non-ZC debaters (‘coz, like, my kids would so totally respect my dignity and look away, knowing that looks are but a strategy), depressing the quality of my debates and thus elevating my teams’ wins and speaker scores! Yay! I don’t know if it worked though. Oh god I hope it’s not my fault they only had 2 wins. Ehhh… But really it’s nice to bring the girls out with me in debates. In ZC it’s kinda hard to show them off, what with me being an authority figure. I. Must. Show. No. Skin. That’s Jams and Henry btw. Jams is the co-moderator of our debate organization. Which is 10 years already! Wee! Happy anniv! And I should definitely be making another paragraph already, mixing all sorts of ideas on one par. My father would strangle me if wasn’t already six feet under.
Henry and Ems and Al-Zho debating in the quarterfinals. Our only breaking team was the LAST breaking team in the 15th MPDC with only 2 wins but a helluva lot of speaker points. That pitted them up against the top breaking team, incidentally, Davao’s. Having adjudicated that team once in the elims, I assured Henry’s team it was an easy killing. Hehehe, I am such a boast. It was the three kids – they were just brilliant, that did it! And on they went to semis!
Dead tired after breaks. After a grueling four rounds, we were fed canteen food. A skinny piece of fried chicken, I think. And a gram of beef. Yup. So right after, we went searching for food. Surigao apparently, does not advocate midnight snacking. Yes. Every eatery is closed after 10PM. Even Jollibee and Greenwich, the only fast food chains existent. Even the hotel we went to declined to serve us food!! Even though we OFFERED to pay. Really! 
So we went to this little tavern, where the waiters tried to make us drink by telling us that yes, they had like around 5 menus available with lotsa names of different foods on them, yes, but no sorry no food was available. Just beer. Fried chicken? Nope, just beer. Tenderloins? Nope, just beer. Ice cream? Oh, uh, yeah, I guess we could serve that. Oh thank you very much, at least the banana can supply our starved bodies with some potassium. At least according to my doctor boyfriend – whom I really really missed coz he was here at home the whooole time.
I still looked terribly cute though.
Jam-jam and Jon-jon. Henry and I were first to arrive the Surigao scene so we decided to register everyone in nicknames. 
Hen-hen, Al-al, Em-em, Rai-rai. Hehehe. Forgive us our brains were fried in the bus ride.
Oh, oh yeah, Jam and Jon. Our fragrant co-moderators. I’m the queen mod, Jams is princess mod and Jon is wannabe Spice. Just kidding. 🙂 We really are considering baptizing Jon-jon as one of us. Just to keep an eye on our ever-fraternizing Jam-jam. He’s quite flirty when left alone. I think, if given the right bribe (one must know him to know how to bribe him), he’d sell our little crowns for pleasure. Hehehe. I’m just kidding. I don’t know what’s getting into me.
Yay, quarters and semis here we come! So the third day is upon us. All pressure all around. Still, we keep the smiles plastered and our evil little souls hidden. Look at this pic. Don’t we look the picture of goodness. Angels, the lot of us. Be scared. Be very very scared!
I love Jams’ signature look. Heehee. In every picture there’s a pout and a profile. I think everyone has a signature look in photos, actually. I like the full-on look, eyes up and chin down. Hides the extra layers, ya get it?
Concerns, anxieties, the pressure is overwhelming! Actually here I think Al, Kish and Pau are heatedly discussing why their beautiful moderator is making the Chief Adj want to cry!! 
Well he had it coming. Keber! He did not even tell me the night of the breaks that Andrew had “mistakenly” entered MSU as winner of the silent round against ADZU! In fact, Apay of XU had given the win to ADZU. And what did the Adj Core WITHOUT ME do??? They decided to text Apay and ask her if it was possible to allow MSU to win instead of ADZU. Hwaaaat??? What happened to ‘the decision of the adjudicator is final and cannot be void’?!? What happened to keeping the integrity of the tournament? What happened to fairness and honesty and equality? Well, all went down the drain the preserve the Chief and Deputy Adjudicator’s dignities. I’m sure Eric and Yves felt their reputations were far more important than that of these little Mindanaoans they were adjudicating. And why oh why would their reps be ruined if everyone found out about the little mistake? Oh simply because everyone would also have found out that Eric and Yves had not done any of the tabs – that Andrew, yes Davao’s Andrew – did all the work. All the inputs, all the match-ups, all the adj assignments. (Apay and I once tried to decipher the tabs and help input stuff, but no, Andrew wouldn’t let us, wonder why?) And what did Eric and Yves do? Oh, looked on and thanked the gods they did not have to do any work. Which is why, probably, they had so much fun.
All the pretty glasses. I just had to include this in. Much as Surigao’s new university site looks like an aquarium (all green and moaty) it had really cute windows with Bible phrases and glass-stains of saints and stuff. So very arty. And the view was really pretty – all countryside and mountain. So pretty.
All in all it was a good tournament – because we won. Hehehe. Otherwise I’d have really made Eric and Yves cry. Or, you know, just let Ikee beat the hell out of Andrew. Hehehehe.
