Hari Ini dalam Sejarah (Part 5): Royal Military College

At this very hour some three years ago, two of the most eminent boys' schools in Kuala Lumpur were battling it out with words and wit for the Tan Sri Datuk Wira Abdul Rahman Arshad State Debate Cup.

The Royal Military College (RMC) were Government against the Victoria Institution, debating the motion 'Space exploration is a waste of time and money'.

It remains to this day one of my very best experiences while in the VI. Not just the round, but the entire debate journey, which could be summed up in everything that happened that morning at SMK Raja Abdullah.


I'm thankful to Shobaan for holding the camcorder, despite the display of absolute non-professionalism (evident on the VCD that was produced). I'm thankful to Tee Ming for holding her camcorder at the Forensics last year (she is a much better videographer than Shobaan). Because for all the camera shake and ambient noise (people in the audience chit-chatting), these videos are virtually all we have of some of those best times.


I'm not going to talk so much about the debate itself in this entry; the video says it all. I want to go beyond the scope of the video and try to recollect the other sights and sounds and emotions on that historical morning: April 27, 2004.

The VI somehow agreed to send a busload of supporters (recorded when Shobaan panned around for a view of the audience), so the debate team had to travel in Pn Jaya's car (her now legendary Iswara aeroback; legendary partly because of what we remember it for, and partly because she has replaced it with a Wira Special Edition). We will always remember the RMC bus joining the road somewhere along the way, eventually overtaking us. Little did they know their opponents were riding in the tiny green Iswara below.

For some reason I simply can't remember what the quarantine room was like in this round. During quarantine, Segambut MP Dr Tan Kee Kwong (an old boy of the VI himself, who officiated at the VI's Speech Day in 2002) officially launched the round and delivered his opening speech, which we of course did not witness. Mum, Dad and Sara were present, as were Danial's mother and Miss Shanti. Apparently, he made many comments about space exploration (which he wasn't supposed to). I suppose MPs will always talk!

Dinesh was excellent; more confident than he had ever been in previous rounds. And by the end of both second speeches, it was obvious RMC was beginning to feel the heat; their Third Speaker was literally sweating puddles, and we could see the sweat dripping from his blazer! In fact, as the debate progressed, the RMC's support team applauded less and less for their own team.

Danial's rebuttal was full of humour (which did very well to balance out the increasing tension) and logic (which did very well to virtually win us the debate), and we will always remember the RMC's increasingly ridiculous attempts at offering POIs (points-of-information) to the point where Danial couldn't take it anymore and literally paused in his speech to tell them to sit down. He ended with an unforgettable "To infinity and beyond!"

I ended my Reply Speech with the now equally unforgettable Latin phrase, "Per ardua, ad astra" which means "To the stars through hardship."


Basically the entire thrust of our case was in the direction of exploring new frontiers. In hindsight (i.e. if we debated today), the Government could've won if they said the 'final frontier' is not space but earth.

I kept the tons of paper upon which Kishan printed the information we needed (I have no idea how my printer managed to churn out so many pages), and as I look back at our Government case, one of the points we proposed was this:

Have yet to maximize our natural resources
- abundance of natural resources
- earth not fully explored
- why go to space when we haven't covered everything on our ground

Today, this hits home as very true to me. It is the main reason why I want to study Biology: there is so much to explore on earth. In fact, most of the ocean hasn't been explored, and that's a whopping three-quarters of our planet.

And, in a recent entry on this blog, I mentioned that for every Stephen Hawking who says, "Go into space", there is an E.O. Wilson who counters, "We need expeditions to planet earth."


The debaters stayed over at my place this time. As Cheras is so much more remote than Kepong (Danial's house is within walking distance from the KTM station) and Bangsar, Dad had to drive to KL Sentral to pick the team up on Sunday.

We had a dinner at Secret Recipe in Leisure Mall. Somehow Dinesh's chicken cordon bleu didn't turn out as expected that night; it was much smaller than it usually is! But Mum cooked the other meals, including a very hearty (vegetarian) lunch on Monday.

On the top of the sheet of paper upon which our Government and Opposition cases were printed, were these words (reproduced verbatim):

sent to ben

Because Ben is a lazy ass who can't get his butt up and workin, I'm supposed to summarize the points we have so far =)

Some may be irrelevant and shit, but this is a collection of the points we have, its up to you filter and alter the poitns to help us in our case, i can't do it alone.

And hurry up la, i need a prepared speech and RMC memorises their whole speeches, it wouldn't be good for us if i don't at least familiarise my speech well enough to not rely on it. I'm only human, i can't memorise a whole speech in less than an hour.

Zer Ken couldn't make it, so Dinesh and Kishan were up early Monday morning typing (accompanied by George, who used to sleep indoors then) while Danial and I were still in dreamland after a a supper of tea and snacks the night before.


Another moment that was not recorded on the VCD was when the results were announced. Truly it was the best moment of my first five years in the VI.

I kept my word, and brought the debaters out to Chili's BSC for dinner. It has been our official restaurant ever since. Danial couldn't make it, so we had lunch there some other day.

We eventually lost to the Infant Jesus Convent of Malacca at the Inter-state level. As it was held in Malacca, they had homeground advantage, but that probably wasn't why we lost. I would say we weren't as focused (this round was many weeks later, and we'd lost a bit of momentum), but perhaps it was because Kishan and Zer Ken weren't there. Oh, and probably because someone from the Wilayah was judging; judges should never be from competing schools/states.

Kishan's sister was getting married and for some reason, Zer Ken couldn't come as some nut in the Education Department said we didn't register him as a member of the team at the very start of the competition, and so we couldn't bring him along. Zer Ken was in the year below us, and I suppose he didn't gel as well with the rest of the team, but he was an invaluable member nonetheless; I suppose the debate was an experience he would rather have forgotten because of all the slip-ups with the government.

As a result, Arafat replaced Kishan. Arafat is not a debater. I suppose in the end none of us could've done it without the others. Dinesh, Ben, Danial, Kishan and Zer Ken: change one, you change all. For all our individual weaknesses, we brought out the best in each other as a team; we're like U2 in the sense that we were dysfunctional but had an amazing chemistry going on nonetheless. In our team, there were no reserves.

I say this because we stayed together even after the debate. The rounds ended, but the friendship hasn't dimished an ounce since then.

Dinesh is reading Engineering (Mechanical, I think) at Imperial College, London. Kishan is majoring in Mathematics, doing an Economics degree at the University of Sydney. Danial is set to become a lawyer, and is very much involved in the international debate scene at the International Islamic University here in Malaysia. Zer Ken, if I remember correctly, is having the time of his life at Taylor's College.

And Ben?


Ben is still here.