(no subject)
Be forewarned that though I try to keep this as neutral as possible, it is still influenced by my biases,and I may be emotionally influenced due to my participation in the competition and may not be able to make a fair analysis of the proceedings. However, as the researcher is the tool for this research, one has to attempt to be as objective as possible, and I shall present my findings in as neutral a point of view as possible. (i.e. I am quite pissed, and this thing may be factual or a reflection of my emotion, depending on which one you think it is)
Sure, I accept it. We could never have gotten into the top two. SJI deserved to win, what with that charismatic guy. RI deserved to win even more so! Zhenghua deserves the credit.
And of course, admittedly, we had little preparation. And prepared all the wrong things, such as philosophy, geography, and history. Well, we thought it was a humanities competition.
Our presentations on the second and third round were probably not so good either, because though with lots of abstract ideas and concepts, do not seem grounded, and analytical enough. It's like a reflective essay, instead of an argumentative. And obviously reflective essays, like Leaves of Grass, is a bit too subjective and non-factual to be judged, and people would obviously prefer something like Origin of Species, something more scientific, grounded (ironic in that the Humanities are supposed to be about the study of the relatively more abstract).
But I shall stone, and flame, and bury alive, and burn alive, and strangle, and garrote, and electric-chair, and do everything possible to destroy that buzzer. SJI got around ten of the fifteen questions, Zhenghua the majority of the rest (with the latter answering some of their questions wrongly - think "What is the capital of Afghanistan?" and the answer they gave was "Baghdad"). We only got the buzzer once - when the question was being read out, and thus not within regulations and we didn't get to answer that question. The only question we got to answer was "What percentage of people do not complete secondary school", or something like that. And even then, we didn't answer because we got to the buzzer first. The other four teams all answered incorrectly, so by default we got the chance to answer, and we took the chance.
I suspect the buzzer was rigged unintentionally because the SJI and Zhenghua are nearer to the counter, or machine, or whatever it is that decides who goes first. But then again maybe our reflexes just happened to be slower for all fifteen questions, and SJI's and Zhenghua's much faster than RI, Anglican High and ours. Or perhaps those two schools just happened to be lucky more than ten times over.
I'm still wondering why questions on Kantian philosophy, Walt Whitman, Franco-Prussian War and these more obscure disciplines of the humanities were not even touched on at all. There was not even a question on History or Literature or even Physical Geography. The first round had so much more challenging and uncommon questions. I should have realised that they'd ask questions like those that they asked, and just spammed the newspapers and scoured Singapore politics for all those answers.
Oh well, no point crying over spilt milk. At least I have fifty dollars, and another plastic trophy to my collection.
Oh, just a note - I still remember the team comprising me, Austin, Anastasia and someone else got fourth in this Nan Hua Secondary current affairs quiz. In Primary Six.
*shrugs*
It's almost like deja vu - a preliminary round that we passed after doing some MCQ quiz; four people in a group; finalists going up the stage, sitting around tables on the stage; getting fourth prize too.
Oh, and the Nan Hua Secondary one was also quite badly named, because there were questions about World War Two. The first round of the finals didn't fit the description of Humanities very well.
The questions that remained in my mind - three of them:
One about the three teams that got relegated from the English Premiership, which, by mistake, had two answers;
One about that Ford place where some surrender was signed - the out-of-place historical question;
One about The Pianist, which, sad to say, we answered wrongly. Even though I remember clearly the group I was in was called PIANIST (Perfectly Intelligent ANd NImble STudents, if you like acronyms).
Still, there was an announcement in assembly for that one, those long boring assemblies in the hall that make you sleep, with talk about assembly topics on courtesy, honesty and other such values.
No announcement for this one, yes, none, it's too much a waste of precious Monday morning post-flagraising announcement time.