between winning and losing, everybody would choose to hold the champion's trophy and bring home the cash vouchers of $500 sponsored by a company that's irrelevant to the contest. it's an established fact that except for 40 year old virgins, nobody tries too hard to lose. but here's the catch: in a competition there can be only one winner. fuck what the politically-correct chairperson always says about 'everybody leaves here a winner', because for the competitor, it's either winning or losing.

this is why i've always hated all forms of competition. anything that involves several people gunning head-to-head for a prize, with no holds barred, that is a competition. ever since Darwin coined his phrase 'Survival of The Fittest', the alpha-male seems to have realized that competition is an embodiment of his pride and ego. suddenly, everything in life is taken as a test to see who is better than who at something. because of this thinking by most men, i am sadly left behind in the dust to eat dirt. i have realized that in this life, i will always come in second place at best, and mostly receive the consolation prize of that sad packet of tissue paper.

why? because i'm a Jack of All Trades, yet a Master of None.

the problem with me is that i dabble in a little of everything, but never seem to have the time to master anything. i play the piano, i speak eloquently, i can differentiate between pinot noir and merlot (not just by looking at the bottle label), i read my fair share of Newsweek and the papers, i can write, i can pierce myself, i can save lives, i can carry weights, i can do basic counseling, i can dispense sartorial fashion advice, i can read French words with the French accent, i give good sex, hell i can even do auto-fellatio. but everything falls short of perfection.

(bear with me here)
i can only play simple piano pieces of Grade 5 standards and below, i can only speak eloquently like a socialite in clubs and in parties, i can only differentiate between wines when i'm at home, i read so much but i can't seem to recall anything important, i can write personal pieces but i can't write informational pieces, i can pierce myself but not other, i can save lives but only when i know what to do, i can carry weights (to a maximum of 15kg dumb bells), i can give counseling but i can't counsel my boyfriend and his problems, i can dispense sartorial fashion advice which i don't put into practice myself, i can read French words with Frenchie accents but not understand what they mean, i give good sex only when i'm a top, i can do auto-fellatio (but only the head goes in). you see, falling short of perfection.

maybe i'm setting ridiculously high standards for myself. or perhaps i just suck at all these random skills. whatever it is, all this was brought back into context during the inter-hospital debate that i was forced to take part in. why was i chosen in the first place? because everyone saw that i had a powerful command of the English language and i could verbalize everything eloquently. note that that just makes you a smooth talker, people. not an intellectual one.

the inter-hospital debates are quite a major event amongst the hospitals in my cluster. because other than audit results, it's the only other method of comparing the standards of intellect between the rest of the health-care groups. to tell the truth, only two out of four of these hospitals take the debates seriously. they have their own internal debates, external speakers and trainers, and even training leaves for these debaters so that they can practice in peace. not surprisingly, the whole idea of having this debate competition came from one of the hospitals with the debate teams. and being in that health-care cluster, my hospital had no choice but to keep sending representatives for sacrificial purposes every year. believe it or not, we are actually so swamped with hospital work (eg. SAVING LIVES) that we do not have the time for recreational activities like debate. fuck, it's not even recreational.

thus, like deers on the 405 caught in front of a truck, we were ran over before we even knew it. and not over were we run down once, the truck reversed and ran us down again and again and again. the hospital from the opposition team had a history of being aggressive attackers of speech. our hospital debate team had a more placid one, comparable to that of Priest and Priestesses of the Moon Goddess. we weren't an offensive bunch. to make things worse, neither were we a defensive bunch also. the good thing though, throughout the entire debate, even though our motion was slashed and hacked to death, not once did we utter an insult back to them. we survived with our dignities intact. then again, since when did dignity play a part in winning a debate?

true enough, history repeated itself and we lost this year's debate in the semi-finals. it's not that we didn't prepare. i guarantee you that we spent sleepless nights worrying about how the opposition would attack us, how they would tear down our motion, rewriting our scripts over and over again. but i guess i just wasn't clever enough to rebutt anything back to the opposition. my team mates who were equally stupefied tried their best to put up a good fight. and did i mention we were too busy saving lives? still no excuses for losing.

i ended up writing little notes to my team mates like 'They are such fucktards' and 'Sushi for dinner anybody?'.

surprisingly my team was pretty cool about losing. everybody was quite shocked that we were shaking hands with the opposition, congratulating them on their win. last year when my hospital trashed them at the debates, they were crying so badly that the consolation prize of the tissue papers weren't enough to stem those tears.

of course, losing also meant having to grin and bear the burunt of losing. everybody we knew kept coming up to us to say things like 'No lah, you guys did well' or 'It's okay, there's always next year'. all of these phrases accompanied with extremely patronizing looks. even the people from the higher management levels came to congratulate us on our loss.

i've learnt one thing from all this though: that i'm not good at debate. cool that i've tried it once. but once again, this sets in motion the theory about myself being the Jack of All Trades. i just want to perfect a skill, is it too much to ask?

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