BY BORDI JAEN
“Adapt, improvise, overcome” – Bear Grylls
THE WORLD is full of unexpected and uncontrollable things. No one in 2019 could have ever dreamed of the many disasters that came (or are coming) in 2020, no less than the greatest of them all, the COVID-19 pandemic. Heck, they say the meaning of B.C. is no longer “Before Christ” but “Before COVID”.
Sometimes, life just finds a way to mess with our plans.
What does one do when life gets away with doing away with our plans?
There is a Chinese adage that I am reminded of, “When the winds of change blow, some build walls, others build windmills.”
One great example that I have observed regarding this adage was with the Philippine debating community. In 2019 B.C. and years before, the typical way a debate tournament worked was debaters would go to one place (typically a school or university would host the tournament) and compete. Debaters would have to book a ticket to the place and book accommodations. This was where the term “Debatacation” came from, because it was like a vacation, but for debating.
Unfortunately, like everyone else’s vacations, it could no longer push through because of the pandemic, so what happened? We moved online. It might sound so easy to say, but as a participant in the first experimental tournament in the Philippines, it was quite a different experience and how frustrating it could be especially when your partner gets cut off or runs out of load! (Then again, as Frank Sinatra said, that’s life!)
Learning and analyzing from two previously held online tournaments, the Iloilo Debate Union (IDU) also had its own online tournament called Iloilo Debate Open (IDO). Woof, woof!
Organizing these tournaments doesn’t get easier just because it moved online. People still tend to be late and the new problem of technical issues emerged which, before, was not much of an issue. Every officer in the union was doing double time to make sure everything would run smoothly. I won’t bore with the nitty-gritty details but long story short, everyone made it out alive and the tournament was considered successful by the participants.
Looking back, I find it funny because at the start of the quarantine, everyone thought there would be no debate tournaments held for a year or so. In fact, the first online debate in the Philippines, aptly named Quarantine Debate Open, was actually just a joke between debaters ‘til it became a reality.
Going online did wonders for everyone. Since the organizers didn’t have to take into account costs like food for the participants and such, registration fees dropped from being usually at P1,000 to just around P250. The usual thing before was that if a tournament was held in Cebu, most contestants would be Cebuanos because if you were, say, from Manila or Iloilo, you’d still have to book tickets and accommodations; since tournaments are online, there’s no need to worry about all that. As a consequence, people from every corner of the Philippines with good wifi could join our tournament.
We in the union, at the start of registration, only expected around 35 teams to join, but it was a whopping 94 teams who joined from all over the Philippines. Some teams were even waitlisted.
But the best part that came out from switching online was, since debaters are people who care for the community, proceeds from tournaments went entirely to charity. A previous tournament’s proceeds went to Philippine General Hospital to help the frontliners. IDO’s proceeds, in the form of school and medical supplies, went to an island community school in Carles. It truly makes me happy to see debate as an art that not only helps the individual (as I wrote about in a previous article) but the community as well.
Life actually wants to let us drink lemonade, but it hands us lemons to make it with first.
All around, I see people build windmills. Although many are really struggling now, many are also adapting and coming out stronger. May 2020 be the year that molds us into stronger, better individuals.
What will you be doing when the next winds of change come? Build walls or build windmills?/PN
