World Scholar's Cup World Finals 2009: My Experience

The World Scholar´s Cup World Finals 2009 was hosted in Nanyang Girls High School, Singapore from June 12 to June 15, with more than 200 participants hailing from 15 countries of the world. The international academic event was organized by DemiDec and the core components included essay, scholar´s challenge, scholar´s bowl, debate and scavengers photo hunt. Based on the theme the Fall of Empires, there were six subjects: Literature, History, Visual Arts, Economics, Science and Mathematics, and the subjects except Math were related to the theme. For example, for Economics we had to study the Economics of Spectacular Collapse and for Visual Arts, we had to study the Art of Decay and Decadence.

The competition kicked off on Friday, June 12 with Scholar´s Scavenge Photo Hunt, where we were divided into eighteen groups and asked to take photos with different items and in different settings of Singapore within a 3-hour deadline. We had to scavenge throughout Singapore for taking photos with different traditional items such as double-decker bus, hotel menu and also unconventional things like living cow (where would we get cows in Singapore except in pictures). We also had to videotape ourselves singing songs in public places, convince hotel boys to do pushups for extra-points and feign mannequin. To sum up, Scholar´s Scavenge was one of the most exciting events of the WSC and it also helped us get to know the place better.

The following day, the main event started with essay writing, where we were to write an essay on either "Advising a potential emperor on building up a sustainable and powerful empire" or "The pros and cons and implications of using nuclear power." Then we had to give MCQ exams on each of the six subjects in the Nanyang Girls´ High School auditorium. The said two events were individual and the next two to come were group events, where I was in the team USBangladesh.

As the name suggests the eccentricity of our team, the nomenclature of our team takes us to the formation of the team USBangladesh. As the tournament was in July and most of the people who would be interested in participating had exams, I could not find any teammate and mailed DemiDec to team me up with participants from other countries. Two potential scholars from different states of the United States were also looking for teammates. Therefore, DemiDec put the three let-out participants in a single team and the team USBangladesh was thus formed, comprising Ryan Nabil from Bangladesh, Bunnie Hadsall from Arizona and Todd Medema from California. We were often referred to jokingly as the United States of Bangladesh and were the only internationally composite team.

Debate was somewhat fun, as we got to know about the style and the way debaters from different countries debate. However, the speech was only of 3-4 minutes and didn´t allow any Point of Information, so the original vigor of debate was missing. We had two team debates, one against a team from Taiwan and another against a team from Korea and we won both of the debates. The resolutions were "That empire and democracy are contradictory" and "That sustainable development could be achieved without major changes in human lifestyle" Six participants were selected from six countries for the showcase debate that followed and Todd Medema was the first positive speaker for the resolution, "The bigger the empire, the harder they fall."

That was the end of the official day one of the World Scholar´s Cup and we went back to our hotel from Nanyang on bus while watching the nightlife of Singapore outside. We reached the hotel at about 10 30 pm and still there was no sleep, only excitement for the next day.

Sunday, the official last day of the competition started with a buffet breakfast at the 5-star Park Hotel Clarke Quay. Then we headed off to Nanyang where fifteen representatives of fifteen participating countries had the honor to bear their national flags in the flag march. I carried the Bangladeshi flag as I was the only participant from Bangladesh, proceeded by the flag-bearer of Australia and succeeded by the flag-bearer of China. Then we had the Scholar´s Bowl, the lengthiest event of the World Scholar´s Cup. Each team was given a remote-control device and we were to answer questions on the projector screen by pressing any of the six options on the remote-control device within fifteen seconds. It took a while to get the network working and once it started, we were awestruck at the state-of-the-art technology used in the competition.

After the Scholar´s Bowl and the lunch, it was time for the Award Ceremony. Most of the awards were taken by local Singaporean schools, Raffles´ Girls, Raffles´ Institution, St. Joseph´s Institution and the host Nanyang Girls´ High School-the participants from other countries could guess where every winner (with a few exception, of course!) was from. It can be noted in this regard that the participating countries were Australia, Bangladesh, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United States, United Kingdom and Vietnam.

Lastly, there was a farewell dinner-where the participating teams had the last taste of Singaporean cuisine and individual best scorer from each school were awarded Bronze medal. The theme of the next World Scholar´s Cup was also declared: it was time for a shift from the Fall of Empires to a World Divided.

The next day I hung out with teams from Modern School of Dubai and International Community School of Bangkok, other than my own teammates. The teams who didn´t have early flights also got to explore the beauty of Singapore that were close to the hotel: Chinatown, River Cruise, Orchard Street and lastly, the colorful and flamboyant nightlife of Singapore.

To sum up, the World Scholar´s Cup World Finals 2009, with its cosmopolitan environment, Singaporean food, amicable local Singaporean people, hospital host, and use of alpaca as the mascot was altogether a great event.

June 16th, 2009

It was time to leave Singapore and bade goodbye to the friends I had made at Singapore- Bunnie and Todd from my own team, friends from other teams and from the organizing DemiDec. As they say, Goodbye is the hardest thing to tell but of course, when there are social networking portals like Facebook and next World Scholar´s Cup, it´s not really that hard to say goodbye.