20/11/2018
To all participants, volunteers, sponsors, and guests of the 9th HKDO 2018,
After 7 grueling pre-liminary rounds, some amazing (and some astounding) elimination rounds, one break night beach party to remember, 100+ trips to IKEA, and four slightly aged co-conveners later, we are proud to announce a successful end to this year’s HKDO. As tradition, we would like to recognize the many people who made this entire event a success.
Despite this being the 9th HKDO, at many parts of this journey it seemed quite unlikely we would be able to pull it off. We were unable to secure location in one of the universities we normally host our tournament at and had to find new friends in Hong Kong to help us bring HKDO to life. Our first thanks go to the tournament possible - Lingnan University, and the people there who made it happen: Ms. Connie Wong and Ms. Elaine Tsang of the LU Student Services Center. Despite having limited knowledge of our arcane activity that is BP debate, they trusted our vision and our plans and assisted in securing multiple university rooms in the middle of a school semester. Thank you so much for trusting that our rag-tag team of conveners could host a tournament of this scale.
Our second thanks go to the people who made the tournament enjoyable. Thank you to all volunteers who ran every imaginable errand in order to ensure the tournament could run on time. While as debaters we may not focus on the small things necessary to make large scale events happened, at one point we had 4 students taking time off of school squatting in a hallway fitting batteries into LED candles. It’s not the most glorious, or recognized work, but it’s essential work that made everything possible. We would also like to extend special appreciation for LU debaters who volunteered in between rounds – at their first BP tournament, instead of mentally preparing for the next round they would run around making sure everything is in order. Yet it was only because of their help, all other debaters were able to find their rooms and have everything in order.
Our third thanks go to our wonderful Adj Core: Harish, Ashish, Yoni, Loke, George, TJ, Mayu and Cara. Joshua and Sharmila must also be thanked for being with us spiritually. People will never imagine just how long our Adj Core spent discussing every possible wording and ways that debaters might end up abusing the motion. Thanks to you, New York did not collapse in a financial firestorm, nor did anyone really go into why the Deathly Hallows was a bad literary idea. Of course, debaters debate as they will and some motions ended up being further from the CAP's vision than expected (what is Israel really), but it was only through your hard work that all of the motions were as enjoyable as they were. Many debaters will look to the motions set at HKDO in preparation for tournaments to come. Thank you for the hours spent arguing every minute detail that made the tournament come to life.
Next, we would like to extend our thanks to the judges who came from all corners of the world to judge this tournament. It’s easy to think that being an IA and flown here and pampered by Loke is a really nice deal but getting visas and boarding 10+ hour flights to come all the way to Hong Kong just to wake up at 8 every morning and judge 4 rounds a day is no easy choice. Thanks to your help, and faith in the quality of the tournament, we were able to bring world class judges all the way to Hong Kong. We hope you enjoyed the free flow wine, and promise if you come to Hong Kong again, we will try to ensure extra bubble tea runs.
Last, but of course not least, we would like to thank Mr. Loke Wing Fatt for making all of this possible. Loke makes it extremely easy for conveners as he does most of the work himself. Despite the lack of venue, volunteers, secured funding and secured teams, Loke forced HKDO 2018 through and made it happen. In our circuit, we must recognize that our achievements are rarely solely our own, often it is only by the efforts of the people around us, the people who judge us, debate with us, put up with us as teammates, and host tournaments for us that we are able to improve and rise to where we are. If we all stand on the shoulders of giants to be where we are today, at the HKDO 2018 we all stood on the broad shoulders and slightly balding head of Mr. Loke Wing Fatt. Thank you for hosting nearly a decade’s worth of tournaments here in Hong Kong. It is through the tireless effort and sacrifice of this individual that we say with certainty, despite all the problems that will surely rise again,
See you at HKDO 2019!
Signing off,
Your conveners,
Junbeom, Cindy, Eunice and Gabriel
*P.S. This is cheating because Eunice didn't say I could add this but would like to say one thing. Thank you Eunice for being an amazing convener and a force of nature; I don't know how much other people know how essential you were but they should know this- HKDO had 4 conveners because one convener did 99 percent of the work while the other 3 struggled with 1 percent. If anyone sees Eunice at some point, please shake her hand and give her some boba. She really deserves it.
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