When a Nightmare turns Sweet

As the nightmare unfolds, I saw myself scrambling in cold sweat. The rest of competitors are just as clueless; they were watching the speaker, prowling for visual cues to 'pin' him down. But he wasn't any ordinary speaker. His speech was one from the Advanced Manual of Interpretive Reading, a speech that no sane soul has even ventured into.

My mind kicked into survival mood as I reminded myself that it's a do-or-die mission. I have never done a '1st evaluator' role in a contest setting before. 5 mins was all I have. To add more time to myself, I was scribbling towards the end of his speech. When we proceeded towards a private room, I was the first contestant to sit down and start scribbling. I shouted to the timer to give us an occasional update on the remaining time. He did, and that forced me to go into overdrive. My final minute was spent re-writing my thoughts into 6 main points on a small piece of paper. That was enough to do the trick, i.e to act confident in front of the audience.

Going first has its privileges. The crowd laughed at my jokes. The crowd took my evaluation as original. The rest of the evaluators had stale jokes. The rest of the evaluators had unoriginal scripts. Thought I could have stretched my evaluation a little longer, it was commendable, given the limited time I had in composing my thoughts. During my 3 mins of performance on stage, I made 3 personal references to his speech, maybe that personal touch got me the votes of the judges.

The result was unexpected - a 1st runner-up. It was beyond my wildest expectations. A first attempt at Division S level against a strong field of seasoned competitors & I truimphed.

Maybe Optimism within a Nightmare will indeed produce light amidst darkness.