Day 3 Wrap-up

Usually, the rule is: the first act's wonder collapses into the second act's drama. So it was today: tougher topics (at least, I thought so - my only reaction to the Syrian internet motion was "but but sir, Syria is a whole country") with more moving parts, closer and closer top rooms, successes compromised and failures recovered from. More rounds in the past and fewer in the future - the story of your team's or institution's tournament solidifying and trying to write the rest itself. Hopefully it's written in ANU's favour - with A on 14 and on the way to breaking, and B and C on 11 with the time to recover, and our adjudicators all in good rooms - but dramas and struggles make you see more than that. Even stalking the tab - banality of banalities - should impress that on you. So many people making their contorted way through the same system - such a sea of unsung desires beneath the couple of rooms you see on Youtube. It should be more humbling to win debates than to lose them.
Sitting there and having these thoughts, it seemed fitting that when ANU A got to one of those rooms (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXZFZNAkCa8), against some of the best teams in the competition, the spirits of the universe intervened and defused all drama by flooding the whole room with water, and replacing the speakers' voices with the music of those speakers' innermost natures. Goldie became a series of cute cosmic beeps and boops, at once bouncy and starlike. At 46:36 in MDG's speech there was a brief flute duet, suggesting that deep - very deep - in his soul he is a shy and innocent wood sprite. Only Callum was audible.
The sincerest good luck to everyone tomorrow!
- B