I braced meself for the weekend. After the terrible experience the last time, i could not expect this time to be any different. I will be dealing with pettiness, emotional outbursts, hypocrisy, self-righteousness, finger pointing, back-biting, dirty tactics, the whole nine yards.
After the weekend, i was pleasantly surprised to find that i was wrong. None of the aforesaid took place. The competition ran smoothly with a good spirit among everyone. There were NO COMPLAINTS LODGED!!!! Perhaps a little hypocrisy when the losers congratulated the winners - but this i see more as an act of graciousness than hypocritical. The only pettiness were when some participants made life difficult for our ushers and escorts - making them run up and down to bring coffee and then complained that it was not good.
But that was it!
When the results were announced, almost everyone was a winner in one way or another. But the biggest winner i guess is the spirit of competition. I find myself looking forward to meeting the other teams again in the next competition.
I had to stand corrected before my new mooters when my warnings regarding my initial fears did not materialise.
So what made the difference this time? Was it because the stakes were not as high, since this was a 'smaller' competition? Perhaps. But i think it could be something else - the absence of one particular institution!!!
Come to think about it, it was a member of that institution who had previously warned me about how dirty and petty the other teams could get. It was that member from that institution who lodged complaints against my team for making too much noise and distracting them - a complaint which was duly thrown out. It was that member from that institution who tried to garner my support when they were planning to bring the organisers into disrepute.
Scientifically, it points to them - all things being more or less equal, the main difference between this competition and the one earlier in the year was their presence. So is it a coincidence that in their absence, things went in good spirits?
*The theme song for the movie, Tootsie.
2 comments:
Congrats on a good competition. Glad it all went well in a certain team's absence. Sorry if a certain team member of a certain team gave you an inaccurate, self-righteous and excessive picture of the whole exercise. Wish I had more experiences like your recent one. May you have many more of those. I know I haven't.
hey man, chill, ok. i admit i ended the post on a rather mischievous note, which i admit may not be fair.
after all, there are many other possible reasons why things happened the way it did.
Post a Comment