Coalesce, Bibliobibuli, Akimbo, Mosh, Bodewash, Donnybrook, Popinjay, Mawkish, Token Economy, Ecorche, Ectocommensal, Congenital.

Two weeks.

That's how long I trained for the Penang Band Festival.

Two weeks worth of sweat, pain, and most of all, wasted time.

If you should know, we won the state level challenge, which was held on Friday. No unbiased judging here. How do I know? Because I asked my younger sister who was watching the event (she's one of those honest types) as well as my mother (vindictive and highly judgmental type) regarding their opinion on whether or not we deserved the win.

They both agreed. But they still pointed out weaknesses in our performance.

Friday's Result: We received the Gold Certificate and were crowned champions of Penang. Annihilating our closest competitors Jit Sin & Heng Ee (someone tell me if I misspelled their names) with the inspirational Sejahtera Malaysia (my favourite Malay Song of all time) and the classical Poet and Peasant.

Yesterday though, was a different story. The judges were different from Friday night. Quite understandable. But most of their replacements were local or regional.

This was the national level competition, so we really should be doing better than this. But as long as the judging was fair, IDGARA.

It wasn't.

None of the bands outside of Penang received Gold certificates and in an odd twist of fate, my band, the classical piece playing band, earned only a silver for playing the same thing from Friday night (as did all the Penang schools), while Jit Sin walked away champions and Heng Ee won a Gold Certificate (as did Jit Sin).

Believe me when I say this isn't the sore loser speaking, here's the evidence:

• Heng Ee played worse than us that night, meaning they played too loudly and there were very obvious flaws in their performance.
• Jit Sin were only slightly better than Heng Ee.
• None of the schools outside of Penang received Gold Certificates (which would have meant they were in contention for the Yamaha Trophy) for their performance.
• Some of the judges were, shall we say, not on friendly terms with our principal Conductor, Mr. Woon Wen Kin.
  
• Chung Ling High School Band (my band) had healthy female support. This is quite remarkable when you take into account Chung Ling is an all-boys high school.

Whatever information above was gleaned from the teacher advisers of CLHS Band as well as ex-members of CLHS Band. If you think they would have been biased, let me enlighten you by saying one of the teacher advisers once gave the president a scolding in front of us band members in a public area.

They lose nothing by giving us their honest opinions. We on the other hand, lose a lot more by listening to lies.

No one plays demagogue in the school band of Chung Ling.

After one days worth of observation, reflection, and other calculations; I have come to the conclusion that the Penang Band Festival was nothing more than a political ploy for the Pesta Pulau Pinang celebrations.

A victory was assure for the home teams when none of the non-Penang teams earned a Gold Certificate.

A mock David-versus-Goliath or some other come from behind victory against a much more powerful competitor was staged when Chung Ling supposedly screwed up to earn a scandalous Silver Certificate while both Jit Sin & Heng Ee were given Gold.

If you still have any doubts, let me leave you with this final note:
Some of the unbiased, common folk, who had no affiliations with Chung Ling were heard by my bandmates saying they were surprised by the decision as they had predicted a Chung Ling victory.

I can only compare this infuriating decision with the one made over the Anthony Bonsante-Jesse Brinkley rematch.

Some victories are worse than defeat.

Live Long & Prosper,
May The Force Be With You,
Be At Peace With Death.