I havent blogged in a while so i thought i would blog about my T.O.M experience in grade 10
If your wondering what T.O.M. stands for its
Tournament Of the Minds.
The other night while talking to my buddy Phil somehow the story of my T.O.M. experience came up. If your wondering, T.O.M. is a nationwide (might even be international-wide) for primary to highschool (up to year 10). Basically you have teams of about 7-10 made up of different grades. Of course primary schoolers with primary schoolers and high schoolers with high schoolers. These teams then choose from 3 categories
Maths and Engineering
English
Science
Once you have chosen your category you get given a long term problem to solve and a short term problem to solve. The Maths section often Build something, English often do a dramatization and science… no idea since no one chose to do the science section. You get about 8 weeks to figure out the problem then you go to the school that is hosting the district comp for your district, present your drama or thing to some judges, get interviewed as a team, then you are sent off to a room where you have 20 mins as a team to solve the short term problem. At the end of the day everyone is herded into the hall, the spirit of tournament award is presented (basically team work award) then 3rd 2nd and then the state representative for each category.
Well my experience was a pretty interesting experience. After we formed our team we chose the english challenge. Our team was pretty awesome team, some very creative minds and no one was shy. Our problem was to come up with a drama that is located from one of the locations given, and then you had to incorporate at least 1 item from list A B and C. and had to have one character from each list as well
There are certain rules to the performance
There is a performance space of 4×4m marked out on the ground
There had to always be 2 people in the performance space AT ALL TIMES
There are a list of illegal props and legal props that can be used
If you use an illegal prop at all in your performance you get disqualified
Thats all i can remember, but they are the major rules. Well after about 6 weeks my group hadn’t come up with anything, often just stuffing around in our meetings or getting frustrated. So one of my team mates decided to just take on the responsibility of doing the script. He had an idea and was a drama student so he was knowledgeable in that area, and generally a pretty funny guy so we trusted him. Week 7 we looked at the scripts and assigned roles and went through the script. The basics of the script were that we were in a hotel and then a restaurant. The main characters were the asian bell-boy (me), the edgy frustrated hotel manager, insecure humpty dumpty (which was an emptied out egg with a face drawn on it) and i cant remember much else. We all came up with our own costumes and then left it at that. The only object i remember we HAD TO HAVE was the soiled glove, i cant remember the other 2.
The day of the comp arrived and we pretty much just winged it. Practiced our script a couple of times. When we walked in, to our surprise one of our 3 judges was actually one of COC’s primary school teachers *phew* We performed and they loved it! they couldnt stop laughing! The part that absolutely went off was when I (being the asian clumsy bell boy) knock over humpty dumpy from the table just before the hotel manager lets off all his steam, the hotel manager walks over to the table and starts firing away, while in anger stamping his foot, which humpty happens to be under. Man you shoulda seen the judges i thinkt hey almost fell off the chair laughing!
Well after that we had our short term problem. It was pretty easy, but the key to these performances is to be creative and to think out of the box. We got a picture of a boy looking at a cow with a thought bubble above his head. Basically we had to fill in the thought bubble. Now of course we first thought of milking the cow etc. So after our initial ideas we scrapped them and tried to think out of the box. I think we ended up with, Uncle Bob’s gonna love dinner tonight. Or something like that.
The day ended and we were all sitting in the hall, they annouced the spirit of tournament awards (which we won) talked about the short term question and gave examples of some of the funny creative ones ( i think ours was read out) and then the awards for 3rd and 2nd then the district representative for the state comp. Each section was announced and to our joy the primary school english team had come first and we’re going to represent the district in the primary english comp at states. Then the secondary section came around. They annouced and we didnt really have high hopes. Then all of a sudden, “the team representing the redland district in the secondary english category is, CHRISTIAN OUTREACH COLLEGE!” Me and my friend weren’t even listening, we had out discmans in our ears, and next thing we feel this tugging from our supervisor telling us to accept our award.
We couldn’t believe that we had won it was so unexpected.
The next week at assembly we all got up on stage at school, i remember my friend had lost his top button and was wearing this REALLY big badge pinned onto the front of his shirt to old it closed. it was REALLY BIG, like as big as those badges on those birthday cards you can buy. He was really worried he’d get in trouble by the principal on stage and all i remember iw alked on stage first, then he walked on after and i just burst out laughing on stage. So embarrassing.
The moral to this story, well i cant really think of anything HAHAHA it was just a random story, hence categorised under random stories. But it was a pretty fun experience, and to win was just a bonus. The states were pretty awesome very very different atmosphere but that is part 2 of the story! haha
