A Mun of Fun!

Apart from being the, and I quote, "largest collection of white tits and ass you'll ever find" (no prize for guessing who said it), SiMUN was actually quite a lot of fun. Especially because among the (very many) white asses were those belonging to our dear friends from RJ, who could quite possibly rank among the coolest Rafflesians on the planet.

Take this for example. In my committee (ECOSOC), we had to debate a resolution on indigenous peoples, which the delegate from the DPRK (pity it wasn’t assigned to Hwa Chong, haha) spoke against. Now, the delegate from the very...interestingly..named Democratic People's Republic of Korea was a perfectly square man in every sense of the word. Heck, if he stood behind a screen, you'd see the silhouette of a sardine can securely fastened onto a Lego brick. Replete with little bristles of hair for other Lego bricks to connect. I'm not kidding. And when he walks THROUGH the screen, in that typical no-mere-wall-can-dissuade-me-from-changing-my-glorious-direction North Korean way that he does, you'll find yourself face to face with a monolith of black on black, replete with a red tie. Talk about getting in line with your country stance!

Anyway, so he walks up the podium, and begins his speech AGAINST indigenous rights, saying how they should all be left to rot because the resolution doesn't concern North Korea anyway. At the end of which, the submitter of the resolution stands up and says: "Well, perhaps Our Dear Leader forgets at times, but does the delegate from North Korea not realise that fully five percent of his country's population is indigenous?".

At this point, most people in the auditorium are thinking: "Oh, shit, now he's dead". This guy, however, is absolutely unfazed, stares at the speaker for a while as if he just babbled something incoherent about Bill Clinton's continued moral impeccability, and goes in a perfectly even voice:

"The delegate of North Korea is not aware of this, as North Korea is only comprised of 100% loyal North Koreans."

Clearly t3h win. Especially because after that, Iran accused North Korea of wearing clogs and therefore having a poor human rights record (best link ever, right?), and North Korea ACTUALLY broke down on stage and sobbed "North Korea is ONLY trying to work with the worldddd!" in the most heart wrenching voice EVER, like Mike Tyson suddenly deciding to convert to the Jewish faith and spontaneously breaking out in Hebrew choruses, while spitting out half digested pieces of Evander Hollierfield's chewed off ear. Sweet.

Oh yeah, back to the point, this guy's from RJ.

So, anyway, my own experiences at SiMUN were pretty cool in themselves. It was surprisingly easy for a first timer, and you always know it’s a good thing when someone walks on stage within the first five minutes and makes an announcement that goes:

"Bee bee boom. Sorry for the interruption, but would all Anti-imperialists assemble here please? America, please piss off. Thank you."

America, however, was too busy studying for her term test at home to be mortally offended. Anyhow, at the end of the first session, I had managed to persuade all fifteen people doing the same issue as I was (landlocked countries) to use and back my resolution instead of theirs, which was strange, because it included all the anti imperialists (i.e. Iran, Cuba and Libya), but ALSO the UK, Japan, Australia, and Canada. Funky. Then I convinced the people who WEREN'T doing my resolution to vote for it anyway. Skillz.

Due to the incredibly large number of supporters (it's diplomacy, not whoring! I didn't buy them chocolate or promise them dates or anything, the latter of which would have been used as a mortal threat. I merely showed them off the floor (no one listens to debate) how truly l33t the resolution was!), our strategy for getting the resolution passed was this:

Chronology of events;

1. Toitle Reads Resolution

2. Toitle makes speech, and passes to other delegate

3. Other delegate yields to chair, FOR time begins

4. Fifteen delegates jostle to speak during FOR time, always yielding to another delegate, then back to the chair

5. Against time begins, BUT is rudely interrupted by a motion to move directly to open debate (where you can speak both FOR and AGAINST), which is seconded by about half the room.

6. Another twenty delegates jostle to speak during open debate, all of whom are For, effectively drowning out opposition.

7. Should opposition arise, almost every country raises its placards and pwns the speaker with POIs

FTW!

So yeah, it was pretty cool. The only problem being that Bolivia was never supposed to play such a significant role in world affairs, as evidenced by the Chair recognising me THREE TIMES, no less, as "The Delegate of Brazil". To which i replied, after the third time, with great consternation, "We like to call ourselves Bolivia at times. BOO-LII-VIAAA. The one that sounds like an yeast extract."

The only aberration was that Jordan DID decide to secede from my coalition in the end, the only reason being because he wanted his name as main submitter. For a resolution that benefits Jordan the MOST of all the countries in the world. Even though there was no best delegate, or delegation. WTF? The only point he had in HIS resolution that wasn’t in mine was this: (I swear, I'm not kidding.)

"Recommends the UN led growth of the plant [long Latin name that probably just means Grapefruit] in African states, for the purposes of providing water."

He never got to hear the end of it, and we (Terence and myself) tabled his resolution indefinitely by a huge majority and got ours passed in committee. Whoops.

So anyway, after three days of constant speaking and haxxing, it finally paid off in the GA when we got it passed 39-5, DESPITE Greece's frantic attempts to slam it as the "embodiment of everything that is wrong with third world dependency". Nice try :) The US went up, spoke for about five minutes on why the resolution sucked to hell, and then voted FOR it because twenty people wrote and told them to. Dumb Greece. See, no one actually listens in debate, unless you tell them off the floor. ESPECIALLY if your article invokes Article 76 of the Law of the Sea, WTF. Insomniacs everywhere rejoice. :) Just kidding Mun. Really, great job, on a really spastic topic!

As for the previous post, the message by Nova was sent to me just before the vote, which was really really tense but rather anti-climatic in the end, because of the huge majority by which the resolution got passed. HELLenic Republic indeed. And sorry Nova, about your resolution, it really wasn’t about Greece breaking the mutual pact, your resolution really did have some problems (i.e, it tried to ban torture, zomg), and Bolivia IS a socialist state after all. (We use Special Police Units to shoot crack farmers.) Ah well. All in good fun.

And good fun it was! At the end of the whole thing, because of the way we worked so closely together, I befriended about half the people, and got their contacts. (Haha if I didn’t, I'd be a political bastard. and I counted okay! 13 guys and 13 girls. So. Not. A. Flirt. Unless you're implying I'm gay, in which case I am So. Not. Gay. As well)

GA was actually pretty fun, particularly because we ended up playing proxy bingo. Now, for all of you unacquainted with the system, in a MUN you aren’t allowed to talk. Instead, you write messages on pieces of paper, and these little people (half of them called Igor, no doubt) scurry up to you and transmit them first to the chair (for censorship), then to your targets.

Proxy bingo goes like this. As with normal bingo, all participants write down numbers from 1-25 in a 5 by 5 square. One non participant, in this case some UWC girl, thinks up a number from 1-25, in this case say 21, and writes it on a piece of message paper. The message then goes to a bewildered securitariat and the chair, who wonders what on earth "21" is, and perhaps thinks that it’s actually half of the Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything, and thereby has hidden significance somehow relevant to the conference (read about the cool messages that went around on Shivana's tagboard, lol). They then pass the thing to all the participants, who cancel out "21" on their pieces of paper, and the process continues.

Five in a row wins. Upon which, you write BINGO! backwards as !OGNIB, replete with click and all, and send it to everyone. Hurrah. The chair thinks you've just discovered the meaning of life.

In fact, it got so mundane at one point that I was about to initiate a vote of no confidence (which my coalition, now much larger, wanted to support) in the Sec-Gen for the heck of it when the conference closed abruptly! Daymn. It'd have been good to sit on that chair, and my agenda would essentially have comprised of have three items:

1. Creating a new voting system where every item of clothing removed by a delegate on the floor counts for ten votes.

2. Legalising the phrase "Tabletop Dancing is in Order", and motioning for that with immediate effect

3. Mandating within the UN charter a decree that every chair-in-training pass through the initiation right of chanting "Bolivia" six times while stepping on hot coals.

After which I'd pass the floor back to the previous Sec-Gen for her closing remarks. Lawl. Oh well, there’s always next year :)

So anyway, to everyone who took part in SiMUN, great job! Bolivia team, nice try, Hoe, you really should've gotten best resolution for yours, too bad the majority of your Committee had the sense of humour of a slowly rusting mess tin. Ah well, better luck next time!

Congrats to Mun and Sam for special mentions, and to Mun for best res. Lol, you trix me, you said ALL of them were awarded to non-debated ones, so I thought that included yours! Never mind. Poor Augustin, brother of mangosteen, sorry you were the Chair, man.

To all my new SiMUN friends; you guys were awesome, really, some of the best orators I know! Thanks for your support, let’s keep in touch!

Finally. For EVERYONE else who didn’t take part, DO COME NEXT YEAR! It’s an unbelievably great experience. SiMUN says, JOIN NOW. Now. NOw. NOW. (Notice the varying tones of voice to gradually hypnotise you into believing me. Yeah, SiMUN's that effective. :))

Nowwwww.





Actually, join ThiMUN. At least it’s not held at the Lychee Franchise.