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Ervim Charles Orbase from the Asia Pacific College was hailed the winner of the English Speaking Union- Philippines Public Speaking Competition held last Saturday (March 6, 2010) at the University of the Philippines School of Economics. He will be the Philippines’ representative to the international competition that would be held in London in a few months’ time. The theme for this year’s competition is “speculations on the future”.

I was able to judge him during the semifinals and he’s an absolute performer. He can literally work a room with his amazing charisma and great personality. He talked about how he once got into trouble for being a shoplifter in a neighborhood grocery store. Orbase likened his predicament of wanting to escape to the struggles that each Filipino goes through when one thinks of leaving the country for greener pastures. There may have been rough edges in his speech but the guy is just so damn funny and personable to lose. He’s definitely different from our previous winners.

Patricia Evangelista – of Storyline and Philippine Daily Inquirer fame — won the very same competition in 2004 when she talked about how Filipinos have found their way to all the corners of the globe. It was a very impassioned speech about her understanding of what it means to be Filipino.

Gian Karlo Dapul (who I also had the privilege of judging in the preliminaries) won the 2008 edition of the tournament talked about fish mucus and foot fungus. While he may look stiff as a board (peace, Gian!), Gian was actually quite a funny guy. Come to think of it, he was a milder version of Orbase. They did the same things – share anecdotes, spoke in different accents and voices etc. The only thing that he didn’t do was shout at the top of his lungs like Orbase did. So I guess they have lots of similarities and yet glaring differences as well. Dapul is now sophomore at the Ateneo de Manila University.

Second placer Asia Pacific College’s Czarina Moresco also used her own life as the major talking point of her speech. She mainly shared stories about her struggles as an expatriate Filipino during the time of the time of the recent global recession. She was awesome! It was cool to know that she’s also a soon-to-be published author AND fashion designer (with actual shows!) on top of being a student.

Asia Pacific College is a relatively new player in this field so it was such a pleasant surprise to see them do so well in the competition. Most of the participants in the ESU competition are usually seasoned debaters from the institutions active in the debate circuit. APC is more or less an outsider to this circle so it is quite unexpected for them to just take the competition by storm.

UP Diliman’s Richard Estrella took home the third spot after he talked about in length about his nose.

The preliminaries were held in the morning with seasoned (!) debaters such as myself, BJ Guerrero, Anna Arcellana, Alistair Zosa, Jon Jon Avila, Aaron Chan and Yang Villa judged speakers. Due to the many UP Diliman speakers who made the semifinals, I was the only one left to judge the semis with four members of the UP Diliman faculty.

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