By Li Minghan
Following in the footsteps of the inimitable Ziqin, I have decided to create a series of fictitious diary entries of my experiences participating in this year’s edition of the Stetson moot. The original is available here.
Somewhere and somehow during my overseas exchange, I decided that I would sign up for the Stetson moot. It is the world’s largest moot court competition devoted exclusively to global environmental law issues. Teams from all over the globe come together at the Stetson University, School of Law in St. Petersburg, Florida in April to present on issues of international environmental law before international experts in the field. In 2024, I was in 1 of the 20 teams who were the semi-finalists in their respective regional or national qualifying rounds, to participate in the moot. Perhaps by reading this you too might be interested in joining too:
Friday, 22 September 2023, 8.30 am London Time
I’m pretty sure this will be the first and last entry of this diary. It is a bit of a haze for me. I recall crawling out of bed on a frosty London morning at 7.45 am (the earliest I have woken up on exchange other than to catch budget flights) and scrambling to put on my suit and tie (no pants, thankfully). I had barely 10 minutes to go through my script before being subject to the intense scrutiny of, among others, Prof Eleanor Wong, on topics which I had only just begun to have any ideas about. What followed was a round of questioning which felt like eternity but somehow only lasted for 15 minutes.
As my time ended, I realised I had not even begun my second set of submissions. “I’m screwed,” I thought. Ziqin’s article on Stetson made me dream of Florida, its sun and beaches. Nevertheless, Florida would remain a pipedream. Why did I think it would be a good idea to moot on exchange again? Whatever, time to go back to bed.
Thursday, 25 September 2024, 7.00 am Vienna Time
Update: I somehow did make it into Stetsons.
I happened to wake up earlier than expected just now.As I was scrolling through my notifications I saw an email from Prof Burton Ong. Startled, I rushed to turn on the reading lamp in my hotel room. I had made it past the auditions after all? Florida (and Disneyland) was going to be a reality for me, I set out with a renewed pep in my step for the day’s dose of exploration.
Saturday, 11 November 2024, 11 pm Geneva Time
I am in a ski lodge somewhere in the French side of the alps. I’m not doing any actual skiing though, because what should have been a day of sightseeing has turned into me scrambling to finish my part of my moot memo. Somehow, 6 weeks have flown right by. First, there was a flurry of introductions (with Kelly and Ying Jie), Zoom calls in trains and airports, and then working on the memorial submissions, which was due so soon! At least, for me, all my teammates have finished their parts and I was rightfully chided by my teammates for leaving everything right to the end. Teammates who, despite the time difference, have stayed up (or woke up) with me to complete the memorial.
“What a strange life this is,” I exhaled as I sent in our memorial, and promptly fell asleep to the peaceful silence of snow falling.
Wednesday, 31 January 2024, 1.30 pm Singapore Time
After twice-a-week benching sessions with seniors and Professors, Now, we have finally arrived at the gates of our first hurdle (in the form of a literal boarding gate). It was a relatively smooth flight, with Kelly and Ying Jie preoccupied with discussing the moot problem, and my attention oscillating between dozing off and watching a Netflix show. I should be more productive, I know.
We landed at 6.35 pm to the last sliver of sunlight in Manila. After collecting our checked luggage, we hurried to wait for the ride to our university hotel which Kelly’s parents had very kindly booked for us.
The hotel was located within the University of the Philippines itself (strange concept to us Singaporeans, I know). It came with the welcome surprise of having a tiny café (from which I will proceed to get many double shots of espresso) and a restaurant with a patio. The meal of lechon, rice, and the first of many Filipino desserts fueled us for the night of practice awaiting us.
Wednesday, 31 January 2024, 11 pm Manila Time
Our papers are filed away, our scripts highlighted, tabbed and scribbled over, and we are going to bed early with our binders full and our hearts trepidatious.
Thursday, 1 February 2024, 7.30 am. Manila Time
We did not adequately anticipate the struggles of 3 people sharing one bathroom, and particularly that I had my share of gussying up to do. While I had my morning coffee à l’italienne (by the counter, standing and scalding myself), Kelly busied herself with finding the path to the competition venue.
8.20 am
Phew, we made it on time. After brushing past other teams already settled in and huddled around their materials, we set down our bags and breathed a sigh of relief. Kelly ran off to greet her friends from other moots, and I had a quick chat with the SMU teams. Soon, it was time to announce the match-ups for the preliminary rounds. Thankfully, we are not the first round of the day, so I had some time to snoop around the competition room to figure out who we were up against. After a brief break for desserts, we got cracking on our opponents’ memorials.
I tried my best to cheer up the spirits of Kelly and Ying Jie by cracking corny jokes, to not much avail.
6.30 pm
Dinner time, after a rollercoaster of a day! We won our first round, despite Ying Jie having somewhat of a shaky start to her first round. Our opponents from Vietnam were particularly nice and we exchanged hugs and Instagram handles after the round. Ying Jie’s cheeky reference to the geography of the Philippines got a chuckle out of some of the judges. Our second round against SMU was a lot fierier, with several exchanges over the interpretation of a few words. I stumbled towards the end of my submissions and tried my best to keep my cool and direct the court back to the main points of my submission. Ultimately, we lost, but the SMU team was indeed a worthy adversary.
We took a Gojek out of the University campus to a nearby restaurant to lick our wounds with some authentic Filipino food.
8 pm
After a quick shopping break to get some snacks and souvenirs after dinner, we returned to our room. I began editing my script and attempted to commit it to memory. Kelly slipped into some sort of trance as she regurgitated her script, and Ying Jie was typing furiously away at her laptop. We are determined not to repeat today’s mistakes.
Friday, 2 February 2024, 8.30 am, Manila Time
Thankfully, we were allocated a later round and could sleep in for an hour more to make up for the late night yesterday. I again had my customary double shot of espresso as Ying Jie hustled to the University library to print our new scripts. I forced my teammates to become breakfast persons and to have something to eat at the University café.
4 pm
Our day ended earlier, so we made the most of the day and walked over to a restaurant within the campus for an early dinner (I didn’t have much to eat for lunch). It was delicious, and there were many cats outside the restaurant to play with. It was a beautiful walk around the campus as we made our way back to the competition venue to hear the results of the preliminary rounds.
Saturday 3 February 2024, 1:30 am?
And we are through! We were the 2nd last Semifinalist announced, and I heard Kelly let out an audible sigh of relief as we heard our team number. My internal calculations suggested that we did not have a particularly high chance of making it, so I guess my math was proven wrong once again. We congratulated our opponents for a job well done, sized up some our opponents, and attempted to head back for an early night. Ying Jie left her court shoes in a plastic bag at the competition venue.
Our night was spent mostly awake in the dark, pumped on adrenaline and chatting about everything. We scrutinized each other’s scripts, did last minute research, got distracted. I’m not sure when we fell asleep…
Saturday, 3 February 2024, 7.40 am?
…except that it was not enough. We dragged ourselves out of bed. I opted for two coffees, one to have on the spot and another to go. I only know this from my bank transaction records as I don’t know how we made it to the competition venue.
11.45 am
The announcement that we are speaking in the finals has hit me like a truck. This has never happened to me in an international moot before. People were screaming and cheering (although I am not sure if it was for us). Our opponent was SMU, although not the team we lost to in the preliminary rounds. They chose Applicants, which meant that we were Respondents again.
All three of us could barely eat anything for lunch, and I felt variously hot and cold. Kelly was groggy from exhaustion, having already mooted in 2 rounds. Ying Jie was trying her best to keep the both of us awake and sane. Dramatic, I know.
1.15 pm
We were brought into the Lecture Theatre for the finals. I nervously scanned the room to see two huge cameras being mounted, and I was reminded that the Finals would be broadcasted live. Kelly was, in her words, “resting [her] face” beside me. Ying Jie sat behind us and flashed a thumbs up whenever I turned to look back in support. Time has stopped for me. The world seems to be spinning and the mental image of me stumbling through my script during my first LARC moot began to haunt me.
4.00 pm
And we won! Kelly and I were so tired and cold from the award ceremony and the speeches that we didn’t make the mental connection when they announced our finalist opponents as the runners-up. We were staring at each other blankly.
Eventually we shook hands with the judges and thanked all of our fellow participants who came to congratulate us. We also accepted our Vietnamese friends gracious invitation to dinner. It was a brilliant meal, and we only parted ways after repeated vows to visit each other.
Saturday, 3 February 2024, 9.30 pm, Manila Time
Finally, some R&R time! Our flight was late in the evening, so we had the whole day to sleep in and explore Manila. Many mishaps occasioned us, like ordering way too much at brunch by accident or Kelly climbing a historic fort in heels. Great food and great laughs were had whilst we fought off the heat and the sun. We boarded a flight with our bellies full and our hearts content.
Now comes the even more arduous journey of – preparing for sunny Florida.
Monday, 8 April 2024, 8 am, Singapore Time
We find ourselves once again at the familiar place (i.e. Changi Airport Terminal 1), trying to engage in luggage socialism with the stack of textbooks, scripts and bundles that we were bringing. Thankfully everything came in underweight, and we did not have to put anything into our carry-ons.
What awaited us was a dreaded 25 hours of travelling and 2 transfers, from San Francisco to Denver to St. Petersburg, Florida.
Monday, 8 April 2024 (?) Sometime in the middle of the day.
We touched down in San Francisco. I was very much prepared for the flight with various gadgets, tinctures and vials but nevertheless I felt dizzy and dehydrated. Amid the queue to clear immigration and rechecking our luggage (I know, international transfers in the US are complicated), we realised that we won’t make our connecting flight to Denver. What broke my heart the most is that during our panic in trying to make our flight, I had lost my precious Miffy bag charm.
I spent the time waiting for the next flight to Denver hungrily eyeing the limp $20 sandwiches and moping about my Miffy charm. It is tragic. I think I ate a salad somewhere just now? Not a good start to our journey.
Monday, 8 April 2024, 11.40 pm, Florida Time.
Beyond the initial leg from Singapore to San Francisco, I was barely able to get any work done. I am still mourning the loss of my Miffy charm, and the planes seemed to only get smaller and noisier. I also did not know that airports could close, so there was nothing to eat or drink at the St. Petersburg airport when we landed.
We trudged, battered and hungry, towards our $80 Uber ride that is hopefully going to bring us to sanctuary.
Tuesday, 9 April 2024, 9.30 am, Florida Time.
What a beautiful morning. The sun is shining, the birds were chirping, the weather is a crisp 21 degrees. On recommendation, we stayed in the same Airbnb as Ziqin and team did the previous year and it did not disappoint. I immediately took a dip in the pool and made myself a coffee. The fridge even came with water and some food. I immediately shook off our 25-hour ordeal which we barely just survived. “No wonder people retire in Florida,” I thought to myself.
10.30 am
After our swim and washing up, we proceeded to engage in our slice of Americana by heading to the nearest Waffle House. The counters were sticky, the music was loud, and the food was oily, but the waiter (I learned that his name was Malcolm) was exceedingly nice and entertained us between plates of unfathomably oily hashbrowns and breakfast sausage. We had a window-seat staring down an Italian restaurant and a Walgreens. This was America at its finest. I almost forgot that I had a moot round tomorrow.
6.00 pm
Prof Burton has just landed in Tampa and offered to take us out to dinner. I indulged myself in a lovely steak dinner by the sea (thank you again Prof!) and we had a quick pit stop at a funky souvenir shop in a place named Treasure Island (were there to be pirates?) to pick up both essentials (sunhats, mosquito repellent) and non-essentials (turtles suspended in a snow globe in a place that has presumably never seen snow).
After dinner we quickly busied ourselves with rehearsing our rounds and getting everything in order. I also packed little goodie bags with durian candy in our daring attempt to take the Spirit of Stetson award by storm (spoiler alert: it was a bad idea, the candy stunk up my luggage and we did not stand a fighting chance against Hawaiian or Irish hospitality).
Wednesday, 10 April 2024, 5.30 pm, Florida Time.
The Stetson campus is so beautiful, I’m already jealous. In fact, it looks almost nothing like a law school. I wish BTC had the trimmings of Spanish tile, rotundas and manicured lawns. We were headed to the opening event of the moot where we could get a chance to learn more about the moot problem, meet and network with fellow participants from all over the world, and my favourite part, have dinner!
There were also many exciting performances, which included dancing, singing, skits and karaoke. Prof Burton shamed us for not having prepared anything to join in the fun or show off Singaporean culture, which I readily admit we could have done better at. All in all, it was a great time.
Thursday, 11 April 2024, 11.30 am, Florida Time
Just finished our first round against the Hawaiians. We were greeted with goodie bags of nuts and chocolate from Hawaii. I think they have their eyes on the Spirit of Stetson Award too. I tried to be cheeky and slipped in an “aloha” during my round but the judges just looked at me stone-faced. I guess I should refrain from trying any form of stand-up in the future.
5.00 pm
Our preliminary rounds ended early today so we decided to head out for dinner and do a bit of sightseeing. We chanced upon this smoked fish place and at Prof Burton’s suggestion we decided to give it a try. It turned out to be rather enjoyable and the portions were too much for us, so we had plenty of it to take back. We also did a bit of shopping at the Walmart nearby, and I marvelled at the vast selection of kombucha on offer (they took up an entire section of the shelf, which took me 5 minutes to walk from one end to the other).
After dinner it was back to work on the moot. I rewrote some parts of my arguments following comments from the judges earlier and set about committing them to memory.
Friday, 12 April 2024, 8.40 am, Florida Time
Another beautiful Florida morning! I am really in love with the weather. We trotted along to our venue with our bellies full of smoked fish and a tuna egg roll (which was a part of the complimentary breakfast Stetson catered for us). I chugged a kombucha ginger shot for energy (and some La Croix for fun) as we readied ourselves for another day of mooting. The teams were noticeably more serious now, and I could overhear some teams in the lounge calculating at their chances of breaking.
5.00 pm
The rounds for the day are over. Unfortunately, we did not get our chance to have our revenge against the Irish team who knocked NUS out in last year’s edition. During our break Prof Burton noticed that my tie matched the vases in the lounge and insisted on me posing for a picture. I have included it for your entertainment.
6 pm
We broke into the next round! So springs another night of frantically preparing, testing arguments, re-writing our script and nibbling on our smoked fish dinner.
9.40 am
Unfortunately, we could not pass muster with the judges against the Filipino team and we remain Quarterfinalists. After thanking the judges and a walk in the Florida sunshine to clear our heads, we returned to the now eerily silent holding room. I remembered that I still had half a research paper waiting for me, and promptly (and miserably) set to work.
Instead of the pancakes that the previous year’s team was entreated to, Prof Burton informed us that there was a Farmer’s Market nearby, and I promptly closed my laptop in favour of greener pastures. Ice cream and tacos wait for no man. The sea wind and the sunshine reminded us that despite everything, we were in Florida. To further continue the distraction, we had various assortments of food (whiskey flavoured cheese, postcards, bags made from recycled atlases, fresh bread, refried beans) which were most scrumptiously enjoyed.
6.30 pm
After watching the finals and receiving some sore consolation that the Filipino team which knocked us out would go on to be Champions, we decided to end our time in St. Petersburg in a somewhat melodramatic manner – by catching the sunset by the beach. I sought to experience as many Americanisms as we could, in the same way an American probably experiences satay at a hawker centre. Our remarks about the vastness of the United States, which began in jest and somewhat successfully incorporated into our moots, soon transcended camp into earnestness.
Our long walk by the beach as the sun set into the sea made me feel awkwardly self-aware, especially as I had refused to change out of my 'penguin' attire in favour of something more beach-appropriate. In my mind, a scene from Winnie the Pooh came up:
Later on, when they had all said 'Good-bye' and 'Thank-you' to Christopher Robin, Pooh and Piglet walked home thoughtfully together in the golden evening, and for a long time they were silent.
But of course, you can’t keep mooters silent for long. Soon talk returned to our upcoming assessments, our plans for Disneyland, and the Everglades despite these upcoming assessments. Onwards and upwards to better things.
Editor note: Li Minghan is a Year 4 Law student in NUS (graduating 2025). He along with his fellow teammates Kelly Cheung (graduating 2025) and Han Ying Jie (graduated 2024) participated in the 2024 edition of the Stetson Environmental Moot. They won the regional round and emerged quarter-finalists in the global finals. He hopes that his experience will inspire more people to take part in international moots, as last year’s article has done for him.
