Maritime Moots 2010, Sydney - Days 2 and 3

My apologies for the late post, but yours truly has been busy.

On the morning of Day 2, UiTM's claimants consisting of Arina Lum and Zharif Shafiq defeated the respondent team from Universiti Pendjajaran Indonesia. Congratulations for having three straight wins.

On the morning of Day 3, UiTM's claimants, who were represented by Arina Lum and Danial Nizam unfortunately lost to Hong Kong University. Among the arbitrators on the tribunal was David Martin Clark, a renowned arbitrator who also has a very popular website. That means that UiTM completed the preliminary group stage with three wins and one loss.

Later that afternoon, when the quarterfinal places were announced, the team discovered that their efforts were not enough to make it to the knock out stages. In the past, UiTM has comfortably made it to the last eight, for e.g. in 2007 (4th place) and in 2008 (6th place). A ban due to HINI in effect grounded the team just before commencement of the oral rounds although the memorials had been prepared and submitted. This team later went on to register a historic first win for UiTM in the Jessup national rounds of 2010, so I cannot help but wonder what if they had taken part in 2009's Maritime Moots.

Anyway, congratulations to the moot squad under the leadership of Miss Shairil Farhana @ 'Mama Shai'. I am proud of your achievements as you have gained valuable experience from this moot. Better luck in the next moot.

Maritime Moots 2010, Sydney, Australia - Day 1

UiTM's Maritime Moot Team got off to a flying start when they defeated a team from the University of Melbourne (which are ranked in the top 100 universities in the world according to the THES university rankings. UiTM currently does not have a THES ranking yet due to a technicality ... but that's another story for another day). UiTM mooted as the respondents and were represented by lead counsel Shairil Farhana (team captain and also known to her team-mates as 'Mama Shai', no prizes for guessing why!) and co-counsel Khairil Khalid (a tiger masquerading as a chipmunk).

This very same team then met the University of Southampton's claimants and also emerged victorious in a second match later in the afternoon. Southampton is home to such famous Maritime Law academics as Prof John F Wilson (author of the favourite student text 'Carriage of Goods by Sea), Prof Emeritus Robert Grimes (who was the external examiner for my Ph.D viva), Prof Charles Debattista (author of Bills of Lading in Export Trade) and Prof Nick Gaskell (renowned expert on salvage law). This is a huge scalp for the UiTM team as Southampton's team are comprised of postgraduates, i.e. LL.M candidates whilst UiTM's team are made up of second year degree students from the Bachelor of Legal Studies (Honours) programme.

Congratulations to the team. Hope you do even better tomorrow, and do not forget to make lots of new friends and come back to Malaysia with loads of happy memories. I shall be looking forward to keeping in touch with you via 'Skype'. Thank God for the wonders of modern technology.