It's Like This, Sort Of

 I’ve been in this routine before.  I’ve been asked to speak in Chinese.  I use Chinese to converse every day without a second thought.  But to offer a formal presentation in Chinese before one hundred people sharpens the focus as to what a compromised effort this might unfold into.  “It would be great if you could do it in Chinese.”  No pressure.  I know though that there are way too many technical words that I do not know in Chinese.  Lay them out.  I’ll try to memorize them.   But time is tight and this will be done at the expense of buttressing the core concepts in English.  

On the morning of the event I got a cabbie that seemed to know where we were heading.  North, on Jing Mi Lu, we’re en route to the satellite town of Shunyi.  I was typing and editing and not paying attention as we passed the turn off to where I’d lived in 1999.   Someone texted.  Someone called.  When I asked how much longer he replied: “five more minutes” once, twice and then a third time. My colleague called frustrated that I’d been five minutes out for twenty minutes now.  The driver sheepishly confirmed that he’d screwed up.  I was too distracted preparing for this talk to really care.  The extra time was a boon. 

And it all went all right.  I stood up and I explained what I could in Chinese.  And then I went to English.  When I could I dove hard in Chinese once again, until I couldn’t and found my self saying “you know it’s like this, sort of.” And then I’d shift to English.  This made for a rather cacophonous presentation.  I looked out and considered my audience.  They were nodding.  I was smiling.  They got the bits that were important. 

And when I was done, I sat and relaxed, as much as one can sitting there in front of the room with eighty-eight people staring at your back.  I wrote some things down.  Made a real bathroom run.  Later made a fake bathroom run out from the subsequent next presentation that was hard to follow.  I tried to absorb the feeling of being done.  For a few hours at least I could savor this after glow.


Thursday 4/20/17