Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Giving a Talk

Tuesday February 7, 9:09 a.m.

It's been a tense few days for me. Nope, nothing bad but I've had a lot on my plate all of a sudden after a 6-week layoff. I had my first Skype lesson with Mr. Moriya on Saturday night. The two hours were fine although there were adjustments to be made in terms of showing written vocabulary, for example. The payment plan is still pending. I had sent an e-mail to the foreign customer representative at my Tokyo bank branch but I've yet to hear from her. Not sure if she thinks my questions are so stupid that she won't deign to answer them.

Anyways, I had that talk for my friend's church group on Sunday afternoon. I was pretty nervous, to be honest. How do you wrap up nearly 20 years of life in 30 minutes? But I was lucky in that when I got to the church some 2.5 hours before showtime, I was met by a few friendly folk who ended up joining the talk. That really helped to take the edge off.

As for the talk itself, it actually ended up going a full hour. Tried to keep it lighthearted, although my  last topic was on the March 11th earthquake. Not sure if I won over the whole audience but a few people came up afterwards to compliment me and ask me questions. But all in all, it was good. Had to decompress for a few hours afterwards, though.