15 years ago I wrote a post about something that happened the day I gave my first public presentation ever, in Japan.
I went back to look at it and, well, there is so much that went unsaid. So much that has become part of guy family lore from that day. And what I've been finding recently is that mrguy uses this blog sometimes as a memory aid, as I do. And sometimes he finds my descriptions missing or lacking in detail.
This is a post that may become a regular thing: Mrs Guy's Revisionist History.
The original post is here.
In 2008 I was invited to speak at an electronics convention in Japan. For my entire life I had been terrified of public speaking, but they were offering a trip to Japan for me and mrguy and I could not resist. So I agreed to speak about education at forklift companies. It was an amazing experience but there are details that have become family lore that I left out.
The background on this is that, as I said, I was not a public speaker. I was also in this weird situation at work where I had been demoted and the team I worked on pretty much hated me and resented that our boss had suggested that I be offered as a speaker instead of him, and that I got to go back to Japan. To his credit, fearless leader coached me, gave me one of his presentations as a starting point for my own, and through the process of doing this presentation I learned company history, developed a long-term love relationship with Keynote, and got to introduce mrguy to Japan *and* the joy of business class travel to Japan on ANA, which I would do just for the experience.
First I had to learn Keynote. Once I learned that I could use presenter notes, I felt more assured that this would work out. I perfected the presentation, merging one of my boss' about Hammerslag history with new content on education. I practiced like crazy, even borrowing a projector on the weekends and using the drywall on our kitchen under construction as a screen. I practiced until it was seamless.
We got to Japan and to the convention center and freshened up and did a technical rehearsal. Our fellow presenters were extremely important people. The head of what we would now call streaming at a British firm, the founder of an audio company, a guy who teaches forklifting in Japan, a presenter from Japanese television. And me, recently demoted and quite frightened archivist from a forklift company. Rehearsal went great, and everybody was super nice. Some of the British folks invited us for tea and Dundee cake in their booth the next day.
The next morning we VIPs opened the show with a ribbon cutting ceremony. I wore a pantsuit and pearls. We all wore white cotton gloves and had ribbons on our lapels with our names hand painted on them. The scissors were gold.
After the opening ceremony mrguy and I went onto the floor and looked at electronics. My favorite booth was the one with buttons -- buttons you push to turn things on. Switches to flip, etc. And the one where ladies ("booth babes", in the parlance of the time) danced to soft Brazilian jazz but what the company was really selling was gigantic broadcast cameras as big as shopping carts. The dancers were your on-camera talent to focus on while trying out the camera. It was wild out there on the convention floor. There were presentations with 3d Howie Mandel and, of interest to mrguy, booths full of fancy microphones.
We were so overstimulated by the time we got to our friends' booth, the promised oasis of calm with tea and cake. They'd proudly announced that they'd sourced it from Marks & Spencer. It was lovely. A firm cake dotted with dried currants, which went really well with the tea.
On presentation day I practiced a few times early in the day while mrguy wore his earplugs and put a pillow over his face to drown me out. We went down for breakfast and...I started feeling distinctly unwell. Down there. Urgently! It worsened and my inner voice was saying "ohfuck-ohfuck-ohfuck these people have brought me *and my husband* to Japan at great expense and I am going to shit in the middle of my presentation and mortify myself, my hosts and my company".
Or something like that.
I shared my situation with mrguy, who went into fixit mode. We were in the middle of a convention complex in Chiba, but he set out to find something to settle my situation (note: I never travel without Imodium now). Meanwhile I had to go. I ran over to the bathroom and as I entered I saw one of the booth babes curling her hair at the mirror. I entered a stall and waited for her to leave, which she did not do. So I used the electronic sounds on the Japanese toilet to (not really) cover my own extremely loud ones. By about my 4th visit to the restroom I realized -- blessedly -- that this was not influenza. It was the Dundee cake. Studded with dried fruit. There could only be so much of it in my system and this would both literally and figuratively pass. Hopefully before I got to the podium.
It was now almost go-time. Mrguy reappeared in the lobby holding a little yellow box with a cartoon of angry internal organs on it, and a story of his own about Japanese pharmacies. The Dundee cake worked its way through my system and I did *not* have to paste a maxi-pad over my butt (plan b). I did my presenting. Woo!
I had fulfilled my obligations (mostly), and after a cocktail party of sorts "don't you celebrate a mid-way through a project?" they asked, we were on our own. We looked for a place to have dinner, but didn't want to spend $36 American dollars for a cup of storm petrel nest and crabmeat soup, so we used the vending machine and ate Cup O Noodles, instead. In our hotel room Mrguy put on his shortie hotel robe, having done a bang up job of shepherding me around all day, and set about getting his noodles wet. His noodles came with chopsticks, but mine did not. I was up shit creek. So I waited for him to finish his bowl and then used his ABC chopsticks to eat my meal. I started the day wearing a ribbon, but ended it waiting for mrguy to give me his used hashi!
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