So, the day was finally there. The Final Presentation.
I’ll do a bit of background info first: I’m currently doing the “vulcanus” program (for those of you that haven’t bee
n paying attention), and part of this is a 4 month intensive Japanese language course (The same as the previous braceted comment). This course ends in . . . . a final presentation. We had to team up and then research something that would force us to go out and speak to japanese people (in japanese) and well . . . . present it. This would serve as a good guide to show our company representatives what level we now posess and it would keep us out of (too much) trouble. The latter was mostly high hopes as it would turn out later, it merely challenged us to do mischief in new ways we wouldn’t have thought of earlier.
The subject of our final presentation would have to be relevant to our specialities. I’m the only aerospace engineer. My teammates include the only general mechanics, superconductor and biotechnology. I was in the . . . . whatever’s left group. This made choosing a topic agreeable to our teachers tricky. But due to the fact that the Japanese will decide everything on consensus . . . and we were not giving way (Gee, really? Japanese Culture works that way? Ah man, if only we’d known . . . .) . . . we got to do something on Japanese culture. Since we all have plenty of experience at being students . . . . we did our research/interviews/final presentation on “time spent in school and how it affects the final product (eg. Japanese)”. As you may, or may not, know: The Japanese view the world rather differently than we do. . . even if it were only from a perspective angle. And we were wondering how much of this different view of life is acquired during school.
I’ll transform the Powerpoint we have to a pdf pretty soon, and there’s a video which I will put on Youtube . . . but I think we’re only getting that in March. I’d post what we said . . . buteuhm . . . The only one that would get it is Maya if Marnix needs something translated. So in stead you’ll get a video in a couple of months, I’ll try and add Japanese and English subtitles then.
In an attempt at . . . something one of our teammembers decided to just not show up ’till 2. I suppose I could’ve worried about it . . . but I didn’t. Would’ve added a nice footnote to our presentation if we had to hackle through his piece.
We were the first presentation after the coffee break, and my illness (I’ve been sick for 3 weeks now and I’ve moved from suffering to ignoring it . . . with the exceptions of when I REALLY need to go to the bathroom as ignoring that would be ã¡ã‚‡ã£ã¨ . . .) held up remarkably well. Some whoozyness, but most importantly: No diarrhea during the presentation (YES!) I steamrolled through my bit with little hesitation . . . and my joke wasn’t as poorly received as many people thought it would be . . . which wouldn’t have been bad either as I had a joke ready for that aswell. A slight confidence issue had me glancing at my sheet more than was strickly necessary, but at least I was able to look at the crowd some and point at the screen occasionally while others would not look up from their sheets of compressed tree. The people following me did well aswell, including the fellow who showed up late, especially because what he was saying wasn’t what we’d been practacing ’till that day and he was doing it without any paper backup at all . . . and still managing to do it faster than when he used the script. The reason he was late was: He just decided to re-write . . . everything. And our presentation was closed by our member suffering from a severe throat-illness-thingy without croaking too much . . . but being so caught up in her presentation the clicking-to-the-next-slide was left out and we went from her second slide to . . . . “Thank you very much for listening” in a speed I hope was high enough for people not to notice the other slide we flicked through.
All in all . . . . we did well. Didn’t win any prizes, but we did manage to provide answers that were vaguely relevant to the questions asked as our Japanese is now developed enough for that.
Now, that takes care of business as well as I can without actually showing the video or posting the script to draw you more into the story . . . I guess it’s more of an “insider-thing”
Anyway, it being the end it was followed by a “this is the end”-party. A buffet which was combined by a secret-santa, some performances and a farewell to one of the staff 🙁
I can not begin to describe some of the things that happened there, so I’ll leave that ’till the people who filmed it put it on the internet and the pictures have been released. But it was good.
Parties are a lot like . . . . bad news. It seldoms comes alone. The japanese school also threw a christmas party. Seeing as I’ve always followed lessons on a different location: I knew absolutely no-one there. Which had no ill-effect on the party whatsoever. (Speaking Japanese with Dutch people and see how long it takes them to figure it out :P)
After this party . . . . (getting tired here, busy day ‘ya know. And still sick to boot) Carl Cox was the featured DJ in a club in Shibuya. Now, I’ve been to a party with him once before and I wasn’t totally blown away, but the qualityof music to the places I’ve been to so far has be so dismal that I knew this to be a vast improvement. In our absence (Going to the Japanese school party) the meeting time had been changed from 11 to 11:30, so we ended up just going in with the 2 of us. This caused us to end up on a dancefloor which facilitated actual dancing. Some drinks and incidents later (I swear; Do I have “I am Dutch, we do drugs. Ask me how” tattooed somewhere?) Mr Cox took the stage. By this time this picture describes the dancefloor pretty well. OK, the lighting was a bit different, the people were dressed a little differently and on the whole maybe a little more enthusiastic . . . but the available dance moves were, by this time, somewhat more limited. The rest of the program’s students showed up at (lemme see: meet at 11:30, they’re italians so that’s 0:00, walk to the club . . . .) 2:15, including the departing staff member and 2 of our teachers (well, I was told 3, but apparantly she was so smashed she didn’t present a verticle target for me to identify). The mood was excellent. Dancing followed. Free wine was provided by people I met while they were offering wine. Strange blond women hugged me and other women taking off shirts because . . . “hey, I don’t need those here . . . right”.
By 3:30 however, myself and my equally sick girlfriend (The price you pay for kissing me) could no longer keep to our feet for reasons ranging from splitting headaches, too frequent required use of toilets, explosion-threatening bowels and just general I’ve-been-sick-for-3-weeks-now-please-let-me-sleep’ishness. Taxi and “brufen” (Japanese and their pronunciation eh) provided us with a well earned rest far into today.
Well worth it though.
On a small side note: I’ve added pictures of the sushi workshop. It comprised of making sushi . . . and getting people stupid enough to eat pure wasabi hehe. Also, note my time card of last month.
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No Quote of the day today. I’ll use this space to link other people’s pictures of today when they post em
Pawel
Final Group photo
Closing skit
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OK, there’s a Quote of the day anyway:
I’m not sure I want to see an “Alien” movie with what’s coming out of my throat now
– Raphaelle