A Presentation

Today I had the first one of my four presentations. It was about cross-cultural communication, a topic of which I had no idea whatsoever before the last night.

I was doing the project in a group of three Indians. And they had been preparing a lot. They already had a fluent presentation on the previous day when I was still trying to figure out my slides. Eventually I had a whopping 20 minutes before the presentation to think of what I was going to say.

It didn't go that well. I forgot what I was supposed to say, I used too much time on wrong slides and finally ran overtime, which spelt a penalty. The Indians did really well of course.

Anyway, after the presentation I wanted to tell our teacher that I'm going to miss the last tutorial because I'll be in Cambodia. Here's the conversation:
— Hey, unfortunately I won't be able to come to the next tutorial because I'll be travling in Cambodia.
— What kind of a trip is it?
— Umm.. just a holiday.
— But it's not a vacation time here in NTU. Do you realize, if you do that, you have then missed TWO tutorials on this course?
— Yes, I do realize that.

I probably would have said something witty if I hadn't been so astonished. I mean, wow, missed an incredible two tutorials! That must be criminal.

Well, I guess the locals wouldn't even dream of leaving the country in the middle of a semester. For many it is too big a trade-off even to go out on a Saturday night instead of working on school projects.