WOOHooOOO. What an adrenaline rush! I've sky-dived and bungy jumped but I have to say that presenting in front of 150 people with your face broadcast pore-noticingly close on the screen and your voice booming over the mic that is attached to your lapel is nearly as exhilirating. I opted out of opening up with a joke which I'm sure most of you will agree was a good move on my part with my tendency to fluff my punch lines. Instead I did a quick IQ test - I learnt it years ago but it never fails to get a laugh.

THE IQ TEST
Basically you get a volunteer and demonstrate to them how you press a coin to your forehead and test your intelligence by trying to knock it off by hitting the back of you head. When you demonstrate, the coin sticks to your own head for about four or five klaps. Then you press the coin to the volunteers head. Press it really hard to "make it stick" and so that when you remove your hand (and the coin with it) the volunteer thinks that the coin is still there and proceeds to try and hit it off. Again. And again. And again. Until they twig that the coin is no longer on their forehead or when you show them. The audience loved it.

Training day

Today was our first day of training. It went quite well except that I managed to spill Pepsi (this is a Pepsi only establishment) all down the front of my cream corduroy skirt within about the first five minutes of the day. Beautiful. You would think I would learn.

I am completely pooped. I never realised that teaching was so exhausting. To make matters worse I just found out that I have to do an hour long presentation to all 150 students first thing tomorrow morning! It's a little intimidating because there are four massive screens across the length of the room onto which they project a close up of your face while you are presenting. Must go to bed now and get my beauty sleep so that I look presentable.

Bowling for good times

This evening all of the faculty went bowling and then for drinks afterwards. I managed to get a strike right in the beginning but unlike everybody else who improved I just seemed to get progressively worse as the evening wore on. At one point I think my finger got caught in the ball as I was hurling it up the alley - it launched into the air and landed with such a resounding thud that I was convinced I had broken the surface of the bowling alley.

After that we went for drinks in the humming nightlife of down town St. Charles which was cool except for the fact that Kippy over here swapped bags just before she went out and arrived at the bar only to realise that she had left her passport (and only form of ID) in her other bag at the Q centre. For those of you that don't know, in the States everyone has to show some form of ID when they go into a drinking establishment - it doesn't matter if you walk in with a blue rinse and a Zimmer frame, you still have to show that you are over 21. Luckily for me the owner intervened. "No she's definitely over 21!" he exclaimed. I felt a little insulted I have to admit but mostly just relieved that he let me in.

Minority reports

I am one of only three females in our group of sixteen faculty. The numbers have dropped significantly since I was at analyst school 2 years ago when it was two guys to every girl. It is still better than Moira Cameron, 42, from Argyll in Scotland who is the Tower of London's first (and only) female beefeater.

Hmmm..... I wonder if they allow vegetarians to be beefeaters?

Lost in translation

It never occurred to me as a first language English speaker that I might have a problem with people understanding me. Let's just say that I have been getting a lot of blank looks lately. I experienced this a little in India, especially over the phone, but then I had Chanda to act as translator for me. The US accent is if nothing else at all times audible and clear. Unlike the South African accent, it is always clear when an American is reaching the end of the sentence because of the consistent inflection. It doesn't help that the more excited I get the faster I speak!

Yesterday we were going through a few ideas for energisers we can use in our section room to up the energy levels in the class when the participants are beginning to flag. One of them is a very basic but quite fun game called "all my neighbours". It's a little bit like Red Rover. Basically, everyone stands on a place holder in a circle with one person in the middle. The middle person makes a statement that is more than likely common amongst the group eg. "All my neighbours that have been to New York". At this, everyone who has been to New York has to leave their place and run to a new place holder. The slowest person gets stuck in the middle and so the game begins again. I got stuck in the middle quite a few times. Do you know that there are only 2 people in our group of 16 that have milked a cow?

So then it was my turn in the middle. At a loss I called "all my neighbours that have worn mascara" and prepared to run. No one moved. Complete blank looks. It is at times like this that I look to the Europeans who are more familiar with the British accent to bridge the gap. I repeated it again and looked at the Europeans in my team beseechingly. German, Danish, Spanish, French, Hungarian, Romanians and Americans alike remained rooted to the spot. Not one of them understood me. Chanda...... come back.

What I should have said it emerged is "All my neighbours that have used (not worn) mascara (pronounce mass[as in weight]-cah[as in Camobodia]-rah[as in Rambo])

It reminded me of when I worked in Winterpark, Colorado as a waitress (server) and had to offer people the tomayto and bayzil soup because they didn't understand me when I offered them the tomato and basil soup.

You live and learn.

The rules of engagement

This week we are doing prep in anticipation of the next two weeks of teaching. One of the things that we have been delving into in quite a bit of depth is facilitation. If you thought that it was just a case of standing up in front of a group and talking you were WRONG. There is way more to it than that. What follows is just a small selection of the tips, tricks and things to keep your audience engaged and participating:

• Use humour to keep people engaged. Try to keep it at your own expense to avoid offending anyone. ALSO, unless you are a really good joke telller don't try and be a stand up comedian. I console myself that it's ok if noone gets my quips. People will generally laugh if you are cracking yourself up, even if they are laughing at and not with you.
• Try to be encouraging at all times. Instead of saying "Mary, have you not been LISTENING? We've just been talking about this for the last ten minutes?" rather say "Thanks for your question Mary. I think it highlights just how difficult the previous topic can be to grasp." Our facilitators are awe-inspiringly polite and patience. They just never seem to lost their cool.
• Be confident. Studies have shown that confidence and not ability convince people that you know what you're talking about.
• Know your tell. Like poker, in public speaking, people often have a "tell" that gives away that they are nervous like speeding up or tailing off their sentences.
• Vary your tone and volume.
• Work the room - apparently there's no better way to bring a delinquint back into the discussion then to subtley go and stand behind them and present from there for a while.
• Take your cue from the editorial yawn. Read your audience. If they are losing focus, take a break or do an energiser or something. Also recognise that there are high and low energy times during the day. Straight after lunch is a notorious low energy period when everyone's blood is rushing from their brain to their stomach and it's time for a siesta.
• If your audience is being non-participative employ the 7 second rule. Ask a question and then be absolutely quiet. Guaranteed, someone will crack under the pressure of the silence by the time you get to seven seconds.
• Unless you are using it, put the pen/white board marker/ruler down. You are not conducting the audience. You are speaking to them.
• Get the right speed. Whilst you don't want to bbbboooorrreeee yyyyoooouuuurrrr aaauuudddddiiieeennnccceeee to sleep, you also don't want them to mss th pnt either.
• Avoid being patronising and treating people like they are in primary school. Going up to someone and slamming their laptop closed because they are checking their email may not be the best way to deal with a situation.
• Try and get everyone to participate. Coax the quiet people to contribute too.
• Oh ja. And don't try and picture your audience naked. Not only is it distracting for you but it can also be a little creepy - "Is she undressing me with her eyes?"

Jet lag

I think I've managed to kick my jet lag. I've wised up you see. On Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights I wouldn't let myself go to bed before 11 despite almost being asleep on my feet. The problem now is that I seem to have developed a kind of eating jet lag instead. I find myself getting hungry at the oddest times. At first when I realised I wasn't hungry at meal times I got all excited because I thought that maybe I had finally developed the small appetite I have always dreamed of but alas, this was not the case. Instead I find myself waking up at the oddest hours completely starving.

The variety of food here is amazing. Anything your heart desires is available from sushi to spaghetti, if you want it, it's there. Luckily, although it all looks good it's not always that tasty. My personal favourite and the one thing that never fails is the help-yourself soft serve ice cream machine with sugar cones and any topping you can imagine. I'm going to have to ration myself on that one.

I want to be a part of it, NEW YORK, NEW YORK

I arrived in NYC after a 2 hour delay refuelling in Dakar, airsick person sitting next to me on the plane and a 45 minute wait for my bag. Ruing my decision not to buy the Accessorise hat and gloves, I took the airtrain to Jamaica station where the climate couldn’t have been further from Jamaican.


New York is truly a mengelmoes of cultures and there is no better place to observe this than on the train where you have a complete cross-section of society. You hear more foreign languages spoken than you do English. If you are thinking of moving over and looking for a business opportunity I would recommend nail decorations. Every third women on the train had long manicured nails with all kinds of funky patterns adorning them.

Eventually I made my way to Stu’s very nicely situated east Manhattan apartment. After a quick freshen up we headed off for a visit to Ellis Island (sans hat and gloves), the famous first point of destination for immigrants between the early 19th to 20th centuries. I have lived in -20’C temperatures in Colorado for 2 months but I think I can unequivocally say that I have NEVER experienced such cold. I ventured onto the deck of ferry to take a few pics of Ms. Liberty and in the short few minutes that I was out there my lips completely froze so that I couldn’t talk properly. I arrived at Ellis Island resembling an immigrant myself with my scarf wrapped carefully about my head.

Ellis Island itself was very impressive. There's an enormous display of all the trunks and boxes that the immigrants brought their life's belongings across in in the entrance which reminded me of the boxes I saw in India. Recalling the scene in Hitch when Will Smith takes his date to Ellis Island to show her her great uncle’s entry in the registration book (who is actually a serial killer) I wandered around looking for the registration book. Eventually I asked one of the guides.

Me: “Excuse me, where is the registration book”
Guide with disdainful roll of eyes and despairing sigh: “There is NO registration book. Will Smith is a liar!”

Whooopsi. Something tells me that I am not the first person to ask him that.

Needless to say, straight after Ellis Island I went and bought a hat.

We also went for a stroll in Central Park and ended my New York experience with an obligatory play on Broadway - Beauty and the Beast.

Start spreading the news, I'm leaving today

Don’t you hate it when you’re running late for your international flight? You rush home from work, recklessly throw everything into your bag knowing that you are almost definitely forgetting something important and mission through the afternoon traffic to the airport. You get there only to discover that your flight has been delayed for 2 hours. This basically means that instead of 2 hours you have 4 hours to kill at the airport:

• 17:10 – 17:20: You clear passport control in record time. Of course this only happens when you have a spare 4 hours to stand in the queue if necessary
• 17:20 – 17:40: You experiment with new lipstick colours and smell perfumes until you look like a clown and your nostrils have gone numb
• 17:40 – 17:50: You frequent Accessorise and try on all the hats. As you do this you realise that one of the important things you forgot was a hat and gloves. You resist the temptation to buy a new hat and pair of gloves.
• 17:50 – 18:10: You hang around exclusive books for a while but your browsing has a limit with both lap top bag and hand bag and coat in tow. By this time your feet, foresightfully decked in fur lined boots are VERY hot
• 18:10: Now you are bored. The metal latticed seats do not look very inviting. You chance the SAA business lounge. You luck out and get in.
• 18:10 – 18:15: You sit in the sports lounge and watch cricket for a while (stranger things have happened).
• 18:15: You think to yourself “what the hell am I doing in the sports lounge watching cricket?”
• 18:16: You decided to get back into blogging

I’m BBBBBBBAAAAAAACCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKK.

Well it must be said that all is going relatively well for now considering the last time I went to Chicago I managed to lose my travel wallet with credit card, passport, ticket and forex inside in the Heathrow airport. I found it again after 40 panic stricken minutes, thank goodness. Someone had handed it in.

BTW, for the blog name, credit must be given to the Big Blue B2 change management team.

I spoke too soon

• 18:40: Bump into digsmate Kevin in the SAA departure lounge on his way to Dubai for a horse show (or something along those lines).
• 18:40 – 19:30: Sit with Kevin and his boss for a while in the sports lounge. Why am I back here?
• 19:30: Kevin leaves and I find a comfy couch and read my book
• 19:40: I realise that my phone is no longer on my person. Knowing myself I carefully and thoroughly check my computer bag and handbag before raising the alarm bells.
• 19:45: No phone. Calmly check comfy couch and surrounds, bathroom and sports lounge
• 19:50: No phone. Raise alarm bells.
• 20:00: 50% of rather packed SAA lounge is helping me look for my phone. It is still ringing which is a good sign but none-the-less nowhere to be found.
• 20:10: Called to reception where Emirates air hostess hands me my phone. Kevin took it with him by mistake.
• 20:15: Sheepishly exit departure lounge. Think my cover of business class traveller may by this stage have been blown.