I enjoy giving presentations to interested folks at my office and recently had the opportunity to expand out to the public – a Chinese friend of mine had expressed dismay at the table behavior of some of her colleagues at a Western restaurant in front of some Western guests.  “Oh, you know, I used to give presentations on this topic at my company”, I said.  “Maybe you could do it for our company.”  “Sure!”  The next thing I knew, I was signed up for a presentation on Western Table Manners to a small electronics importing company.  I picked December 13th, when Robert would be in town, so that I could solicit his help as well.

I wanted to do something beyond a dry presentation and the day before we were to deliver the course (we were having too much fun and procrastinated as long as possible) we finally came up with an idea to recreate a dinner scene with a really badly behaved guest.  We then would recreate the scene once the guest had been properly educated.  We formulated the plot over pizza at Sandro’s place.  Sandro of course, didn’t want us to leave so early and kept handing out samples for us to try.  We went to bed rather late with the intent of working out the details the morning before the presentation.  The following morning, we ran through it three times.  From my personal experience, running through a speech three times would give me the confidence I needed to do a decent job.  Two people was more of a challenge, but we felt reasonably confident.

Of course, the show went fine and we got good feedback.  I hope they were being honest.  I’m interested in honing this presentation; I have another opportunity to deliver it to another group in January.  Robert, want to fly back?  Maybe you could deduct the ticket from your taxes!