Presentation and Celebrating the New Fiscal Year
Last friday I had to present the program I have been working on before my Manager and some colleagues. It took me rather by surprise.
I was expecting that two people will come to my desk and just take a look at what I have programmed like they did before. This time however I was given a notebook just one day in advance and an email with room number and time.
I almost would like to say “of course” when stating that my program did not run on the notebook. But I had a few hours to fix two minor bugs and had it running by thursday afternoon. I prepared a handout and a one slide PowerPoint presentation. Figured it would make it easier to make my points, especially since most co-workers did not speak English very well.
To make a medium sized story short, I presented my software, it worked, everyone, especially me, was happy and the discussion afterwards was interesting. My co-workers mainly pointed out that the user interface could use some improvement.
April’s fool day is the start of a new fiscal year in Japan. Therefore during the first weeks of the month companies celebrate parties and my company was no exception. On the same friday at 6:30 we went to a nearby hotel where a hall was reserved for us. It was nice, especially since people from the Tokyo office came, so did the people from Nagano. However, I think none from the branch in Africa joined up with us.
The newbies, that included me of course, had to introduce themselves on stage. AND they also had to sing karaoke, one after the other. I was terrified since I cannot sing at all. I mean, I have been to karaoke in Japan a few times, but standing in front of an audience of approximately 100 people, on stage, spotlight on, was a whole different story. Person closest to the stage : the ceo.
I asked around if some people would like to sing my song. Nobody did. However, after singing for two minutes two of them, guy and girl, hopped onto the stage and helped me. Yeah, they saved my ass up there. : )
I would have been much less nervous had I known that most of the people present would make fun of themselves on stage. We had YMCA performed in leather by the Tokyo people. We had acrobatics performed by the Nagano people. And something I would like to call the “Money Dance” because it included masks of that cat lifting up one paw performed by others including the ceo.
It was a fun day.
