public relations

I am very proud of myself today.

My first English one-hour-long PowerPoint presentation was 6 years ago. Since then, I have done a lot of English presentations depending on PowerPoint, especially my fabulous PowerPoint. I am always proud of my PowerPoint design skill.
I am also very proud of my pale face (thank you, Mama). When I am nervous and don't know what to say, my face turns pale and my speech turns slow, which gives the audience the impression that everything is totally under my control and that any pause is just a part of my show.
Also, when I am nervous and start producing sentences without much thoughts, the audience laughs and appreciates my sense of humor. I love it when people say I'm funny because they obviously are clueless about my cluelessness. And I would just shrug and say "Let's move on."
Obviously "Let's move on" is a very useful phrase and also somehow enforces the impression of me being funny. I really do not have a clue.

A PR group came to the research center. Each lab had to push one person out of the crowd to give a presentation.
I got to give the show one day and two hours ahead of my plan, which said "You give a presentation at 1pm Wed". The plain-emotion executive secretary of the Chief Executive Officer (I really like word "executive" a lot recently) told me that actually I was scheduled 11am Tue.
I think she must have desired my panicking voice saying "OMG, really? I am not ready." Instead, I said "ok, I can do it."
She was not sure if I was sure. "Are you good to go?" she asked.
"Yes." Plain and simple and good to go.

Oh come on, I had practiced with Kim, Chris, and Paola! I got a terrific supporting system here. I don't know who you are, Esceo (short for executive secretary of CEO), and I haven't met you even after my show. Where are you hiding? Come face me and speak to me. How dare you talk to me like that?

Right. I am not happy about a call from esceo yesterday. She demanded me to cancel a reservation of a conference room. Word by word, she said "Cancel your reservation. CEO needs it."
I was like "what? who are you?" Only close friends are allowed to talk to me like that: no please, no thankyou, no would-you-mind, no nothing.
Esceo took my "What?" response as a please-repeat response. So she repeated.
"Alright." In fact, I mean "Fine!" But that would be too rude.

I wish Esceo were in the audience and I wanted to see how much she would have liked me after my impressive down-to-earth presentation.
It is difficult to make a presentation for laymen. Can't use jargons. Can't take the audience as if they are grade students. It is pure teaching to a group of people with zero background.
The PRs were hungry students. They came to learn. They were motivated because they were paid for it.
They listened very carefully. They did not hesitate to ask questions. They nodded when they truly understood (at least for the messages that I successfully delivered). They took notes. Lots of notes.
They asked questions from the first slide to the last one. Questions after questions. CEO had to stop them from asking questions so that I was not eating up too much time from the next presenter. The cool part is that the fact of questions-after-questions is because I could come up with answers after answers.
They loved it. CEO was happy that he could understand every word I said. For this, I am proud of my small vocabulary bank.

I never use sentences like "that's a very good question" or "that's a very interesting point" to buy myself time to come up with answers. It's just not in my answering system. If I don't know, I would say "I don't know."
I gave a presentation in one of the regular "CogPsych" brownbag meetings. Michael the professor, who was famous for "talking like writing a science paper", asked me a question full of "in that sense" "which indicates" "therefore". The question was pretty long and hard to process even for Toby. I bet everyone was happy that he/she was not me. I tried my best to understand Michael's question and answered "I don't know the answer." He did not press me and simply nodded. So I asked the audience "Any other questions?"

The PRs were participating and engaged in my performance.
It is rewarding to see people understand my work. Their smile means a lot for me.

Esceo was participating and engaged in bugging me by bugging the previous Chief Postdoc and our lab secretary. Hey, Esceo, stop telling people to tell me to cancel the reservation after I have canceled the reservation. You know I have done it. I am trying to fight the urge of being me. Please cooperate and understand that I am busy too. You are a nice person, and I am too. Let's work together.

I participated in an acting group after graduating from university. I always liked to go to pre-rehearsal meetings because I knew an elegant woman would be there. She was one of the founders of the group. A perfect goddess-like glow came from every breath of cells of her. I just liked to stare at her and to be bathed in that illusionary female perfection. Even her voice was perfect. Comfortable was how I felt when I was in the same space as she.
One day, she said Fxxx Your Mxxxxx in local Taiwanese. I was shocked, and a question instantly escaped out of me, which was "When did you change and become like this?"
"This is the real her. She became elegant since starting the daytime job in xxxx." Her best friend replied. The illusive goddess then sighed and said "Such is life" in the perfectly elegant way.
Even though I had learned performing before I was aware of it, I definitely learned something that day: public relations.
It is an art. For example, appearance is not everything but can decide a lot of things. Performing this art well is the key to get to the right path leading to the goal.
Ideally, a mask is not necessary. Sometimes one needs a mask to play a nice person in certain situations.

I did a good job today (patting my own shoulder) without a mask. Perhaps the PR group would like to even offer me a job.
I also gave a good performance dealing with Esceo, with a mask. Usually taking a deep breath is enough of a rehearsal for this kind of performance called "suck it up".
Well, such is life.