Another Milestone in Learning Chinese?

Thanks to everyone who has been asking how the presentations went. As mentioned in the earlier post, March 20th and March 26th were two significant external client facing formal presentations on a technical topic I was very insecure about. I've been doing presentations on a smaller scale with clients, and certainly presentations to students and internal employees - this was different. Perhaps its psychological - another milestone or mental breakthrough in the language journey.

How did it go? I don't know. After the March 20th presentation I didn't feel like "I nailed that one" ... but at the same time I didn't feel like I need to dig a hole and bury my head in it (that feeling does happen from time to time). In the end, I know I didn't do great, but considering my current language ability and the graciousness of the Taiwanese audience, it could have been a lot worse. They know I am obviously not a native Chinese speaker and fortunately, I'm speaking from the perspective of sharing international experience.

The Chairman of the Accounting Research Foundation did say to me in a lunch the following week that while he missed my session, he heard it was one of the best ones. I'm not taking this too seriously as it could just be Chinese courtesy!

I did notice I have felt a little more confident in formal presentations since this date. Again, a mental breakthrough. Still have lots to go in the language learning journey.

Tomorrow I get to have dinner with 12 Partners from the other Big 4 (our competitors) on the topic of Quality & Risk Management - have to brush up on more technical terms!

Here's some press coverage of the March 26th event we held: