Out of my depthAs a schoolkid, I signed up for a public speaking contest purely as a ruse to meet girls. It haunts me still: in front of 300 people, I started to speak, dried up, stood there for what felt like half an hour staring at the floor and then slowly walked back to my seat. Oh, and the girl I liked laughed.
Have you ever been utterly, completely, devastatingly out of your depth?
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chthonic, Thu 14 Oct 2004, 15:07)
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Russian interpreterA few months after passing GCSE Russian, I somehow ended up volunteering to interpret at a business meeting between a local bus company and some visiting Russian businessmen who wanted to do some business with the UK travel industry.
So there's all these men in suits sat around the table with deadly serious expressions on their faces, ready to talk serious business.
And then there's 16-year-old me, barely able to count to 10, never mind say things in Russian like "We have a fleet of modern, airconditioned buses that we could make available to you through a leasing arrangement."
I was so out of my depth it wasn't true, and of course since the participants weren't able to communicate with each other, the meeting was a total flop. Utterly humiliating.
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Biffins Bridge, Thu 14 Oct 2004, 19:05,
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