Continuing Tokyo Work in Singapore

The training which started in Tokyo last week is continuing in Singapore. Today’s work really tired me. People had a conference call at 8:30 this morning, liking California, Tokyo and here. It lasted only for a little more than an hour and went well as I believe, but it required me to maintain a high degree of concentration. To me, the end of the meeting seemed like the end of the day’s work. When “we’ll start (the training) at 10:00,” it took me a moment to realize there was much more to do today.

Hearing high-pitched Singapore-accented machine-gun English for hours is a torture for me. The trainer says, “I don’t want,” as so many people here do. And this annoys me a lot. Every time I hear the phrase, I almost ask her, “You don’t want what?”

She says she finds the kind of English “Caucasians” write can be hard to understand. I replied, “I sometimes find what Singaporeans write is difficult to understand.” Then she claims her English is “proper.” Excuse me?

One thing I felt very comfortable today is the accent I was hearing from California through the phone speaker.

And her boss said yesterday and also today “You just need to translate (do interpretation).” Yesterday she was talking about this morning’s meeting and today she said so again when I was showing my fatigue (I believe “Why are you so tired when you only have to translate” is what she meant). I don’t know how serious when she was saying this. She might be only joking. All the same, I feel disappointed with this sort of thinking. Few people understand how nervous I can be and how concentrated I need to be to do interpretation work.
Tomorrow is the last day of this cycle of work. Then in two weeks, I'll be in Tokyo again.