Feeling Like Strangling Someone

Last Monday in Singapore: I attended a few meetings as interpreter. In one of them, I was looking at a material written in English, projected onto the screen of the room. I really didn’t understand much of it because it was so badly written. Why can anybody be happy writing and reading something like this? The author is someone I’ve been working with since February 2017 and he is a division manager. I felt disappointed.

Last Tuesday in Singapore: I almost felt like strangling someone. She, manager of another division, simply did not stop talking and went on almost two hours without a break. (And it was not the first time I felt this way with the person.) How can anybody expect me to be able to follow someone like her. (She is a very nice person, though.) And the PPT material she had prepared was incomprehensible to me in many places.

It does seem to me the mistrust that has been shown by their UK sister company may be because of bad writing by these people in managerial positions in Singapore and Malaysia (and possibly Japan too). How are they communicating with each other, I wonder?

With no respect to language, they make no effort to make their writings grammatically correct and succinct. They do not have to be beautiful.

 

A few morning ago, my mother appeared in a dream. It was a nightmare.

Sometimes, the power button of this Acer PC, bought only a year and five months ago, does not work…

Today's Work, Old Dreams and Family Story

Today, I participated as interpreter in two Skype meetings linking Singapore and Tokyo (almost 3 hours in total) today. I got so nervous before the first meeting started with my palms wet with sweat and I kept smoking to suppress the nervousness. Strange because I’ve worked with one of them once in Tokyo and the other two many times in Tokyo and Singapore. This nervousness because of something like stage fright never goes away.

自分にとって、見た夢は目覚めた瞬間に忘れ去ってしまうのが普通だが、時間が経過してから思い出したり、何度も見たりする夢もある。ひとつは「大阪のキタ（梅田辺り）にある空港」から最新鋭の飛行機に乗って（たぶん）関西空港に向かう夢。真っ白い滑走路がビルの屋上からはみだすように伸びていて、海に飛び出していく。もうひとつも空港にいる夢。アメリカかヨーロッパへと出発するためにいるこの（たぶん京都にある）空港で、次の手続きをどこで行うのか頭上にある矢印の指示を見ながら進もうとする。この空港も実際の空港らしくなく、チェックインカウンターは白い布がかぶせてある長机が並んでいるどこかの催事会場の受付のよう。

家族のことについてもっと書こうと思うが、書けない。家族がお互いに支えあっていたりする描写を読むと、はっきり言って気持ちが悪い。