Show & Tell

So I was the first one to do the show & tell. Hopefully prof & friends enjoyed it = ).

Firstly,

Personally I think it was good, though it achieved only about 80% of my expectation.

For me it was a real experience of "selling". The performance started only with the idea of doing 3 balls juggling. 1 moment I suddenly had the idea of 1 ball juggling as the deceived cover of the real so. That moment I realized that though 3 balls juggling seemed interesting, it was set of repetitive boring action that might not hold people interest for a minute. I realized that all the things I focused in was how to do 3 balls juggling, not how should I do my show & tell. I was focus on how to make a good product (and think its quality will pay off), not how to make people like it. "Yeah, how should I really perform? how should I introduce & talk?" I woke my mind up. 1 ball juggling was a good idea to get people attracted because it sounds stupid and trivial. Then I started to think about a rough version of script, how to start it stupidly and end it impressively. Later when I went around and kicked randomly (a bad habit you get when you practice taekwondo..) another idea come to my mind - having a warm-up session that really overdo the things (yeah, make it stupid). It supposed to be at the beginning of the show, but just before the show start, I changed it in-between the 1-ball part. I even thought of a mute show (dont know if it's a correct word) but couldn't carry it out. These all complete my performance.

The good part of the show is that I really worked on it. I was kind of obsessed of it and thought of improving it all the time. All the ideas somehow paid off. The 1 ball trick made some people surprised / applauded when I changed to 3 balls. Warming up attract some people also. And there wasn't much problem with juggling 3 balls at the later part of the show. So it went (somehow) well. My script wasn't bad.There were some unexpected things happened but I handled them not too badly.

The worst point was that I got too nervous. Faster heartbeat, cannot speak clearly.. That kind of feeling I could see many people shared with me today. Because of it, I somehow moved from 1 part to another too fast. I couldn't do presentation part as I wished (such as look at the audience). I couldn't really juggle 3 balls as well as normal. Sometimes I baffled (this is attributed to my poor English speaking skill as well. I've actively sought for chances to do presentation and perform in front of many people to get familiar with them but I still need to experience more. Hopefully I will have more chances.

Another bad points were that I didn't practice to 'fail to juggle 1 ball' and didn't really planned the warming up thoroughly. What seemed to be easy could be hard in a real show. Next time do prepare better, as in the real show, things never go as well as in practice. To achieve 100% we must prepare with 120%.

Stay tuned, the next post will be I talking about myself and looking for teammates.

FYI, I practiced this trick a year ago for about a week (practiced for a short of class) and then stopped. And just 2 days before I brought the balls and started practicing. Now I can do it continually for several minutes (several hundred times). I am quite happy and satisfied with that result.



While watching everyone's show & tell I thought of making comment of them. However, now I forgot most of the things already. I'll try to jot down something.

I like prof's first words. Talented people are usually multi-talented.I think it's true.

First, the shows varies a lot, saying different people are interested in different things. That's really cool. Most of the show were really cool, like the card trick, guitar plays (recognized Canon in D), songs (Imagine by Patrick). But that said, I realized that sometimes cool things just impress you for a moment, then passes by very fast. You ended up with remember no performance but the things meaningful for you, things make you think about.

Carolyn's show of drawing, I got stuck at some moment and said some stupid things. Came and said apology to her after the show.It actually turned to be a good thing as I got a reason to start a talk with her. I really admired the passionate way she got crazy & talk about manga just now.

Adhiraj's story. Honest stories are always easier to recount. Honest stories are always heard. Attentively. Someone responded after prof asked about his story that he was good at talking / recounting / smtlike that (you understand what I mean). I agreed wholeheartedly. It just made me feel so sorry about my speaking skill. Adhiraj inspired me to talk about my worst failure. Wait for the post = )

Many people got the same nervousness as I had.Many foreigners suffered the same problems with english speaking. I particularly noticed some pattern of mistakes in Vietnamese's way of speaking English.