Recently, the whole office admin has been buzzing with action because we were supposed to be involved in the organisation of a conference that will be held here.
Well, I was kind of interested as I have never been to an actual conference before and it is kind of a perk that I get to attend it, without paying! Boy, was I wrong... The conference was crap!
Firstly, it is organised by a Taiwan university and we were just the local organiser, who still had to liaise with them and their nonsense demands or requests. Their organisation skills are next to none. They were supposed to send 21 packages to us which consists of the items that should be in the conference bag given to the participants. Out of 21 boxes, only 4 arrived. Well, that's ok because if the packages are lost, there is nothing much they could do about it and I think it's not really their fault too. Also, lunchtime was a flurry of activities, most of them useless. There were not enough seats for all the participants and a few extra tables have to be set up. There was the prize presentation for the best paper and so on but there were no one there to receive the prize. I guess those who are really good can't be bothered with all these nonsense. So, while the VIPs are on the stage giving out prizes and stuff, one of the Taiwanese staff told us to help scoop food onto plates for the VIPs. You have no idea how awful and miserable we look. A few of us were just lining along the buffet line, scooping food onto plates when everyone else was seated, staring at us because the projector screen was just above the buffet line. And the worse part was, the brainless silly Taiwanese staff didn't communicate with the hotel staff and the staff has already prepared food for the VIPs. Our embarrassment was for nothing. It was a bloody waste of our time. And did I say that we didn't get to eat because they refused to open another table for us to sit at and we had to sit outside the Grand Ballroom, eating chicken rice?
Secondly, I had to contend with enough bad english to last me 10 lifetimes. I have nothing against Taiwanese but their expressing skills are practically non-existent! They can't pronounce properly. They can't converse fluently. They can't understand questions, at times. And their presentation is all about reading from the slides. It is just like our primary school English lessons where the teacher would appoint someone to read a paragraph out of an article or the textbook. The situation was exactly the same, just that these people are mostly Ph.D, educators and their English standards are 10 times worse than our primary school kids.
Not to say that there are no good ones, but the majority of them are really bad. I was so bored during some sessions that I just took out my handphone and started playing games on it. And I'm usually not that impolite.
Bleah. Tomorrow is another day of torture. I'm sure after that, I would have heard enough bad english to last me for 100 lifetimes.
