Rehearsal

(I must have a flight of idea and the story I recalled keep moving back and forth. Let’s go back to that lovely afternoon of our own board examination, which passed quickly and smoothly.)

In the same evening, I was scheduled to have a meeting with two representatives of a drug company in the café of a hotel nearby.

Oh, no. They’re not going to sell any drug to me. On the contrary, they were asking me to join the advisory board for the development of a new product of theirs. They actually made that request a few weeks ago, and we were supposed to have a formal meeting that Saturday – where I would give a brief talk and summarize my suggestions. I gave them the slides a week prior to the meeting, and, to my surprise, the contact person of their local office called me and told me that the director of product development of their headquarters wished to see me in person two days before the formal meeting.

“We just want to go through the slides.” I was told.

I arrived on time, and was met by the director – a verbose middle-age man from some southern state of America, and a nondescript assistant of his.

“Let me first show you the slides that the first speaker is going to use,” he said. (By the way, I was going to be the third speaker, and the second on the timetable was this sales director.)

It turned out that he did more than what he said – he gave the talk, from head to toe literally.

I tried my best not to snore – at least not loud enough to disturb people sitting at the next table.

When I woke up thirty minutes later, he had, apparently, just finished.

“Now, let me show you my slides,” he went on.

I decided I could have a longer nap, and was suddenly thankful for the years of training in medical school – so that I could sleep when I am sitting upright, sometimes even with my eyes open.

(To be continued.)