The Art of Public Speaking: The ability to say holy cow crap

Its 5:52 am and I don’t seem to fall asleep at all. Not that I didn’t try. I closed my eyes, started counting the sheeps but then the sheeps turned into lambs and lambs into goats and then to buffalos. The animals seemed to never stop coming. I turned myself into another comfortable position only to be faced with another hoard of farm animals. And then an image of George Orwell conjured up even though I have never ever googled to check how he looked like in the first place. So how do I know its George Orwell? Well, he looked like George Clooney face hammered by nine inch nails. It was time to give up on sleep.

Besides the small issue of preparing for upcoming presentations, preparing for finals, working on time-consuming projects, working on to finalize the last issue of Quill, irritate my dorm mates by singing annoying nepali songs, trying to walk to 301 only to give up half way through and take the bus, staring at engineering mathematics, wearing two distinctly different socks because the other pair is mysteriously missing, doing meetings, texting in meetings, making “I don’t know what you mean” faces in the meeting, eating big macs on packed public transport..i think i should stop now. Yeah…. Nothing much has been going on. Oh yes, I forgot to mention how crappy arsenal are playing these days. I hate it when they concede in the 88^th minute.

Of course, there has been no drinking. Absolutely not a drop. Ok maybe, might have worked on a glass or two of scotch but that’s about that. What about beer? Wow haven’t had that for a while. My blood pressure has significantly subsided although I can feel it rise every time I watch arsenal play. Throwing chairs around and shouting out of the window actually helps to calm your nerves. Try it for yourself.

As stated earlier between now and Dec 20, which will eventually end up me getting my ass over the mountains and into Kathmandu, I will have very little time to write anything up here. I need to sort out some issues before I can think of momos. As I decided not to take the dorms for the winter, I will have to find a way to bribe people to host a portion of my stuff. And the stuffs, I realized, are humongous. I don’t seem to throw anything away. From chocolate wrappers, to stone aged slippers, everybody’s making a home for themselves in my designated dorm area. Its about time they saw the outside world.

Moving on away from shamelessly publicizing about myself to…mm… publicizing myself again, I have decided that I should, for the greater good of this world that I share amongst you good people *coughs*, write how I have made the transition from possibly the world’s worst public speaker to becoming world number 183,404,883. That’s some rise isn’t it? So how was I successful? Whats my mantra?

 

Removing the “is my zipper open??” factor

I remember this one time in high school. We had just wrapped up a boring session on Climate change, and as the head of the organizing committee, I was called up stage to give a speech.

I went up all elegantly, placed my paper on the podium, made the “ahhhmm” sound and started speaking.

“good afternoon everyone”

I could see the crowd shake their heads in approval. If my mind reading ability is to be trusted, I could even hear people say, “hey, this guy is not that bad after all”

Silence.

The crowd started to listen hard. I could see some necks being strained as if moving an inch from the last head position would drastically increase one’s hearing ability.

“good afternoon everyone”

I swear I heard somebody say, “ I thought he said that already”

“good afternoooo…n everyone”, came out again from my lips. I was starting a monologue inside me. “hey man, would you stop saying that?”

*confused voices from the crowd*

I ended up repeating it a further 5 times. Which leads us to a grand total of 8. I mean who in the right mind would say that?

Although I might have exaggerated the details a tiny bit, you can comprehend how badly the speech must have been.

That was in 2008. 2012 presents a very different year entirely; A rejuvenated year where I actually enjoy giving speeches, being amongst public and often looking forward to giving presentations. Our Prof recently stated that I should let others speak as well. That bad. This goes without saying that I do have my fair share of cockups at times, but most of them go pretty well.

What really changed was the ability to not give a horses tits about what people are thinking about you. the more I worried about how people might judge me from down, the worse it got. I could feel my vocal tube become a nano tube and could feel my pressure rise up again. This is clearly a fact that everyone knows. However, not worrying too much about how you look provides that extra RAM in your brain to be able to conjure shit that you are required to say.

So the next step is how not to feel feeling self-conscious. That’s a really good question indeed. I have absolutely no clue. I usually check my pants zipper these days. You don’t want the crowd to amuse themselves on the color of your boxers. So that’s my major concern. Everything else is negligible.

The ability to say holy cow crap, or as most like to call it, bull shit. Or call it whatever you like.

I would like to draw open three individuals that I find most interesting to watch on stage. No its not Russell or Jobrani or CK. Its people whom I have worked with, with whom I have taken courses together. They are the ultimate bull-shitters.

Rank 3. Lupin: this is what I admire about him. His complete apathy to what others might be thinking about what he is saying takes me by complete surprise. Don’t get me wrong, he has value in what he says but at times he lets out shit like saying judas priest is religiously oriented. This gives the listener two ideas: 1. He has no clue what he is saying 2. He has amazing level of self confidence.

Both of these factors help him make excellent presentations. Its really a joy to watch him do it. His posture, the way he uses his hands to explain and quick responses he thinks or dodges a question is admirable. Once we had this ass in class who asked unreasonable questions completely out of topic which I had nothing to answer..because the questions were so stupid. Fortunately, I had teamed up with someone who could come up with crap right there right then and instead made that ass look stupidier than the question itself. Bravo.

Rank 2. President of the wetuks: The president of the association related to Koreans who lived abroad but came here to study is perhaps the best of the crop. He has innate ability to observe himself in public light, often through means that I don’t usually approve, but this guy can speak. He has a real cocky personality, which has really boosted his confidence to come up on stage and be at home. I remember this one time he was holding his glasses in his hands (remember how educationalists do that?) explaining a ppt slide while making gestures with the same hand. Interesting body language. As if to say ,”you don’t know shit”

Rank 1. The ass: as much as I hate to see him around or as much as I hate to see him be clever and observe me what I am doing in the computer lab, I have to concede to the fact that he is the ultimate bullshitter. A bullshitter, who has absolutely nothing stuffed in his brain but can still say “intelligent” sounding stuffs. I know this guy all too well to know that things in his brain are near nonexistent but he has this cunning way of expressing it in Dinosaurious, gigantic, amplified and overly over confident way. I took this class with him once where I had to go to him later and ask him (after his “amazing” presentation) if he pastored in a church. And we all know how confident and skilled pastors are in delivering messages although the content might be no use to you. (Just a personal opinion, if this tends to hurt you in some way, you might close this tab and never come back again)

 

So there you have it. I hope this helps for your final presentations *hides smile*. Time for breakfast