Training in Mandarin

I conducted a training in Mandarin today. It was the second time since I've joined NT that I've had to do a WebEx training using my "mother tongue".

It wasnt that bad an experience, to be honest - given that they attendees (a group of asset managers from China) didn't even see fit to ask a single question - it was just that I felt a little 'strange' trying to string together seemingly simple sentences, and getting tongue-tied all the while. It was so darn hard not to lapse into English at times!

Fortunately, I managed to pull through the session. Thanks to my prepared Powerpoint slides and pre-training preparation (hey, I actually have to surf the internet looking for translations and/or ways to describe certain financial terms. It was pretty... ).

Sigh... it is true that if you dont practice using a language for some time, you tend to lose touch with it. For me, speaking conversational Mandarin comes quite naturally. In fact, we speak Mandarin at home so often, that beastie has taken to using it much more frequently than he uses English.
It's just that to use Chinese as a medium for business communication - that is really something entirely different.

I'm just glad I am still able to do it, albeit a little "rustily". =)