The Rules

Yesterday I had the privilege of presenting to a Communications group about keeping presentations simple, but engaging. I think it went well, at least 18 of the 20 strong audience took a card, I figure if I’d been boring, they wouldn’t have taken a card, but then they are very spiffy cards.

I took them through my 10 rules of creating a MS PowerPoint presentation, it took an hour, they asked questions, they laughed (very important), I said OK a lot at the beginning (always do, it’s the nerves) and they left feedback, but didn’t nick my post-it notes. It was good.

The issue was I had to get back to the office in a different suburb. I’d already had a two hour lunch break, so I decided to get a taxi rather than take the train. It would save me about half an hour. Ohh how wrong can you be?

My driver was a middle aged Asian man, fairly standard for Sydney, who had little grip on the English language, also fairly standard for a Sydney taxi driver. After he had run over more than his fair share of cats eyes, I asked him if it was knocking off time soon. Change over happens at 3pm, it was about two fifteen. He pointed at his face, shook his head and said ‘nose’. I had noticed he’d been sniffing, but that wasn't my question.

We got onto the Warringah Freeway, barely mind you, he had to swerve to avoid the concrete barrier. At that point I decided I would ask him to let me out at the first possible stopping point. 30 seconds later, I realised he wasn’t following the rules. The Goddess of Driving Rules (an American friend of mine) includes a rule that states, ‘You can never drive faster than the car in front of you’.

Clearly my driver did not know of these rules and tried to drive faster than the Lexus in front. He realised what he was doing and slammed on the anchors, unfortunately the extremely wet weather outside the vehicle made the stopping process somewhat slower than normal and we hit the shiny silver Lexus in the backend at about 30kph.

Having been on the receiving end of a couple of rear-enders (get your mind out of the gutter JH) I know that bracing for impact is the worst thing you can do, so I exhaled, relaxed into my seat and did my very best impression of a jelly.

The following 45 minutes involved a woman in her 50s wearing more labels than a rally car and a face that looked like a leather handbag that had been stretched out of shape, shouting at a tired Chinese man that shouted back. Neither of them understood each other.

I got back to the office later than if I’d have caught the train and I even had to pay the taxi that picked me up from the side of the road.

New Rule: If you err at taking a taxi...take the train.

Today, I feel like I’ve been run over by a bus but I’m riding high on Voltaren flowing in my veins. I know it’s muscular pain only, nothing broken or sprained. Another hot bath tonight, so can someone please remind me to buy bubble bath!