Spanish Meetings

Today was a day of meetings and not-meetings. From 9 am in the morning when I was in the office till 7 when I finally left the office- it was meeting after meeting. Although the first one in the morning was k, I couldn't speak much. The next two ones were an exercise in understanding people and what they were saying from their body language and hand actions- cause the meetings were entirely in Spanish!!!
To top it, it was all technical- things I was hearing for the first time and that too in Spanish or Espagnol... Great exercise, by the end of the day I could make out atleast what were the different weird sounds they were making, especially the four words I could understand were: Uno, Dos, Tres (from the famous Ricky Martin song) and 'Si' or yes in spanish....

Of course I was passing on my uncomfortableness to any one and everyone who dared a look at me. I was constantly staring at the speaker, following discussions with swift movements of my head, as if looking at the lips move would make do for my virtual deafness. Nonetheless, despite my best efforts to look involved and interested, the head of communicable diseases did ask me at the end if I understood Spanish. Much to my dismay I had to reply in the negative, however, I guess it was better that I did not understand any word or else I would have realised much earlier what I found out in the last presentation which was in English- that all those people were going over the same muck but only the name of the disease changed.

Resting in peace of hindi songs and english language at my place right now, tomorrow is another onslaught of a crash course in Spanish.

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