The weekly routine begins with finance class Monday morning. The topic: Bond valuation. Nothing could be more important to you right now than coupon payments, yield-to-maturity, and face values. Speedily the professor goes through the slides. But you got something else on your mind. A speech.
Every Monday, the Toastmasters meet. A student club. Not for preparing delicious breakfast items with bread and butter. But for practicing public speech and listening skills. It seems like a fun thing, improving and being active yourself instead of passively sitting in class. Today is your first speech. The topic is familiar, you have been working on it the past twenty years or so: Yourself. One method to prepare a speech is to write it down completely and then break it down into notes. But as an Improv veteran, you don’t need much preparation. Four bullet points written down will do it. You improvise.
The meetings itself are very formal, with a president and several officers. Some sort of unintentionally funny bureaucracy. The officers’ crucial tasks include things like timing and counting ‘ahs’. The recommendations for the speech suggest dressing up. You honor this advice by wearing your favorite clothes: Worn-out jeans and a Hollister shirt. Nothing can go wrong if you wear that.
The club elders were able to recruit an impressive number of first-year students. A common mistake when starting an MBA program is to sign up for too many activities. Business is about limited resources and business school even more. One of the new recruits obviously miscalculated something. He promised to give the “word of the day”, but does not show up. Thus the president gets a little confused, just like a fellow toastmaster. Too busy with his own tasks, he forgets to observe your speech and give feedback. The warm words from other participants compensate for that.
Today, you do not only deliver a speech, but also a present. A birthday present. One of your Indian co-students did not have to come to this country alone. In order to facilitate her transfer and to check whether she would do her homework, her parents decided to accompany her. And thus Pallavi’s mother celebrates her birthday far away from home. Together with some friends, you try to fill in for missing family members.
Shortly after entering the host’s apartment you learn that some things truly are global phenomena. The birthday child is in the kitchen, fixing a myriad of dishes instead of enjoying the day and let others do the work. Pallavi’s lovely mother even misses most of the actual dinner, urging you to eat without her. Any similarities between her and your grandma and own mother in Germany are purely coincidental. When she finally leaves the kitchen do try the ambrosial results of her work, she hardly eats for five minutes.
The various Indian dishes, all vegetarian, have different degrees of spiciness. A kind of hash browns, e.g., has chunky pieces of green chili pepper in it. The spiciest food offered is made of fried eggplants. But unlike its Italian counterpart, it is piquant. For your unacquainted palate it is just on the lee side of being too hot. Your Indian friends can only frown upon that, for them it is just regularly seasoned.
After the dinner come the presents. The Indian-Nigerian part of the group has organized a chocolate cake for dessert. Very American, very sweet. But the host honors the effort and politely takes a piece. The German part of the group shows its thankfulness for the invitation with a book. Selected poems by Robert Frost, an American writer. His most famous lines are the ones titled “The Road Not Taken”. Is this the right present? In any case, the father seems to embrace it. A poet himself, he shows you his latest publication. Unfortunately, there is not much to marvel about except the cryptic Hindi letters. Luckily he wrote some poems in English, a long time ago, though. He will search for them in his documents, he promises. Another reason for you to look forward to visiting again.
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