On 12 March again a special China talk, this time to a group of EMBA.
One really has to keep cool. The day started not that auspiciously, for once raining in Beijing, so biking with all my stuff from Gongti to Novotel Peace was a bit more complicated. I was told 19th floor then discovered there was a room booked on the (usual) 2nd floor. So I started setting up everything, long time in advance. Nobody seemed to be coming, so I called my ISP contact – who told me, it is 19 not 2. OK, she came over. After waiting finally the hotel agreed to do it there. I was anxious to get the projector going… a usual source of problems, and so it was. No signal going to the projector, technician checking the pile of cables, clueless. Suddenly, whoops, signal. I don’t like that: what comes like this also goes like that (and I was right).
The group was very active – and patient. I had changed quite a bit my very personal intro on China, giving a view on the impressive changes over the past 30 years, not only in terms of buildings and technology, but also the changes in society, surprising and even shocking at times for people like me. Who would imagine China Daily talking in details about “sex addiction in China”?
All went well and then, once again my MacBook Air refused to cooperate. Nothing of the keyboard worked except the mouse, so I could at least advance the slides. Then the projector got tired and lost the red color; the red cover of my book became dark blue.
But we all took it in stride and it went well.
Back in the office now trying to replicate why the keyboard freezes after some time. Google was no help. Turns out, connecting to a screen is not the problem either. I tried some recent PPTs: all freezing at some point, even the older ones: they worked without problems in the past. So, should be something being corrupted in the PPT or in the program. Now the challenge is to find it and/or rebuild the PPT in a “clean way”. I use the latest PPT Mac 2011 with MAC OS 10.7.5The same happened with a PPT done in Office 2008 for MAC: never insert a movie. That will be the end of your slideshows (and there is no way around). However, you can do it in Office 2011. But this time, no clue yet. Seems pretty difficult to find.