The Presentation Mix-Up

I got a call the other day. My phone displayed “No Caller ID”, which was a bit odd. Usually, these anonymous numbers are either robotic voices claiming I owe money or bored telemarketers trying to sell me something.

On the other end was a woman whose name I couldn’t quite catch. She spoke rapidly, and the background noise was deafening. It sounded like she was in the middle of a McDonald’s kitchen with all the frying and beeping. I was about to hang up but decided to give her a chance.

From our chat, I gathered she was asking about my recent “presentation”. I told her she must have the wrong guy. I hadn’t done any presentations in ages. She seemed puzzled and insisted I’d recently done one at a hospital. Hospital? Presentation? Nope, wrong person, I thought. But then it clicked.

Turns out, it was all a big linguistic mix-up. In Australia, a visit to the hospital or even just a doctor is called a “presentation”. Classic language trap, and even after four years in Oz, I still fall for them. I had indeed been to the hospital, but not for a PowerPoint. I’d rocked up in the middle of the night at A&E with a bleeding, broken toe. Quite the presentation, that. Now I know. Next time someone mentions a presentation, I’ll think of sirens, not slides.