Here I am, sitting in the departure lounge at Sydney airport, waiting for my flight to Auckland. My gate lounge is next to the staff entrance to the Qantas Lounge, so I am enjoying complementary internet access without being a Qantas Club member.
Much amusement a little while ago – a passenger was not arriving for her flight to Denpasar and was not responding to the polite but increasingly urgent messages in English from the gate staff. Suddenly, we got an impassioned plea in a language other than English from a different voice. I’m not sure if it was her mother, or a tour guide or what, but whatever she said, the final passenger came at a dead run and the flight was able to be closed off.
I’m not feeling as organised as I’d like to be – on the agenda for this evening is putting slide transitions into my powerpoint presentation and removing the auto-looping and some other interesting effects that come with the university template. I was informed by my supervisor that I should use this, but it’s been set up by the marketing people for use at open days and careers fairs. It has about 12 different slides, each with different photos of scenes around the uni and the automated transitions. I really want my audience to be waiting to see what scene will be on the next slide rather than listening to what I have to say, and the auto-forward every 13 seconds has the potential to be very embarrassing if you don’t realise it’s there.
My presentation has my favourite photos on the title page and then a nice plain UNE green bar, logo and crest, without the photos, on successive slides. I will have a conversation with the marketing people when I get back, about developing an academic template.
