When I showed up to deliver my rescheduled seminar at the University on Sunday afternoon, I learned that the trouble had all been caused by the occurrence of a doctoral 'entrance exam' that morning. In order to give the anxious graduates sitting the test a fair crack of the whip, this had necessitated closing down the entire building in which it was to be held.
Oh, well, that's all right, then.
So long as there's a good reason. And, clearly, this is not something that anyone could possibly have known about any distance in advance. Certainly not the person responsible for "co-ordinating" room bookings!
It seems our contact person setting up the seminar for me had found out about the problem at some point on Friday morning. It is therefore still something of a mystery as to why she didn't let me know about it until FRIDAY EVENING. Or why she didn't inform my employer (the major UK company that was supposed to be arranging everything) at all.
Oh, well. Let it go. This is China.
At least everything went smoothly in the end. Well, apart from the fact that the last-minute rescheduling (or the fact that it was on a Sunday in the first place??) meant that we only had about half as many attendees as had been optimistically projected. And apart from the "organisers" not having set up the computer/projector prior to my arrival - and then, of course, discovering that it didn't work. The IT flunkie was evidently familiar with this problem, and was fairly promptly able to substitute his own laptop for the PC permanently installed in the lecturer's console; and, after only a few more inevitable minutes of faffing around with loose cables, we were up and running. So, we got under way a mere 15 minutes late. Or 285 minutes late - depending on your degree of reverence for keeping to timetables.
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