Well guess what I really can swear quite delectably in French after training the Cirque du Soleil technical crew on site in 3D AutoCAD… they swear extremely well in English and French!!! It was the funniest training session I have ever given…
I trained them in one of the smaller yellow and blue tents on site, called the Technical Tent. In every room was a small closed circuit TV screen that was focussed on the main centre stage of the performance tent, where the performers would practice during the day. While our sessions happened we could watch the tiny little Chinese girls practice their juggling.
I understood a little of their French but picked up a couple of swear-words from them as well.
One French Canadian woman sat at her computer and swore and yelled at the computer every time it didn't do what she wanted it to do. She preferred swearing in English with a lovely French accent, I thought it was hilarious. She just yelled "F@#$! F@#$!" continuously at the screen, really loud. It didn't help much. The other people in the class didn't even notice.
One fellow in the class had hurt his back quite severely in an accident while doing some rope rigging on the roof of those huge high tents they have… he could hardly sit still for longer than 5 minutes with the pain in the training session, so he asked his best friend sitting next to him to use a long piece of gaffa tape on his forearm to rip out all the hair off his arm. This idea was to distract himself from the pain in his back. When his mate tore it off he yelled with delight - and it helped him - true story.
On one day I told them that with all the shenanigans we were getting a bit behind schedule with our training. Then when I got back after lunch I saw them all sitting quietly at their computers – and every one of them had taped their mouths shut with gaffa!!!!! Truly! I laughed my head off at their dedication to the teacher. More yells as they took the tape off after forgetting about facial hair etc.
Even more surprising, the company was so happy with the training in Brisbane, that they flew me down to their next location, Melbourne, to train another lot of people.
Above is a little watercolour painting I did of the view I got as I walked over to the circus site every day. The tent was situated alongside the Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne.
I trained them in one of the smaller yellow and blue tents on site, called the Technical Tent. In every room was a small closed circuit TV screen that was focussed on the main centre stage of the performance tent, where the performers would practice during the day. While our sessions happened we could watch the tiny little Chinese girls practice their juggling.
I understood a little of their French but picked up a couple of swear-words from them as well.
One French Canadian woman sat at her computer and swore and yelled at the computer every time it didn't do what she wanted it to do. She preferred swearing in English with a lovely French accent, I thought it was hilarious. She just yelled "F@#$! F@#$!" continuously at the screen, really loud. It didn't help much. The other people in the class didn't even notice.
One fellow in the class had hurt his back quite severely in an accident while doing some rope rigging on the roof of those huge high tents they have… he could hardly sit still for longer than 5 minutes with the pain in the training session, so he asked his best friend sitting next to him to use a long piece of gaffa tape on his forearm to rip out all the hair off his arm. This idea was to distract himself from the pain in his back. When his mate tore it off he yelled with delight - and it helped him - true story.
On one day I told them that with all the shenanigans we were getting a bit behind schedule with our training. Then when I got back after lunch I saw them all sitting quietly at their computers – and every one of them had taped their mouths shut with gaffa!!!!! Truly! I laughed my head off at their dedication to the teacher. More yells as they took the tape off after forgetting about facial hair etc.
Even more surprising, the company was so happy with the training in Brisbane, that they flew me down to their next location, Melbourne, to train another lot of people.
Above is a little watercolour painting I did of the view I got as I walked over to the circus site every day. The tent was situated alongside the Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne.
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