My name is Monika and I am from Indonesia. Many international companies have representative here, and like many of them, the one I work at uses English as its business language. The thought of conducting a meeting in business English was daunting at first and my first experience was a complete disaster.
I thought I was prepared well enough, but one thing I didn’t take into account was the various accents people have when speaking English. It also didn’t help that my vocabulary wasn’t what it is today. For the life of me I just couldn’t understand what the others were saying some of the time. I felt stressed and completely forgot to consult the notes that I had, so everyone thought I hadn’t prepared at all. Eventually I had to request a short break and took a few moments to calm my nerves. After that, things went better but it was definitely an experience I will never forget.