Done!

It was back to Building 4 today, and I ran into the Traffic Jam From Hell on the way into work, causing me to be late by a few minutes. Unlike Tuesday and Wednesday, today's assignment included interpretation at two meetings organized to work out the details of future simulations.

The work involved something between consecutive interpretation (which is where you wait for the speaker to pause before you relate what's said in the "other" language) and what's called "whisper simultaneous" (which is where you try to relate what's being said at nearly the same time as the speaker, and you're doing it in a low tone of voice so as not to distract the speaker or the rest of the assembly).

I survived both sessions, and actually retained quite a bit of the content of the meetings. For a couple of hours after returning from the meeting, I was approached by the folks I'd been supporting to explain the chicken scratches that were distributed to participants at the conclusion of the session. Details aside, I was struck by the alacrity with which people proposed every manner of failure, designed ultimately to temper the crew into a highly competent team that knows the vehicle they're flying as well as (if not better than) the people who designed and built it.

Alacrity and, yes, a pervasive atmosphere of schadenfreude. :^)

Cheers...