English Dept and technology don't mix well together. First GP lecture of the year and the AV goes completely dead. No picture, no sound, just the blue "no signal" screen. And the intro lecture as prepared by Anthony and Vince is graphics heavy. Idea was to flash photos taken from recent news and see what the students would say or ask about them. This plan was not to be. The intro lecture became very imagination-dependent as Anthony verbally described the pictures the students were supposed to be seeing, and he was supplying his own responses to them himself. An interactive lecture gone back to monologue instead. On hindsight, maybe he might have called up various members of the audience on stage to describe what they saw on the laptop? That way, it wouldn't have been all Anthony-talk but some audience participation as well.

There was nothing anyone could do. The equipment was working perfectly the session immediately before. Even with our tech on site, he was no help at all. A screw-up this serious usually means someone forgot to do some simple little thing, but no one could figure out this little problem this time so there was no AV throughout. Regardless, Anthony kept his cool and just did his thing. It wasn't that difficult for him to do the talking, just harder for the audience to visualize what he was saying.

For courage and composure under technical breakdown, we tutors in the back row gave him a standing ovation.