Faceplant

I attended a breakfast seminar this morning and it occurred to me that this probably ranks fairly high as one of life's little ironies. A breakfast seminar starts at 7.30 a.m. and wraps up at 9 a.m. sharp so that all attendees will be spared the inconvenience of missing more than half an hour's work. For this opportunity, attendees have to greet the day as early as 6 a.m. and get out of the house by 7 a.m. How it could be possible for someone who got up at 6 in the morning to be able to absorb and digest facts and legal arguments by 7.30 a.m. is beyond me. I for one feel like I have been exhumed, dragged out of a crypt by my hair and then forced to shake hands and exchange namecards with complete strangers. And I'm sure that's how I looked.

As luck would have it, I sat next to a very intriguing PR manager who kept me awake. It's not a compliment. I've always lamented that it's impossible to be sleepy and irritated at the same time. You're either one or the other, but you can't be both. She irritated the hell out of me within 3 minutes and after that I was completely alert. She reminded me of 3 people who used to be friends and acquaintances but are no longer. Come to think of it, why is someone like that even put in charge of PR. It's like hiring the Anti-Christ for a PR position.

She insulted people. People she just met. It wasn't direct, but it was as subtle as a sledgehammer.

"I've never heard of your company before." she said to the guy on my right, who is the country manager of a rather international recruitment firm.

"Your accent is funny." she said, to the guy on her left, an Irishman.

"See you around ... I suppose." she said to me and a colleague when we were parting. "I never attend these events." she said, in leaving. Yes. Maybe you should stop attending. Please.

I don't think she was stupid or silly. I think she just derived pleasure from putting people down and seeing the looks on their faces. I can never understand people like that. I had a friend of some 20 years who put me down constantly throughout 3 dinners in a row and since then I have not been able to meet her due to my busy personal schedule. So what are you people up to these days, she would ask. And then laugh when I tell her and say "you're so provincial", or "that's so boring" or "that's just so typically Singaporean", as if she had not spent the first 18 years of her life in Singapore. Honey, did I say we spend our days digging for cassava and licking ants off trees for extra nutrition? And when she said getting married and having children was "so typically Singaporean", I almost ground my back tooth off I was so irritated.

Yes, as you can see, Singapore is the only country where the population is actually increasing in the traditional way. In central London (just behind Harrods) which is where you come from, everyone is 20 years old forever in the latest Galliano and they reproduce by mitosis. You can be as cosmopolitan as you think you are, sweetie, but is your passport still red?