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01:10 AM
Bikram Vohra
JournalismPakistan.com
April 21, 2014
This is real serious stuff. It’s not funny. Years of research have gone into it, huge mountains of data were fed into a Cray super-comp to tab the results and we finally got the top five best ways of leaving a party without offending the hosts.
For some reason the airport story is a winner. Sorry, got to get to the airport, got relatives coming in from Heathrow (sounds more authentic than saying London).
Would love to stay, but leaving for Toronto in the morning. Of course, there is a risk some nasty sod would say, what, there is no flight to Toronto at this time.
But usually no one argues, it is an unspoken pact that everyone understands. You know you are fibbing, the host knows you are fibbing, you know he knows you are fibbing but it is a getaway.
My friend uses the medical line. Awfully sorry, what a lovely evening, but our neighbor’s wife is unwell, her husband is travelling so we promised him we’d stay with her but we had to come say hello, couldn’t resist it. Complete blarney but you are a good Samaritan and nobody can fight you.
The best tip; go early (like if the card says 8.30 pm get there exactly at that time) and you stand out because there is just you and the caterers and they are still laying the tableware and the hosts are pushed to hurriedly dress and come down and you go through that huggy routine and they remember you came and then wait for the first lot of people to fetch up and when they are 20 odd folks around, beat it, no one will notice and you will be the guests most remembered.
Another play on the theme is to arrive an hour before the event (works for mass parties) and explain how you are committed for some other function but you just had to come and greet the hosts on this occasion and the hosts are miserable because they are jonesing for you to leave so they can dress and there you are saying, must say cheers at least once and really feeling bad we can’t attend and see the point, they have to give you an A for effort.
Finally, do the phone call thing, it works. Suddenly look up from the face of your mobile and say, migoodness, crisis at the workplace, man, damn it, just when I was getting in the mood, flipping boss has to call now, I’ll try and get back.
What sort of crisis is there at 9.30 pm, who are you fooling? As for getting back, what a lot of nonsense.
To make this work a bit more effectively, make a lot of white noise about how you are going to relaaaaaaaax and enjoy the evening and like, you have been looking forward to being here….makes the crisis call more dramatic. Of course, you can always stay home and wonder if they are talking about you.
(The writer is a Senior Editorial Advisor of Khaleej Times and the paper’s former Editor. He has also been the Editor of Gulf News, Gulf Today, Emirates Today and Bahrain Tribune)
If my call is so important to them, why don’t they answer it for 22 minutes?
How come when I want to, but something specific online is the only item out of stock.
When I get into a queue or lane going fast, the moment I get in, it becomes the slowest and refuses to budge.
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