A very brief meeting

Yesterday I received a note saying that I had to attend a meeting this morning to present one of our curricular revisions to a the committee who is in-charge of evaluating such things before it is passed on to other committees higher up in the administrative hierarchy of the university.

As the meeting was set at 9am, I once again showed up at work earlier than usual to attend to other matters before I left. Then after posting a note on my door on my whereabouts and letting our department secretary know that I wouldn't be around for the next hour or so, I set off walking at around 8:50am to the venue which was at a building about a couple of minutes away.

Upon arriving there, I was shown to the conference room. To my surprise and slight irritation, I found the place empty: I was the very first to arrive there. Knowing that I would be wanted back at my office to sign papers as usual, I hoped that the members of the committee would arrive soon so that we could get the meeting over and done with. After all, we only had three short curricular proposals to discuss.

[This so-called Filipino time where Filipinos generally arrive very late for meetings or gatherings is one of my pet peeves. I recall being asked to be piano accompanist to a group for a particular event. I would always show up a good ten minutes before scheduled rehearsals to set up my keyboard and other paraphernalia. But the the group's members would always arrive half an hour late. I was so irritated with having to waste so much time waiting that I refused to play for the group for subsequent events.]

After waiting for about 5 minutes, somebody finally did come. We had to wait for a few more minutes before the committee chair arrived. And then it took another ten minutes for two more committee members to arrive. Still, the meeting couldn't start yet because a quorum of five was needed.

Finally when it was apparent that nobody else would be arriving--it was a few minutes past 9:30am!--the committee chair decided to start. So we went through the usual procedure of taking up curricular proposals: I as resource person would present each proposed revision and the committee members would make comments. As expected, we were done in a mere ten minutes--which is a laugh, because it took more than twice that time to wait for everybody to come.

Anyway, we all made our quick goodbyes--the committee chair was just as anxious as I was to get back to his office to attend to registration matters--then I started my walk back to my office building. I had gone less than ten meters when I heard somebody calling to me. It was one of the staff at the office where we had the meeting: I still had to sign the attendance sheet and would I mind waiting for the snacks to arrive? It turns out that the office staff had ordered some sandwiches and drinks but our meeting was over so quickly that the snacks had not yet arrived by that time!

In the end, when the snacks did arrive a good twenty minutes later we all just grabbed a sandwich each and left the drinks to the office staff. (By the way, I had the sandwich for lunch.)