A lick ass event!

Oh how I wished I had said I could not attend it. I had so many good, genuine excuses under my belt which I could have used. I had the misfortune of being invited for the Business Today Top 10 awards ceremony. I did feel a sense of apprehension and foreboding the moment I got the invite. But my vanity stomped on my common sense and made me confirm my participation. My vain brain was conjuring up images of me hobnobbing with top businessmen shaking hands clinking glasses passing out cards and making small talk and working the crowd like Bill Clinton at a fund raiser. However memory should have shattered these illusions as most of the time in reality is me standing on a side with a drink in my hand looking for someone to talk to. Whilst pretending to be busy messing around with my phone. That is the advantage of a Black Berry cos people think that you are actually working.

Anyway I went to this function at the Hilton fashionably late. Hoping that the proceedings would have started. But sadly the Cheap guest ooops I mean the chief guest decided to grace the occasion even later. After about 20 minutes Mr.Basil Rajapakse walked in to a lot of hoopla and fanfare. What I found intriguing was the number of body guards which made up his entourage. One could be pardoned for thinking that Prabhakaran was still alive.

From there on everything was downhill for the next seventy five minutes.

Gosh the two lovely ladies who came on to the stage to compeer could not do anything else other than barrage everyone mercilessly about what a wonderful human being BR was. As well as his daughter and his wife. They only did not mention how good his dog and cat were. They loved him. He loved them and everyone loved one another. Except those of us in the audience of course.

The organisers went to great pains to establish their close links with the government and how they did a lot of work for the government completely free of charge. It was an ass kissing exercise of a gigantic scale and I guess they catered to the ego of BR without giving a thought about all the business leaders who were present. What I can’t understand is how someone who is the brains behind all this strategy of the government can fall for such crap like this. Guess shit happens. And what was worse was that the shit did not stop flowing. They went on bombarding us with this crap for an hour by which time people were getting quite flustered. People were exchanging SMS messages and one could hear the faint buzz of conversation picking up and finally a few of us decided to sneak out of the event pretending to be going to the bathroom. We all ended up going to the pub and having a good drink. So in the end it was not such a bad night after all. Of course other than the faint hangover I am nursing as I type these words.