Predictors

After more than an hour of colourful discussion, what was the conclusion of the meeting ?

Of course there was none - I expected that much before I could find my chair in the conference room.

For those who are not familiar with this kind of business, there are a few predictors for a hopeless meeting:

1. The meeting involves more than 10 people. (Think of our Executive Council.)
2. The meeting is regular and more frequent than once every year.
3. There is no agenda.
4. The minutes of the previous meeting is used as the agenda of the next one. (Alas, they keep talking on the same things without making any progress!)
5. The first item on the agenda, i.e. confirmation of the minutes last time, needs to be seriously discussed. (If they could not even agree on what have been said, how could you expect they agree on anything else ?)
   
6. The secretary could not prepare a draft minutes before the meeting. (I claim no credit on this point; Humphrey Appleby taught me that much.)
   

PS. You may wonder why an autistic academic like myself needs to attend meetings of gangsters. The story began in 2003, when that famous ward of our hospital was closed down for SARS. A few weeks later, our man from Pluto decided to open the ward again, and he had to find (whom he believed to be) the least superstitious physician to take charge of the running of the ward. Naturally this selected one had to sit in all those administrative meetings.

And why did I accept taking up that ward ? In such a period full of unknown danger, I could just follow what Gu Long (古龍) advised: 最危險的地方是最安全的。