Conferences on Friday Evenings are bummer

I am just back from a CxO meet organized by a famous lobby group and a very famous research group. There were presentations by 2 people, two VPs of that group. What I know about Americans/Europeans from TV and movies is not at all true. Everybody looks light brown on TV, but these guys were the pinkest I've seen. Pinker than the Spanish guy I met at the Gateway of India when I moved to Mumbai. They talk as if their noses were stuffed, I could understand what they said, but it appeared like they were talking in a silly voice, like my cousin talks My boss sat for just one presentation (by the first VP) and left. He had a lot of work. But, the sales guys went out within 15 mintues after my boss left. Must've been over their head. My company has the laziest sales team I've ever seen. One wanted my boss to 'just include his name' whenever he writes a paper, and the other one says he doesn't do anything other than what is said, because people then expect him to do something. People ask him to work? That must be horrible! While our biggest competitor was there, handing out business cards to all the CIOs present there, and working, they went out 'for a smoke.'I met them outside and they say to me, 'let them meet 20 people. What's the big deal? I will get 20 of them as clients'. They blew up the one chance they had to meet top 15 or 20 executives at one place, for free!

After that, I came back to the company and saw the common newspaper lying in the lobby. I picked it up and started reading it, when this duffer programmer comes up and 'asks' if he can have it. I said, I just started reading it man, and he goes to another guy and started cribbing about me. He starts badmouthing me in Hindi/Marathi to the other programmer, not knowing I knew Hindi. I don't know what I did to offend him! I've barely talked to that idiot. There was one guy leaving our company to join some MNC. I asked him how much of increase there would be in his salary (expecting something like 80% or 90%), the previous guys pips in and says 'X Lakhs, X Lakhs'. I guess he did that to deride me or something. I just smiled, he has worked 4x as long as I have and it was still about 25% less than what I get. Umm... Yeah!