On Apology

Where I work, a lot of meetings and stuff are made compulsory, and if anyone were not able to make it, he/she will have to submit a written apology. One such meeting was held a couple of days ago, and it was a pretty important one since we held discussions with our counterparts from a university in UK through a speaker phone (and yes - long distance phone call). Still, naturally, there were some people who were not able to make it.

During the meeting, the kwai-lo on the line posed a question to a lecturer who weren't in the room, and instead of the simple, straight-forward "He is not available today" or "He's unable to come to this meeting", the chair on our side here said "Oh, he's on apology!" - being, I guess, too eager to indicate to the kwai-lo that the absent lecturer was absent with apology, not just absent. Anyhow, if the kwai-lo noticed it, he pretended rather well to have understood what the our guy here said. Probably he's already used to it.