A day long seminar: Phrases which annoy me

Today has a sort of holiday feel to it. Not because I wasn't working, nothing new about that. Today I took the day off to attend a seminar on an important software that we use. It was basically a sales pitch and so it was free, even had a free lunch. The people did a good job of presenting the new package.

The best line of the day was probably right at the beginning. The keynote speaker began his address with these words - "I thank you all coming here so early in the morning." It was 10am when he said that!!! It was kinda fun to see how fast you could guess what part of India each speaker was from based on their accents. We could easily spot the Tamilian and the "Hindi speaker".

Other than that, these guys kept saying things that I hadn't realized till then how stupid they sound. One such phrase is "... and without much further ado ..." before introducing EVERY speaker. Now I can barely accept "... without taking up much more time ..." because it's a self-deprecatory way of giving respect to the speaker. But the "ado" line has become the staple form of introducing people and the lack of originality bugs me more than anything else. And I wonder if these people even know what "ado" means. Another small thing the speakers kept saying as they began talking was "Am I audible?" or "I hope I am audible." Why not just say "Can you hear me?"

Atleast they had a free lunch, which even though it began at 2pm was worth it. Let me just mention the desserts - Jalebi, Butterscotch icecream, rabri and a kheer of some sort. Did I go for second servings of the dessert, you ask? What do you think?