Cricket - Sport or insect?

I had a very weird work dinner in Singapore last night. Our new global head visited Singapore (our regional hub for anything non-equities) and our business manager decided that the bigger "management" team in Asia should have dinner with the new global head in Singapore.

Most of us are (the second tier managers) actually based in HK and because of the cost control plan, we had to take an 8am flight from Hong Kong to Singapore. We were half awake when the plane landed at Changyi. The high temperature and humidity was not a very nice welcome. Lots of people said "Isn't HK the same?" Similar but not quite. Singapore is at least one notch hotter in my opinion. Anyway, 3 hours of meeting with my boss and colleague before dinner and drinks with the new global boss. By the time I got to the Equinox, I was exhausted.

The new head seemed like a smart guy and nice. The one thing that he shocked me was how talkative he was. Lots of managers are strong believer of "silence is golden" but not this one. He was very willing to share his thoughts and seemed t e willing to listen. A pretty good sign. However, we all stood around in the corner of the private dinning room for over an hour before we could sit down. Unlike a normal cocktail, we were just standing there in a circle. Couldn't really stretch or switch my mind off.

The conversation at the dinning table was typical business conversation. The vision, the strategy, the execution. Then someone, in the hope of lightening up the atmosphere, asked about cricket (of the 14 people there, 6 Indians, 1 Kiwi, 2 Australians, 1 English. The remaining are 3 Chinese and 1 French). The conversation became so biased towards Cricket that for 40 minutes, it was nothing but how important Cricket is to some very senior management......

I don't mind listening to a sport that I am not familiar with. I can't expect others to watch diving and baseball as religiously as I do. What struck me hard is whether I belong. There were supposedly funny story of how a group in London plays every weekend for 8 hours for 9 months and how someone got a pretty bad injury and the captain (read boss) didn't want that person to leave for medical care. It wasn't that funny 10 minutes into that conversation. I think there was a lack of cultural sensitivity. If I started talking about Tai Chi, it would be me being rude....

It wasn't pleasant and really made me think of what I should do next.