Clever Taipei Civil Affairs Bureau officials find a way to attend wedding banquets on the clock, under the guise of the city’s “Everybody Show Up On Time Campaign” [全民守時運動].

Will our tireless civil servants bring red envelopes for the happy couple? Will they sit through the PowerPoint presentation on how the lovers met? Will they join in the traditional conclusion of a banquet: the undignified scramble to snatch leftovers away in doggy bags? Will they avail themselves of the candy and cigarettes the bride offers the departing guests?

I wish them luck in improving our punctuality, but honestly, I don’t see what the big deal is. To my mind, the most urgent problem at modern wedding banquets is the dismal Johnnie Walker-to-guest ratio.

The seating of the guests also leaves something to be desired. At the last banquet I attended, I sat with four couples— happily married, by all appearances—while all the single women were seated together at a table on the other side of the room. The ladies looked terribly lonely.

The previous three banquets, I sat with my boss. Not the sort of frisson that makes one lose track of the hours.

Solve these problems, however, and people will surely show up on time. At the least, they shan’t notice any delay in the start of the festivities.

Nice to see the Hakka held up as a model minority at the bottom of the article, though.