Group Lunch

I dont know what is it about group lunches, especially if the group size is more than 6-7 people, I dont know what it achieves apart from the fact that one gets a free lunch. Usually, the confinement is between the 2-4 people around you and if I get to pick the choice, I usually pick folks whom I know. So, why is there a group lunch. I can sort of understand the deal about birthdays and farewell lunches. Am I the only one to have such a cynical view?... I dont know..

In most of the group lunches, mainly the ones that have a very long table with people facing each other and you get trapped between a couple of people whom you dont know. Dont you feel that there is usually an interesting piece of conversation going on at the other end of the table where people seem all happy and laughing out loud, and people from the non-laughing end try to focus and look at the crowd on the other side with a sorry look on their faces. Especially, for a person like me whose ears are a little "goyyan", even under normal conditions of temperature and pressure, I dont hear things properly, even if shouted at close proximities. To top that, the wave of laughter from the conversation sort of propagates to some extent along the table, deteriorating in its content along the way. Have you had cases when the person next to you looks at you and laughs and you dont know whether to laugh back without knowing the context. I sometimes laugh and be a roman in italy. There are times when I end up asking them what the conversation was about. In most cases, the reply will be "I dont know, I think it is something about blah blah blah"... I ask myself, "Why did you laugh then?"... and then I laugh at them pretending to laugh at what they were laughing about. May be my neighbor was laughing for the same reason as mine about his neighbour, I just dont know.