Office politics

Today I had my DSH oral exam. Didn't do it well. I really hope I can pass though, because I may not have another chance to take this test again... Had lunch with Yu-chun, Hiroki, a TW-ese and an Indian today after the exam. Then I went back to office for the 7-8pm conference call. I still need to learn how to participate in these conference calls. I am not used to talking on a phone. A funny thing is: in these calls German becomes an extremely useful language for discussing matters behind your American and Canadian collegues :p Although OA has warned me it is useless unless I want to hear people argue, I also listened to the 2nd call. Now I realize how stupid I was to ask the question last time: "is it usual for these conference calls to last so long (2 hours). I sat there from 8-10pm, and the call was still alive when I left. On the one hand I learnt how people defend their software designs within a team, on the other hand I learnt the office politics. But from a company's perspective, what a waste it is to have the employees from different teams to argue on a international call for > 2 hours...