THERE WAS NO SIGN of the Bishop of Victoria, the Catholic bishop, bow-tied chief secretary Donald Tsang Yam-kuen or the representative from Hongkong Bank.
In fact, just 63 of the 132 people entitled to attend the annual general meeting of the English Schools Foundation bothered to turn up to the gathering of Hong Kong's great and good.
The venue of recent years - the comfortable boardroom of the ESF's headquarters - was swapped for the dimly-lit hall of Quarry Bay School to make room for the many observers expected.
It was all the more surprising then that so few turned up, for there was an extraordinary item on the agenda - the call for the foundation, the ESF's governing body, to vote itself out of existence.
The mood was sombre as members of the Hong Kong establishment represented on the foundation took their seats alongside principals, teachers and parents. The gloomy atmosphere was to be expected, given that the next day would be one of the most humiliating in ESF history, when it would be hauled before the Legislative Council to answer the damning findings regarding spending excesses and inadequate management control revealed in last month's Audit Commission report.
Unlike earlier AGMs this one did not end in a social gathering. The few had to make do with coffee and tea rather than wine to cheer them through the evening. The winds of change had already arrived.