Similar thing in the Philippines. A common scenario is someone will invite another to an event, and the answer is "maybe" instead of directly saying yes or no.

Similar thing in the Philippines. A common scenario is someone will invite another to an event, and the answer is "maybe" instead of directly saying yes or no. This also irritated me before until someone gave me a possible explanation: It's actually a privilege for someone to be in control of his personal schedule. There are a lot of examples on how someone is not privileged enough to be able to fix his own schedule, but one example that I remember is that there are people who have uncertain or irregular salary payment schedules, so even if they really want to join that weekend nightout, they don't know if they will already have their money by that time. Or someone's salary is so low, they are willing to work as much overtime as they can, so they might not immediately commit to an invite because there might be an opportunity to work overtime on that day, night, or the day after.