SINGAPORE - Sometimes, on starry nights when the moon is high and it's just me and the crickets, I lie on a grassy field, look up at the sky and think: If I made a strategic pivot towards fried chicken tomorrow, would it disrupt my positioning on macaroni as the game-changer in the domain of microwavable lunches?

Sorry for speaking this way.

I went to LinkedIn, the site for business networking, and before I knew it, I had drunk the Koolaid of leveraging portfolios towards a next-generation argh I should stop.

Lately, when browsing the LinkedIn profiles of thought leaders, brand gurus, TED-talk givers and holders of dual degrees from Harvard Business School and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government (Only two? Was Harvard Medical School full? I guess someone didn't try hard enough), a few phrases keep coming back, like annoying waves beating against an especially irritating shore.

We've had to put up with a pandemic in the last few months, which is terrible enough, but phrase abusers pour more sand on our collective shorts by sounding like they have it all figured out.

I seem to get the same e-mail, just worded slightly differently and sent from different people.

For example, company representatives might say our present situation is "unprecedented", then add that we poor sods can "leverage their experience" to get out of it. If they have experience in it, things can't be all that unprecedented, can they?

An invasion from Mars would be "unprecedented". Me not snacking at 11pm would be unprecedented.

A virulent disease? Precedented. All too precedented, actually.

But there will be those who insist on seeing opportunity in a crisis and so advise us to "pivot" like we were ballerinas, after which we can follow up with "resilience" like we were concrete bollards.

They ought to make up their minds. Or do they think we can be both and come out twirling in cement shoes?

At this stage of the pandemic, if you have to use terms like "pivot", or "x in time of the coronavirus", where "x" is some mundane human activity, it just smells to me like someone had to fill a word quota and chucked in verbs and nouns guaranteed to get the client nodding because he heard someone else use the same words so they must be good.

This pandemic word scourge has become so bad that a developer might create software - let's call it the Coronaverbaliser 2000 - that mashes up phrases to craft gibberish that maximises the feel-good factor while containing no meaning at all.

It might sound like this:

"I hope this e-mail finds you: safe/well/not wall-crawling insane. As you know, we are living in: a challenging time/a unique period/a Barbie world, cos you're a Barbie girl.

The question is: How do we: stay agile/resilient/let the dogs out and yet: stay safe/lean and prepared/party like it's 1999?

Now is the time to: leverage our experience/invest in our borderless digital crypto-exchange/WFH but take me to Funky Town.

Take our pandemic self-audit to see if: your organisation is inno-preneurial/you are re-skillable/your guilty feet have got no rhythm.

If you are still reading this, you need to: sign up for a free webinar/re-webinate your webinars/webinar webinar webinar! Say it loud! Congratulations, you now speak fake Swahili!

Thank you and stay safe."