My bad, I guess there is no way to 'set' your status to 'Away' in an IRC client. I was getting it mixed up with Messenger.
OTOH it would be possible to use the /nick option to add [Away] to the end of your name, but that's way too much work for most people that frequent IRC chat rooms.
Oh well, I guess I'll just have to work on my patience.
Cheers!
