I found out in the hard way that the LCD manuals were quite optimistic when giving information for the execution times of LCD commands.
I also found out that some commands actually finished very rapidly. This all seemed to depend on when I kicked the LCD module.
After throwing the fixed delays out of the window my code became at least 3 times faster especially on writing characters to the LCD.

Here is a code that checks whether a LCD is busy:

// -----------------------------------------------------------------------
// LcdBusy.c
// -----------------------------------------------------------------------
#include "Lcd.h"

// -----------------------------------------------------------------------
// Check if the LCD is busy doing stuff
// -----------------------------------------------------------------------
extern	bool_t			LcdBusy			( void ) {
	uint8_t	busdata;
	if	( LcdExist() ) {
		ApplicationIrqDisable();
		ApplicationLcdBusRead();
		ApplicationLcdSetRW( 1 );
		ApplicationLcdSetRS( 0 );
		ApplicationLcdSetE( 1 );
		busdata = ApplicationLcdGetBus();
		ApplicationLcdSetE( 0 );
		ApplicationLcdBusRelease();
		ApplicationIrqEnable();
	}
	else {
		busdata = 0;
	}
	return	busdata & 0x80 ? 1 : 0;
}

// -----------------------------------------------------------------------
// EOF: LcdBusy.c
// -----------------------------------------------------------------------

And here is a sample on how to use it:

// -----------------------------------------------------------------------
// LcdWait.c
// -----------------------------------------------------------------------
#include "Lcd.h"

// -----------------------------------------------------------------------
// Wait for the display
// -----------------------------------------------------------------------
extern	bool_t			LcdWait			( uint16_t aMaxtime ) {
	uint16_t	mytime;

	mytime = aMaxtime;
	while	( mytime != 0 && LcdBusy() ) {
		mytime--;
		ApplicationDelay( 1 );
	}
	return	LcdBusy();
}

// -----------------------------------------------------------------------
// EOF: LcdWait.c
// -----------------------------------------------------------------------