Thursday, May 26, 2005

Eating Alone

Today we did something high funda at work - failing over the primary server to the secondary server on purpose and checking if all the jobs, scripts blah blah run fine. And this had to be done during lunch to affect minimal users. So by the time I reached our cafeteria, everyone from my dysfunctional lunch group had left leaving me to lunch alone. :-( I looked around and though I found a few people I knew and who would engage in decent conversation, they were sitting with people I didn't know or people I knew and knew they wouldn't talk! Feeling very pathetic and wallowing in self pity I sat a table all alone, finished my meal in record time and ran to the refuge of my cubicle.

Now don't get me wrong here, I not a namby pamby girl who can't get anything done alone. Heck, I've survived three and a half years in Pilani, half a year in Bangalore and almost a year in Hyd all alone. I am pretty brave and independent kinds. But I can never ever go to a restaurant alone and dine alone!

I don't know why this is so. I have gone shopping alone umpteen number of times and never felt odd. Come to think of it, it makes more sense to drag someone along while shopping to prevent impulsive purchases that lose its charm as soon as you go home. A meal is for an hour but clothes are forvever! :-) And I do other stuff (that I can't think of right now) also alone. But eating is a big no-no! Once I almost entered a restaurant alone, and then I perceived the imagined snickers, glances of pity, shouts of "loser loser" reverbrating all around and ran right back!

Ann Landers (no I don't know who she is) said "It is far better to alone than to wish to be alone". So with this knowledge in mind and a book in hand for company I am going into march into someplace nice and dine alone and then blog all about it! :-)

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

hey j....
somehow i am reminded of "Caroline in the city" - the episode whr she tries to dine alone and go 4 a movie alone :))

btw which place r u planning to march into ?;)

littlecow said...

what if your consider yourself the "watcher" than a "watched"? eating at restaurants alone is fun -- you get to observe all of what goes on around. the prereq is to find a large enough restaurant and a table with a good enough view... for your first attempt, cheers!

Anonymous said...

Survived alone for 3.5 yrs in BITS!.. my foot!... i have our entire 2000 batch as witness to talk about ur solitary sustainance at bits!.. hehe!

Well..eating alone.. gosh!... tats the worst... was the toughest part when i got lost from the group in london:((((

Sagnik Nandy said...

i actually like going on dinners alone - but that has a lot to do with my earlier experiences of hanginng out in an obnoxious dinner group - so the key to enjoying solitude is bad company

janani said...

@kalpana - yes even even i was thinking abt tat episode while writing this! i wanted to mention it, but since some ppl feel there is a sitcom overdoes in my blog, i held back. :-)
as for dining alone, one of the days when u ditch me and go somewhere, i'll do it! :-)

@littlecow - yes me shall definitely do it one of these days. but i am not so sure abt the "fun" part though! :-)

@sharan - yeah me was not a loner, but c'mon i have been to all kinds of places alone, as have everyone else! remember the trips to pilani computer centre to get our systems serviced? :-)

@sagnik - i also eat my lunch with a pretty obnoxious group, but i somehow seem to prefer sitting in that group and not saying a word rather than sitting all alone. it seems to give me a i-have-ppl-around-me-but-i-don't-give-a-damn kinda attitude! :-)