I can't remember the last time I had lunch by myself. Where I am, there is always someone to take lunch with: family, friends, people from the office, people from the not-so-distant past dropping in to say that they're still around. I relish long lunches not so much for the food as for the conversation, the connection.
Yesterday, I found myself without a lunch partner. There was no one I could badger at the last minute. Besides, I don’t like eating in at the office. Not on someone’s desk, anyway, with pictures and perpetual smiles beaming beneath glass pads.
And so it was that I ended up in a corner table in a not-so-crowded restaurant, with a plate full of pasta, a thick slice of pizza and a bubbly glass of Coke. There were no familiar faces, no one to share the table with, and for an hour, it was just me.
As I leafed through Lesley Garner’s Everything I’ve Ever Done That Worked, I remembered countless by-myself lunches in the past: table-for-one affairs when I had all the time to read, to dawdle, to think up stories of and about people at the other tables. I remembered notes hastily scribbled on paper napkins.
That one hour was like revisiting a familiar almost forgotten place and discovering that I can always come back.
5 comments:
this is interesting because in my work, we seem to be in a world of our own. we seldom go out to lunches together. i usually end up eating in my office or meeting a friend outside. could i be working in bizarro world...lol.
Thanks for the birthday greetings. I really appreciate it. Linked you in my blog too.
In my line of work, I'm always on the move. That's why I often find myself having lunch all by my lonesome self in different places around the city. But I ain't complaining, because I really love those "me" time. It's about the only time when I get to think... :-)
Hi Menchie! Now lang ako nagkaroon ng time to open my blog. Thanks for visiting me there and thanks also for reading my trying hard notes.
It's been a long time na, di ko na nadagdagan yung mga dramas ko doon. Ginawa ko kasing hingahan yun eh. Kaya lang di na pede ngaun kasi naka-open for all na pala sa batchmates natin un hahaha. Bawal na ang mga drama.
I saw your baby's pic, cutie pie rin and carbon copy mo ah. You have the right to multiply, hehe.
Ako naman, childless kasi nagka ovarian cyst ako...di na nabubuo.
But it's ok, masyado rin akong busy sa ofc kaya di na ako maka read ng mga emails ko.
Bye regards again...time to work na.
Oh, i have lots of that. And I actually enjoying eating alone. Like you, I'd usually have a book along. Pero kung wala, I indulge in a bit of people-watching, :D
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