I don’t know how
it is in other cultures, but venturing to a restaurant alone has never been a
nerve-wrecking experience here in Hong Kong. Obviously, we don’t call it a
transient city for nothing, for even on the microscopic level of dining, we
Hongkongers are pretty much a speed-inclined pack who come, sit, eat, and leave out of biting necessity. Either we have but a pitiable amount of lunch time
because of the afternoon meeting coming up; or we all finish work in different
hours, rendering an impromptu dinner with friends quite a bit of a mish.
Whatever reason it is, we have developed a culture of dining forlornly and
quickly, about which I am not complaining at all – it’s all quite lovely
actually, because HK has at the same time also become a, what I call,
solitary-dining-friendly place.
So I hear you
ask, my dear readers, “where does awkwardness lie in this blog entry then?”
Excellent question (* exudes air of authority of an all-nurturing educator *).
Precisely because most waiters/ waitresses are hearty enough to take care of a
frequent solitary dining person like me, they make a little effort to split the
table for you.
The
"Symbolic Gap"
Now, that’s where
the discombobulating part is. So you went into a restaurant, found no available
seats other than the table next to an already dining couple. The
waiter/waitress then offered said seat and inquired if it’s much of an issue.
You said no, of course. S/he brought you forward, as you comfortably sat down,
displaying a polite-yet-forced smile to the intruded couple. Then, here it is,
the waiter/waitress kindly detached your table from the couple’s, yet to a very
minor extent, leaving a baffling feeble gap of 3cm.
What does that
mean at all really…? The waiter/waitress appeared to be all winningly proud,
thinking s/he has vacuumed the awkwardness into the gap, whereas I stared at it
in utter bafflement. Is it meant to be an imaginary, symbolic partition,
against which both parties would act like each other didn’t exist?
Well hello! I’m
apparently invisible because of the 3cm gap between us. We’re SO convinced even
though your spaghetti cabonara next to me looks and smells salivating.
Odd.
I hope at this
point you don’t mistake me for a mean, sour and demanding customer, as in fact,
the effort is all appreciated, thanks muchly. But in all honesty, it just
creates every unnecessary feeling of abandonment that would otherwise not have
conjured if not for said crack.
Throughout the
meal the gap seemed to subtly shout “this guy doesn’t belong to the bigger
group. Now, HE, is a loner.”
Thanks muchly.
The
Table-sharing Embarrassment
Albeit merely
symbolic, being "served" with a gap might actually be a fortunate
treatment. Fact is, dining in this busy city can at times turn out to be a
tricky social occasion. I call it a "social" occasion, because those
are the times when we’re thrown into a table of complete strangers, with whom
you are forced to cope throughout your meal.
Being a frequent
lone diner ( such an awfully sad term – "lone diner" - Imagine a
veiled spinster wearing all black sitting there sobbing with a little
handkerchief wiping the corner of her eye), I have had more of such experience
than I ever needed. While I proudly congratulated myself on the strong track of
lone dining experience, it often took just one incident to shatter my
confidence. Let me now share with you my most extreme table-sharing fiasco:
It was lunchtime
in a Vietnamese restaurant, one that was as local and busy as its food was
tasty. I, famished and dehydrated, was dying for the lemongrass pork-chop rice
with fresh coconut juice. Eagerly I stepped into the hustle and bustle of the
restaurant and was immediately asked by a high-pitched lady “HOW MANY OF YOU???”
“Oh, one, just
me.”
“Okay this way
lah handsome.” This is one thing I love about Hong Kong – we are never judged
for dining alone with that oh-just-you-only-face.
Oh nelly. She
brought me to a table of 6, around which were:
1. An
affectionate teenage couple shamelessly feeding each other
2. Grandma
and mum eating in silence and indifference to each other – the smell of
post-argument air.
3. Young
dad in his early thirties and his boisterous, attention-seeking son jumping on
the chair. (Single dad?? Or just busy working mum?), and
4. Yes,
me. Well hello!
Now, question:
how to survive in such a situation?
a. Run
(but you were hungry and it was lunchtime in TST)
b. Request
another table (An obvious impossibility)
c. Ask
for take-away (refer to a.)
d. Suck
it up (Yes! Congratulations – you are in for a social challenge!)
But first of all,
where should I look at? The table was round, which means you would be
inevitably looking at someone and come off as creepily observing someone's
ingestion process. So I decided to keep to my little space (1/7 of the
already-tiny table) and stare at… the soy sauce bottle.
Then there came
distractions. The couple’s unabashed PDA (public display of affections, just in
case some of my readers are not acronym-shrewd) was overwhelming and
jealousy-evoking (don’t judge!); the pervasive tension between grandma and mum
sent me uncomfortable dread about a potential explosion of temper; the
shrieking kid was a down-right nuisance and dad was useless curbing his little
monkey despite fake and unavailing sternness – in a word, infuriating.
There you have -
a buffet of emotions as appetizers. Yum.
It was
challenging, I can tell you, to confront such a jambalaya of competing emotions
on my own. Luckily it is the smartphone era we're living in now, meaning we can be easily
companied by our phone(s). Here in the following are some tricks to deal with such an
unfortunate occasion. Feel free to use and consider them my gifts for you. You
are very much welcome.
1. Take
photos: Even if you are not phototaking-inclined, I suggest you to turn on the
phone camera and take photos, nay, LOTS of photos of your food, so you would
look like a smart and diligent social network user with lots of
friends/followers dying to get a hold of your latest updates.
(difficulty 3/5 – mainly due to risk
of seeming like a vacuous teenager)
2. Make
a phone call: Pretend something important is going on and your input is highly valued.
Examples: stock buying/selling as you are an i-banker (have no idea what
ibankers do really...) , love advice as friend is suicidal, crisis in office as
you are the head of office, etc.
(difficulty 4/5 – creatively
demanding)
3. Receive
a phone call: Same as 2., yet with a heightened sense of emergency because they, not
you, sought help.
(difficulty 8/5 – wholly because
iphone’s signature ringtone is polyphonic and hence humanly impossible to
imitate.)
Anyways, my meal
was finished in haste, but that’s certainly quite an achievement don’t you
think? Sounds like a shining spot on my résumé: Successfully
coped with a tricky lunch with 6 strangers in conflicted emotional statuses.
Now I must revise the first sentence of this
entry - Hong Kong is largely a friendly place for dining alone indeed, but
sometimes things like table splitting and sharing do make me gasp and utter a
fatigued "nooooo!"
