Perks and 😑 of Dining Solo

Before my recent resurgence, I do dine by myself on scattered occasions since my dining companion at that time was too busy. Well, the history of dining by myself actually goes way before that, back to my JC days. In fact, it was a secret indulgence of mine during that time. I remember I liked the western food in my JC's canteen, so I always looked forward to enjoying it by myself, without bothering to cater to others' presence, you know, listening and replying accordingly to them. I would skip lunch and wait until the Chinese lessons to enjoy some Me and Food time. Why Chinese lessons? Because all my classmates had to attend them, I was exempted because I had passed Higher Chinese in secondary school.

I have to admit dining solo in a restaurant is a totally different experience from doing that in a canteen since there are service staffs around and I do feel I kind of stand out from the crowd by being the only lone wolf in the restaurant. Before the age of resurgence, I was of the mentality: I sure don't mind dining alone, I'm good with it, I just want to discover new tastes. Anyway, I was not exactly at a good place at that time, losing myself along the way. Writing about my dining experiences helped me to hold onto a small part of my true self. It is like my little haven, belonging to me, and me only. However, I was being reined back from fully indulging in this until now. 

Lots of things happen during Circuit Breaker, which are not due to Circuit Breaker, but due to incidents that happened to happen during this time. I decided to take a step out to make that change and so here I am, embarking on a truly solo dining journey that is made out of my choices instead of circumstances. I can proudly say that I now dine almost exclusively by myself! Now my thoughts are: I love dining by myself, I can order whatever I want to eat, I sure don't mind standing out from the crowd.

Of course the first few times I dine alone after the resurgence came with some awkwardness. But with practice comes perfection, now I'm totally comfortable with it and can catwalk into the restaurant before making myself comfortable at my seat. The great service does help too. And guess what, I saw on quite a number of occasions guys dining alone in the restaurants too–and one of them I saw recently is pretty cute 😉.

One of the perks of dining alone is obviously I can choose to order whatever I like, I do not have to care about another's budget, opinions and preferences. The downside to dining alone is that I can't try lots of dishes by myself, but hey, I rather savour 3 dishes of my choice than to try 6 dishes not of my choice.

This is just my personal experience that I want to write about. I'm not advocating anything. You just do what you truly want when it comes to dining in groups, pairs or solo. I do like dining in groups at times, just that I will not write about it since my focus will be on people, not food.

Now I just need to change my mentality from "I sure don't mind standing out from the crowd" to "I love to stand out from the crowd". Okay ... that's quite a tall order for me, but got to try 👍.