Kvetch #9: Dining Alone in Jakarta

The sad thing about living alone, working too much, getting paid too little and lacking a social life as a result (if it's not sad enough) is that you often end up eating out alone because you have noone to unwind with after a long stressful day.

For a local in a highly UN-individualistic country like Indonesia, eating out alone is taboo. You grew up there, you were taught to take care of your family and friends, you have no language or cultural barrier, so you should have friends and there's no reason for you to eat alone. And like any other taboos, eating alone is damaging in many ways.

What if you run into a bunch of college friends who are having a reunion? "Awww, I'm sorry," they'd say. "If we knew that you were around, we would've invited you." You make other people feel sorry for eating together while you eat alone, and guilty for not having guessed that you'd be in that area that evening.

Even if you don't run into anyone you know, you're still liable to become an object of pity. The long-term stable couple in the next table who have nothing to talk about to even get thru the appetizer might try to come up with a chronological account and possibly a psychoanalysis on why you are at the restaurant, alone. "I think she just came back from her boyfriend's funeral and wanted to be alone," one of them would speculate. "Nah, she must have been a victim of child-abuse who can't make friends with anyone," the other would guess. Both concluded that they should be thankful that their lives are not as miserable as yours.

Even if there's no one else at the restaurant, eating alone could be damaging. You lose your power to complain at bad food and service. They'd assume that solo eaters are single and it's just too easy to dismiss your complaint as the typical behavior of a bitter over-aged single woman who presumably have character flaws. "Don't take it personally," a waitress would tell the one you scolded. "She's just, you know, an old spinster. It's not you, it's her."

Of course they wouldn't bother to think that this may be just a one-off thing and that you do have a life sometimes. Why would they anyway? As the person breaking the norm, its your responsibility to minimize the negative perception.

As a veteran loner, here's what I'd suggest:
- pretend to be a foreigner (remember, the stigma only applies to locals): bring a Jakarta map, speak broken Bahasa and hide your Blackberry
- act like a cool intellectual person with the fuck-the-world attitude: wear shorts, torn t-shirt and the $1 swallow-brand flipflop; conspicuously read good books with eccentric-sounding titles like "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" and avoid Eat, Pray and Love at all costs.

Well yea, it's kind of sad, but by doing that, at least you get to eat good food whenever you want it.

Kvetch #8: A Taxi Passenger's Predicament

I still don't understand why the taxi driver who drove me home tonight had to tell me all the tragedy in his life only because I started a small talk about how the taxi ordering system works. This is really unfair. I treated him with respect, but in return, he put me into a big dilemma.

On one hand, he had violated my rights not to hear the details of a stranger's financial condition and his wife's medical history. On the other hand, he had - intentionally or not - put me in a situation where I would feel like a heartless bitch if I exercised my rights and did not respond to him.

And seriously, he said he couldn't share his problems with anyone because they wouldn't understand. What made him think that a stranger who simply needed a taxi ride home would? Plus, how can I know that he did not tell the same story to all of his passengers just to get some pity money?

Anyway, I finally decided to ignore him and told him in the end that I hoped things would get better. But to alleviate my guilt, I told the story to some friends to see if they'd do the same had they been in my taxi. Luckily a lot of my friends have the same level of moral standard as me. In dilemmatic situations like this, they always feed my id and praise me for being "logical" or "practical". These are the same people who fully support my idea to volunteer for the Mentawai tsunami victims so that I can work on my tan while padding my resume and looking adventurous on Facebook.

Oh well, objectively speaking, I really did not have the obligation to sympathize with him. It is everyone's responsibility to build their own network of emotional support or a medium to channel their frustation (like I'm doing with this "kvetch").

Of course saying this doesn't make me look like a great person, but at least, I have made a good enough case not to be called a heartless bitch for what I did (or didn't do).