I don't like eating alone (especially away from home)
Posted by mofembot Wed, 13 Feb 2008 17:46:00 GMT
Actually, I don’t mind eating alone at home, so long as that doesn’t occur too often. But I don’t like being away from home and having to eat out all by myself. In fact, I dislike it enough that when I considered my options last night in Heidelberg, I opted for not-wonderful Chinese take-out that I ate in my rented room. I was alone there (the family I rent from were off making Jolly Purchases at Ikea), but I was in my room, not subject to curious or imaginary pitying gazes, and could read my email and usual websites.
I’m posting this from my office at SAP in Walldorf, where I ate my dinner – the various items I took away from lunch earlier today (per my frugal habits when in Germany). Lunch was free because I got into the 3-day training session for which I’d been wait-listed: I went to the training room about 15 minutes before the session to see if I could take the place of somanyone who wasn’t going to show up. Sure enough, the instructor said he’d gotten an email from a would-be participant who was sick. And since no one else on the wait list had shown up (I’m only guessing there were others on the wait list)…
Even though parts of this training are excruciatingly boring because I’ve used some parts of these applications before, I’m learning something. More important, since lowly external contractors such as myself don’t get paid for attending training sessions, it’s a good thing I’m doing this now, when (because of a budgetary snafu) I’m not working anyway. End of April, when the next session is scheduled – well. That would be three days when I would be able to work for pay, and I honestly don’t think I’d do the training under those conditions.
But back to eating alone in a strange land. I dislike it enough that 4.5 years ago, while attending a education conference in Hamburg, I popped up the instant the pre-lunch session was over and proclaimed to the room that I was tired of eating alone, and would somebody please like to eat lunch with me? I ended up with a very interesting lunch companion with whom I ate a couple of other meals as well; she and I corresponded for a short while after the conference was over.
But there is no one to do that sort of thing with here, really: my mentor and my colleagues all go home after work and have to deal with the Making of Dinner and all the family hoo-hah. Usually Urte (my mentor) is here quite late and so I eat my “dinner” while she finishes off a salad or dessert that she took away from the cafeteria. But there was a general, off-campus “all-hands” meeting of regular SAP employees today… so…sniff… I was alone when I ate, with only the world wide web for company.
Could be worse.