On being Asian and eating alone

I'm Chinese-Malaysian, which means that for as long as I can remember, the words "eating" and "socialising" have been pretty much synonymous. You're considered to be very strange indeed if you do one without doing the other! None of this "we'll meet up for a measly coffee" type thing that Western people tend to be into, no, Asian friends will meet at a restaurant to partake in a banquet, then spend 15 minutes arguing loudly about who gets to pay the bill (I've seen many of these fights during my childhood and they're pretty funny in a 'they-would-be-more-funny-if-I-wasn't-actually-sitting-on-the-same-table-as-these-people' kind of way).

Anyway, today (after my exam finished and I had a couple of hours to kill by myself at a shopping centre before my partner finished work) I realised that I had to have lunch. So I spent a few minutes indulging myself in my favourite past-time, which is imagining all the lovely things I would eat (much more fun than actually eating those things, because my physical stomach has a limit, but my mental stomach is bottomless!)

I could go for sushi? Or maybe Indian? Or eat at a fancy cafe? Or Noodle Hut? Or just get something cheap at the food court?

Then I realised that all this imagining was actually making me pretty sad. Because I'd be eating lovely things, sure, but I'd be eating them all alone, and I kept picturing myself as a lonesome figure at a table for one, just generally being lonely. But why shouldn't it be considered acceptable to eat alone? I gave a little thought to this then concluded; it's because eating is embarrassing, and when you're doing something embarrassing, you generally don't want to be the only one doing that embarrassing thing. And believe me, the way I eat is pretty embarrassing because it generally involves spilling a lot of food onto my clothes, and getting sauce all over my face and even sometimes in my hair.

But yes, in the end I ate alone. I finished Good Omens while nomming on a chicken wrap with spicy sauce, and it was generally an okay experience, except the wrap was pretty spicy indeed (once I ate a whole birds eye chilli, but that story doesn't belong here...). So I concluded that, contrary to popular belief and conventional wisdom and Asian sensibilities, it's cool to take up a whole table meant for four people with your little lonesome self.