the cafeteria diet

Maybe the food I get at the work cafeteria is OK if you don’t have to eat it every day for several years. Maybe. It’s been so long since I started eating there, I no longer remember. Now, I buy more than I need to eat in the knowledge that I’ll only consume about half of it. This depresses me. I love food; every meal that isn’t thoroughly enjoyed seems to me a waste. An opportunity I’ll never get back, like the two hours you’ll never get back after watching a film that should never, ever have been made (of the two that leap immediately to mind, the first was a ill-considered borrowed DVD, the second the most pathetically hopeful choice of a poor, poor selection in a Manila cinema). But I’m hardly one to talk when it comes to time-wasting; I waste about two hours a day in the office, in a last-gasp burst of work that’s meant to make me feel better about doing bugger-all from 8 to 5. I’ll keep on eating at the cafeteria, of course – there’s no hope of me getting organized enough to bring lunch to work. Every day I stare at the same tired, limp, tepid dishes and they blankly stare back. I used to ask the staff to heat things above room temperature, but the microwave broke a few weeks ago and there’s no sign that it’s ever coming back. Occasionally I pop back into town to eat. I should do that more often. There’s always The Big Oz.