Sira-sira store: Instant this, instant that

YOU plunk yourself in one of the cavernous bucket seats in a fast food restaurant. You think: “This is a nice addition to this place. It’s conducive to conversation. Wish I had my girlfriend with me.”

Business-like white tables and pastel plastic chairs don’t encourage people to linger after the spaghetti has been polished off and the fried chicken ravished. The message in fast food outlets seems to be, “Eat and leave.”

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Well, that’s why they call it fast food—far better than instant fare and a little less artsy than fine dining.

Speed is one characteristics of your generation, the instant-this and the instant-that yuppies who can’t stand being in the slow lane or long line for that matter. You like changing lanes—not on the highway, but on a fast food lane just to cut the waiting time.

You want services that are faster than sound the speed of sound so you can save on minutes. You don’t know why you have to save; you just do it like clockwork. You have so many minutes now in your cup, your cabinet, your car dashboard that sometimes you don’t know what to do with your surplus time.

You wonder why no businessman has yet invented a time bank, a place where you can deposit all the minutes saved from opening instant food packages and having meals at a fast food diner.

While waiting for the pasta you ordered, you shamelessly watch a young woman whispering sweet nothings to her American husband (your presumption only). You wonder whether they met the instant way also.

At another table, you spot two grandparents shushing a handful toddler. Great! They are playing instant baby-sitters while mommy and daddy order their fast food.

Your order is getting late. This is becoming a waiting game, but then the restaurant is crowded and so the food is not as fast as you want it to be.

That’s life. You find your twisted logic amusing. You can’t suppress the smile now, and you start to snicker. The American guy at the next table gives you a look that says “you look crazy.”

Maybe. Hunger can do funny things to the mind. Heat can also make you dizzy.

The volume of diners today has overworked the air-conditioning, or maybe it’s just your feeling of being overheated by the El Nino sun.

No matter, you console yourself. In a few minutes you will have your pasta bowl with the nationally advertised tomato sauce topping.

You liked the advertisement, the one with the cute guy and the coy, young girl exchanging double talk and thought balloons about their favorite noodle.

How you wish you had an instant girlfriend like that girl: toothpaste smile, expressive doe-eyes, smooth skin and soft voice. But this only happens in advertisements.

In real life, even instant noodles require from you some patience while you wait for the water to boil. It’s only a perception that the soup is instant.

These thoughts distract you, so that when your food actually arrives you are surprised that it does.

The striking odor of the parmesan cheese reminds you that instant can be worth the waiting, too.

(ober.khok@yahoo.com)