Yet another Saturday of plain indulgence with gremlin. I had Famous Amos, a New York cheesecake, a movie soaked in crude political humour, a huge bowl of expensive ramen and a whisky to end the day. Indulgence, plain bourgeoisie indulgence. And all for under $40, which makes it less bourgeoisie suddenly. Those who haven’t seen gremlin probably picture her to be quite plump by now. This is not the case. Not yet at least.

Apart from my usual bragging of how I’ve been enjoying life, I can’t help but to wonder if the long queue for the expensive ramen affected my judgment of how nice I found the ramen to be. As a result of having to queue for the ramen, would I have kicked into trying to rationalize (backward) that it was in fact worth the wait and price? I certainly thought it was awesome – but was I thinking properly?

Then again, having to queue for that shitty so-called “prawn mee” at kranji cookhouse, didn’t make it taste any better. (it was the only place I pressed a “Poor” food rating.) — although I didn’t make a choice and it was free, hence no need to rationalize.

And in another instance, people like my dad views it as a “whole package” thing. The entire experience (including waiting time etc) affects whether he thinks the food is nice or not. Or so he says. I can see how that goes: you rationalize that the food isn’t nice so that you don’t have to go through the long wait again -___-

Does it apply if you didn’t have a choice?

The restaurant however isn’t very conducive for social interaction. It’s noisy with quick paced jazz music (which is unusual for a japanese restaurant). The distance between you and the person opposite is quite big, and they almost deliberately have a ‘group table’ which you share with other strangers. It’s almost as if the place is designed to make you eat the ramen quickly and get out, so that the next paying customer could hurry his way in (and then out again).

That provided a good excuse not to talk much. I wanted to just enjoy my expensive ramen quietly — especially since I queued for it.