Each appearance of the waiter brought a temporary ray of hope to my table.
After waiting close to 30 minutes for a meal, my sister, daughter and I were getting a bit on edge. I had waited all day and practically starved myself to the point of fainting in order to savour this meal.
So, having placed our orders some time ago, I eagerly waited. But when meal after meal kept being served at other tables I began to feel a bit peeved.
At one point hunger had so overtaken us that the conversation suffered; questions were asked with no particular interest in the responses.
Soon, tired of talking about how long the food was taking to arrive, we resorted to silence with only our body language saying exactly how we were feeling.
I kept a steady eye in the direction from which I expected the waitress to appear.
She did appear and set the food before me, much to my delight. I noticed my sister and daughter were slow to get started on their meals but that was not my concern.
Just as I was about to put cutlery to food there was a shout.
“Wait!”
Afraid that something was wrong with my meal I recoiled, loosened my grip on the cutlery and starting examining my plate. Immediately my stomach started to churn in anticipation that something was disgustingly wrong.
Then I heard a statement that both relieved and upset me.
“Lemme get a picture for Facebook,” my sister said and started reaching frantically for her cellphone or Ipod.
“What?” I exclaimed when I realized what the outburst was about.
With that I plunged the fork into my pasta dish and began eating determined, not to allow any pictures to be taken.
Somehow my sister managed to snap a photo just before the fork hit the plate. Out there in cyberspace there is a picture of pasta with a fork heading towards it.
Sorry, but if that picture is not snapped between the time the plate is set before and my thanking the Almighty for providing it I won’t be pausing for any photo shoot.
I am beginning to dislike dining out under these circumstances.
Why is it that everyone believes they must post photos of their meals to proclaim to the world here is what I ate at some point in my life? Stop telling me you are enjoying the meal and simply enjoy it and tell me later, if you feel you must.
I still can’t quite grasp why people post certain things on the Internet. Do I really need to know every minute detail of someone’s daily routine?
I use the food incident as an example but truly the Internet has intruded on every aspect of daily life. There is nothing sacred or private anymore and I say that as a journalist whose livelihood is based on putting the lives of others on display.
Of course, you can share the good news and other worthwhile tidbits but there must be a line drawn between sharing and just spreading uninteresting information. Sometimes by the time you are through reading and looking at what is posted you sigh in exasperation because it wasn’t worth your effort.
That is because there is a race out there to get information out first among competing corporate entities. The effect of that is that individuals have also joined the race to be the first to know or the first to share information.
The result is that without sifting through the information everything is put out there, from the most boring item to the most extreme incident. It has made human beings slaves to the technology.
Rather than enjoying the moment, individuals are too busy posting about it.
Antoinette Connell is Daily Nation Editor. Email antoinetteconnell@nationnews.com
