unextrovert
june 10, 2005
i think the majority of the people who know me will say i'm an extrovert.
i swear, i am not though.
really.
but people laugh when they hear me say that. i'm not sure what it is about people who only see you as one-sided and cannot believe that there are other facets to you.
for example, i actually like to eat lunch alone at times. especially when i'm going to hole in the wall places for vietnamese food that requires a tolerance for fish sauce. but when there's nothing but me, my cup of tea, bun cha gio thit nuong, fishsauce and a soda chanh -- i feel like i can really breathe. there's no listening to people drone about their life, their relationships, their work, their problems....it's just me and my life, my relationship, my work and my problems only. nobody elses.
i think like most of you out there, it's great to have interaction sometimes, but we often times need to balance that with being by ourselves. space? freedom? release of inhibitions? i've been finding that recently, i enjoy my 1 hour of distance from everything that sucks something from me the rest of the 9+ hours i'm at the office. it's not that i don't like my colleagues or that i don't get along with them -- it's just that i feel like i need to be by myself with a book or just spend the hour for me only.
as great as it is to have camaraderie at work that extends into the lunch time, i'm at the point in my life where i need to regain consciousness of myself and who i am and NOT the person in a job at a particular company that i spend the majority of my waking hours at.
if you ask me, what i think i am is this: an introvert trained to be an extrovert when i need to.
and if you're still hungry for food photos:
i'm lucky that my local japanese restaurant has such good sushi and japanese grub in general. on cold nights, i'm especially drawn to ordering the udon suki. the thick udon noodles in a light dashi broth with salmon, a shrimp tempura, mushrooms, chicken, and other veggies really hits the spot. add a sprinkling of the togarashi shichimi to give it a nice kick. :9 this dish comes in a pretty large metal pot, so it's great for sharing.
from time to time, i like to order some inari (football) sushi. i like the sweetness of the tofu pouch combined with the tanginess of the sushi rice. it's a good offset for sushi rolls such as the rainbow roll - which has sake (salmon), hamachi (yellowtail) and maguro (tuna) wrapped around rice, avocado, cucumber and masago. and i really love shiromaguro (albacore tuna) sushi. :9
currently listening to: feist, one evening
