I've been to my share of eateries over the years, more so after my recent shift to a city with no obscurely linked relatives' homes to gate crash into. The mundane exercise each night, initiated by a lazy roommate who goes, "So, what do we do for dinner tonight?" in quite the Disney's Jungle Book Vulture kind of way, leaving the NP-Complete (little computer humour there...) problem of finding a satisfactory restaurant each and every night solely to me, has resulted in me getting familiar with absolutely all eateries in the locality, and most even beyond. My apologies for that mammoth of a sentence.

Anyway, as I was saying, I've had my share of eateries. Cute word, isn't it - eateries? But I digress... so, of all the places affordable (barely) for your average daily dinner, the one place I want to go into again and again is this tiny little Subway that's a convenient two kms away from our home. Initially drawn to it because of one disturbing detail on the results of my then recent medical checkup, I now like to go there simply because of the interesting blend of people it draws in. Of course, I admit one can see a similar blend on any of the newer trendy hangouts these days, but then again everywhere else they generally talk, laugh, have a good time. Nothing worth observing. At Subway, they are more themselves, lost in thought, as I am, lost in mine.

There was this really innocent fairy-princess kind of girl with a strange tongue (as in language, you pervert). Spotless skin, face like a doll, her words sounded quite like a casual medley of instruments carried by a summer breeze. Looking down at the way she looked half smiling at her toes as her male accomplice made all the moves, I couldn't help but let my mind be drawn to romance once again. Rather than check her out, I instead simply wished her, and if she wanted, the lucky freak who was with her but so did not deserve her, all happiness deserved.

Then there was this Oriental student, bespectacled, hair falling over her face, trying very hard to look lost in a book and in her white PDA, which I admit, was what I was drawn to before its owner. Feverishly concentrating on her reading and occasionally keying in frantic bursts on her PDA, she received more than one smile from me. It's just as well that she was too busy lost in her world to notice. A good half hour passed, and as I picked up my tray to leave, I noticed she had but gone through a mere dozen pages in her book. Perhaps she found English difficult, perhaps she had too much else on her mind, perhaps she was alone. Perhaps.

Then there were the bogged-down-with-life atomic families, the rich irresponsible software engineers, the confident aunties, the full-of-promise couples. Each with their own ideas and worries, their own opinions and insecurities, all bottled up inside them, not even let out in the small confines of the Subway outlet.

And then there was the foggy spectacled (yes, they are still foggy) self-declared psychiatrist with only an average wiener. The 6-inch sub, I'd call it. Hehe...