Office bento culture is trending, no more worrying about what to eat for lunch
Sitting in front of the computer, my stomach let out a growl. I checked my watch; it was not even 12 o'clock yet, so I figured I would have to hold out a little longer. At this new company, lunchtime is 12:30, half an hour later than at my previous company, so my stomach, long accustomed to eating at noon, would strike up its hungry-belly song at this hour every day.
Just then, the colleague sitting next to me had already stood up and headed for the break room, deftly tossing the lunch box she had put in the fridge that morning into a Tatung electric cooker to steam. As the minute hand crept step by step toward the half hour, the aroma drifting out of the Tatung electric cooker turned my hungry-belly song into the wail of a Greek tragedy.
Finally, the 29 on the bottom right of the computer screen ticked over to 30, and like a runner at the starting gun I jumped up and announced: "Let's all go out to eat together!" One glance around the tiny office and nobody paid me any attention! Was nobody hungry? Only the male colleague farthest from me said yes; the others either kept their heads down working or gave me an apologetic look and told me: "I brought a lunch box."
In a tiny office of just 10 people, the rate of bringing a lunch box was as high as sixty percent. Of course this had to do with most of the people in this office being female colleagues, but the only male colleague who went out to eat with me that day also told me: "If I were working in Taichung today, I would bring a lunch box too." It turned out that he, a Taichung native, rented a place in Taipei and did not cook, so he had no lunch box to bring. When I asked him why he would be willing to bring a lunch box, he said: "The leftovers need to be eaten up quickly, otherwise when I get home at night I'll still have to eat them!"
Fear of eating leftovers was of course not the only reason everyone brought a lunch box. "It's convenient, you don't have to think about what to eat at noon" was the answer another colleague gave me. Indeed, every day as noon approaches, what to eat really is a big problem.
The tasty places usually require queuing, the ones with no queue are often not tasty, and otherwise they are just too expensive. If you want something fast and cheap, it seems you can only eat nutritionless fried fast food, or those 7-11 microwave quick meals made the night before and long since not fresh, or malatang and oden made from who knows what fish paste. This colleague, who had brought a lunch box from childhood all the way to adulthood, added: "Eating a lunch box from home is healthier; at home we only use olive oil!"
Of course, besides being convenient and healthier, another colleague who brings a lunch box told me even more: "With a lunch box you have more time. Going downstairs, waiting for the elevator and walking to the restaurant takes at least 10-15 minutes, ordering and waiting for the food to arrive takes another 10-15 minutes, and after eating you still have to walk back, and then you have to start work right away. It's too rushed! Your stomach won't digest properly!" I also noticed that colleagues who bring a lunch box spend less than 20 minutes finishing it, and they often use the other 40 minutes to take a nap, watch the news, or go out to the park for a walk, which seems to make better use of those precious 60 minutes.
A new colleague who had not been at the company long, and who was originally one of my lunch buddies, announced after just a few weeks that she was going to start bringing a lunch box too! "This way you save money!" she explained to me as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, and her tone even seemed to suggest she was wondering why I would ask such a simple, easy-to-understand question. It turned out that she, who loves traveling through mountains and rivers, felt that the 100-150 yuan spent on lunch every day could, over a month, save about 3,000 yuan, and over a year that comes to 36,000 yuan! When I asked her whether she would still bring a lunch box if she got a raise, she said she would keep on saving that way, so she could go to even farther places!
It seems that I, as the underdog of the office, should probably consider joining their lunch box camp too!
