Last night we went out to dinner to one of the fancier restaurants in our neighborhood. Not that you can't go there dressed in casual wear, but since the tables are sheathed in linen and you are given real linen napkins, and the waiters wear ties, there is a sense of formality, even if the fare is Californionized French bistro cuisine. Oh well, that was quite a mouthful, but let me say, in case of the actual food, quite tasty.
It was quite amazing to be able to snag a table without much forethought on a Friday night. The economy, in spite of the rosy words from Wall Street, is tanking even in this county, where there are still quite a few people who are profiting through their investments or running companies that keep amazing the pundits with those steady jobless growth spikes in income statements.
Even before we got to our dessert, not even by 9 pm, the restaurant was more than half empty. All of which gave me an excellent view of the couples and small parties at the various tables. About 90 percent of the tables, laden as they were with drinks, plates, and bread baskets, also had a menage of iPhones or other smart phones in plain view.
I half expected that waiters would arrive with trays of small chargers for the phones, ready to feed them choice electricity, to keep them humming along. But lucky for us, these phones were all lethargic, reluctant to go off or even grab their owner's attention away form the company or the food. Still, there they were, even in stealth mode, erasing distances as much as making closeness a faraway concept.
