Monday 13 April 2009

Cooking

(Sunday, 12 April 2009)

I haven’t cooked in a while. Until today. The hostel I’m staying in Copán, Honduras, has a quite spotless kitchen for guests’ use. I’d probably have gotten a meal by the same price in a food stall in the street, but I just felt like cooking.

I went shopping late, so not much to choose from: rice, corn and scrambled eggs. Ah! And milk. A whole litre of it. Damn, I miss it!

It was good to spend some time with the pans, alone, in the kitchen. Travel does this to you, I guess.

You meet plenty of folks down the road, but you still spend a lot of time on your own. And that’s good. I’m an introvert after all...

It’s also good to have some company for a day or two, but then you move on – different directions or not.

But so, as I was saying, you spend plenty of time on your own.

To me, it has meant I’ve been remembering past stuff from my life. Some stuff I hadn’t thought in years. Other stuff that has happened recently, but it still surprises me the extent to which I can remember it in detail.

Stuff from high school or even my childhood. Last year in college, when I shared a flat with a mate. Past travels. Stuff from work. The departure from London.

No nostalgia. No regrets either. No critical thinking , actually. It just looks like when the brain gets bored during the long travel hours, it closes in itself and dives deep in the souvenir box.

It just digs, moves things around. Picks one thing, looks at another. And then it puts them all back in and leaves them there, for the next time travel.

It’s curious and the first time I’ve experienced it this way. It seems like you need serious time on your own for it to happen.

And, if it keeps this way, I’ll end up remembering my 9 months in the womb by the end of this trip...

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