SPA - Getty

Well.....  Not exactly.....  Last time I flew NY-LDN with JP III, he told me that he had no interest  whatsoever in such menial stuff.

But, what I wanted to share with you today has a slight resemblance, i.e. my first 'Spaghetti', by myself, for my self.  It was an incredibly revealing experience!

It all started due to the fact that I felt that I was hungry, sensation that was somewhat easy to identify as my stomach started emitting some funny noises.  I got confirmation by simply observing my watch.  It was 20 hrs......  So, I gathered all my mental energy and braced myself for the journey ahead.

It was my understanding that one has to put water in a pot (no, not that pot....) and let it boil.  After a few minutes of digital 'tap tap' on the black cooker's dashboard, I managed to figure out how to keep that 'circular area' red......  I placed the cooking 'tool' on top of it and started to gaze at it with bovine eyes in the hope that the water would soon boil.  The sheer reflection of my brown eyes at the bottom reminded me of those long gone days when you had to go to the Physics lab in school and carry out some experiments....  To be honest, I cannot remember having witnessed such an interesting one in a long, long time.

Standing there, in what my lovely wife would call a 'Peter Pan Posture', or PPP (but not the BUPA health coverage for expats.......), it seemed that I was becoming older by the minute.  After 10 minutes or so, I noticed a few, tiny bubbles forming at the bottom of the pot.  I could not understand why this process was taking so long whilst in an electric kettle it would take about a minute or so.......

As my mind drifted away trying to find an explanation to this, my engineering mind covered all possible angles, form the thickness of the pot's base to the fact that this lost town is some 130 meters below (real) sea level........  Finally, it was becoming obvious that my anxiety about the the success of the experiment was inversely proportional to the amount and speed of bubbles rising from the depth of the tiny water tank......  And, there they came !!!   Bubbles bubbles and more bubbles.

The instructions in the pasta package indicated (in any language but English) that I had to put the 'raw material' into the boiling water and leave it there for some 12 minutes.  So I followed the instructions.  After the said period of time had elapsed, I took one worm-like thing and tasted it.  But it didn't stop there....  I have heard somewhere that the proof of the pudding would be throwing the spaghetti against a wall and see if it stuck to it.  In this case, the long-white-thing did stick but nonetheless it started 'crawling' downwards like those cheap toys street vendors would do with funny little plastic 'human replica', particularly in Santiago de Chile...................

The only issue is that, as I consider myself a 'food-chondriac' (defined as lack of self confidence, anxiety and/or fear of food poisoning usually experienced by inexperienced and spoiled people), and adding to that my engineering background, I decided that this task deserved a 'safety coefficient' of 3.0, i,e not waiting 10 but 30 minutes in order to make sure that, if not 'al dente' at least no one could say the thingies were not well done......

I did the wall-test again and, to my delight, the worm go completely stuck, so I went about making those footballers' like pirouette (mentally of course, but it took some effort....).  Stuck it was, and I left it there for a few minutes for me to contemplate the proof of success........ Anyway, the ear-to-ear (internal) smile turned into pure muscle work as I had to almost sand the little thing from the wall as it was cold and glued to it !!............

As I could not see a drainer (to be used to 'fish' the spaghetti), I instinctively grabbed the pot by the handles so that I could pour the water in the sink.  Mmmmm..... quite a painful experience.... The pot was hot, so I burned my fingers.  Simple as that.  Total pain.  Period....

Some time later that evening, probably lost count of the minutes as I put my hands in cold water, I saw myself sitting at the table with more food than I could possibly eat (how can this people not sell packages of 100 grams for people living alone in Aktau?  Someone please explain this to me...).

Anyway, the things were tasteless and almost dissolved at the mere sight of my fork....

Now I know that I have to put salt in the water, some oil as well......  I will definitely invest in a drainer and will put a post-it on the wall to remind me to use some protection for my hands the next time I try to carry out another physics experiment !!

But I ate it all.  Sheer pride..............

Next adventure will probably be that of throwing some meat in a pan and measure how much it shrinks between the time it touches the hot surface and the time I believe it is ready for my consumption.........