My life revolves around the two magical numbers ‘12’ and ‘6’; your life is probably similar, especially in COVID time. So, a typical day for me looks like this:

12pm: ‘It’s time for takeaway lunch from the Dining Hall.’

6pm: ‘It’s time for takeaway dinner from the Dining Hall.’

The hours between 12pm and 6pm are, of course, a mixture of work and procrastination.

The next day, everything repeats itself yet with more precision and less anticipation. The hours between 12pm and 6pm are filled with procrastination and sleepiness. Work? Forget about it.

“Stepping out of the College room seems to take more motivation, confidence, effort, and courage; while going on holiday has become an ancient mythology only documented on social media”

Sounds familiar? Indeed, such a mice-on-the-mill lifestyle (or in reality: student-at-the-hall-and-in-the-room lifestyle) can get monotonous rather quickly. Stepping out of my college room seems to take more motivation, confidence, effort, and courage than ever, while going on holiday has become an ancient mythology only documented on social media. As a result, looking at the clock with excitement and waiting for the two magical numbers to arrive has become the greatest relief and joy of the day.

You could ask, ‘isn’t such a life reduced to the most basic level of biological existence?’ You wouldn't exactly be wrong, however, I refuse to merely ‘exist’ and go through the motions. Instead, I have travelled around the world despite all the current limitations imposed on us. This is the new superpower I have acquired in the COVID era, a power which I call ‘culinary imagination power’. It allows me to turn a static life into a rich collection of destinations.

And with this power, a typical day of mine becomes:

12pm: ‘It’s time for the flight to South Africa to meet my friends in Stellenbosch!’

6pm: ‘It’s time for the flight to Thailand to enjoy the sunlight and beer at the beach!’

The hours between 12pm and 6pm are now filled with not only a mixture of work and procrastination, but also imagination and surprises. It’s almost as if I can hear the flight attendants announcing that line with the most unfamiliar familiarity: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, please fasten your seatbelts until the seatbelt sign is turned off.’ I (unsurprisingly) prefer the latter interpretation of a day: the one with more mental movements.

In a previous patriotic piece, I have shown how Churchill College accommodates students during the pandemic. Thanks to Churchill College’s creative hospitality team and their international dining hall menus, a meal from hall is no longer ‘just a meal from the student canteen’. Instead, it constantly changes my perspectives on food. 

For the past year, I have carefully documented each meal on my phone by taking photos. This allows me to remember the feelings I had when I tasted new flavours, imagining the time and innovation it took to transform the most common ingredients into mouth-watering dishes. I want to record the textures of ingredients, the flavour, the salt, the soy sauce, the curry, the chili, the sugar, the herbs, the colours of the sauces, the aroma of food, the softness of naan bread, the greenness of vegetables, the orange carrots and the crispiness of the baked potatoes. These dishes tested my taste buds continually and expanded my limited knowledge of foods and cooking.

“My brain has been constructing a database of flavours from all corners of the globe”

As an amateur cook, I am always looking for new ideas for future recipes. By looking at menus, I try and better understand how the dishes came into being. In addition, whenever I read menus, I often look up random entries about the countries where certain foods originated from. As such, my brain has been constructing a database of flavours and facts from all corners of the globe. 

Despite the rather restrictive condition of the current times, I feel free. From South African Bobotie to Indian and Thai curries, Chinese five-spice pork, chicken chasseur, Duck confit, spaghetti bolognese, lasagne and braised lamb belly, these dishes take me to different places. They are the carriers and the fuel of my imaginative power. They have made me feel more connected to different parts of the world, even when I am hundreds, even thousands, of miles away from certain parts of it. 

You may ask me where I am going to go next. The clock says it is currently 11:55 am and I am ready to board the next flight to Mexico City, enjoying Mexican chilli con carne on the way there. ‘Thanks for flying with us, we look forward to seeing you again’.