the brook

Is it possible to lose yourself so completely that you find your own source at the other end of the circle? What is the face of bliss? How many moments make up a decade, a century, a millennium? I don’t know the answers, but I can tell you that in the temples of Angkor I started to ask the questions.

Traveling always takes one across physical and sometimes cultural distances, but this vacation was easily the best I’ve ever had thanks simply to the sense of being transported across time. The various temples are anywhere between seven and eleven centuries old; and on many time has clearly left its mark.

Yet there’s a timelessness about many of the better preserved temples – one is very much aware that these monuments have witnessed the course of human events for a time so long that it’s hard for us to imagine. A thousand years ago gunpowder had just been invented, and so had fire arrows.

The temple builders were either Hindu or Buddhist, and it is really a wonder to behold how some things have withstood the test of time. The depiction of the Buddha’s face, for example, is carved on many of the temples’ towers and is instantly recognizable – truly an icon that has stood the test of time.

The setting of the temples – they’re in a huge complex set some distance away from the nearest city (Siam Reap) – which helps in capturing the sense of history. Apart from the tiny stalls that are set up near most temple entrances, the few motorized vehicles, and the fact that you get cellphone signal everywhere, not much about modern life has encroached upon these ancient wonders. There are still vast tracts of land and forest between the temples – and each temple within itself is huge. When I walked the long bridge towards the Angkor Wat temple, I could sense how grand a vision its builder must have had.

In case some of you who know me are wondering, yes, I did take photos; and they’ve been quietly getting their space on my photoblog. Start here, and keep going forward.

My one thought when I returned from Cambodia was this – it’s surprising that a place like Singapore gets maybe five or ten times the tourist traffic as Cambodia; but this was easily the best holiday I’ve ever had in South East Asia. It’s a must visit place – if you haven’t been there, do keep it on your travel list.

Cooking for yourself can be addictive. It’s easy after a while, doesn’t force you to think every day about finding food, makes you crave simple food if you’ve eaten out too much, but most of all it makes you do crazy things at times.

Yesterday I was feeling mighty adventurous and in the mood for trying something different. So I headed to the grocery store and came home with some cabbage.

What induced me to buy cabbage I do not know. Maybe it was some shred of memory of being advised to eat green leafy things. I don’t believe that I could identify cabbage the day before yesterday if my life depended on it. I’ve been trained to eat, not to remember and identify leaf names. In fact, on my way back I read the label on the packet and it said “Wong Bok” which nearly made me decide to get my head examined. A quick Google, however, assured me that the now ominous oval in my hand was indeed cabbage.

I describe the vegetable as ominous because I was now at a stage familiar to nervous bungee jumpers who, having made a painful climb to the top of some bridge or ravine, now ponder the wisdom of letting mindless gravity take charge of their lives. Here I was, someone who barely knows how to cook an omelette and who forgets how many cups of water are needed for one cup of rice – handling a vegetable that in everything but taste was as alien to me as multilateral diplomacy is to George W. Bush.

Like your foolish but egoistic bungee jumper, I decided to take the plunge. Let me warn fellow non-cooks – all the health benefits you may accrue from cooking and eating cabbage cannot make up for the rise in blood pressure that must occur when untrained folk try and get this herb to behave in the kitchen.

A vague intuition told me that I should probably cut this thing before trying to cook it and so I dutifully picked up a knife. If you want to analyze how to cut a raw food item, I doubt you’ll find anything as unyielding as cabbage. Apples are easy, tomatoes are messy but simple, cucumbers can be dangerous but obvious but cabbage… cabbage is a total mystery. I stood there for a few minutes, knife in hand, my mind in knots about the right approach. I was so bashful you’d be forgiven for thinking that I was planning to ask this vegetable out to dinner. Come to think of it, I was. From a certain point of view.

I managed to cook it somehow; though words cannot express how glad I am that no authorities on cooking were on hand to observe me and laugh hysterically. As for the the result – suffice to say I ate what I cooked and lived to tell the tale.