Dec 7th, 2025 Sunday Sunny
Since childhood, I have found “time” to be an intriguing concept.
Of course, like all other kids, I learned that each hour is made up of sixty minutes, and each minute sixty seconds. However, while something happening in an hour seems far away (young children are not known to be patient), the “click – click” from the clock indicating the passage of every second seems so short. How can something so brief add up together to be something that feels much longer?
As I grow up, I observe the same pattern, albeit on a different scale. While every single day seems to go by quickly, a whole year feels like a long period. Just as is depicted in the famous song from the musical “fiddler on the roof”: sunrise, sunset, swiftly flow the days. Sunrise, sunset, swiftly flow the years.
When did the incremental, quantitative change of a moment lead to a drastically different qualitative change?
Perhaps this is our brain’s work. Because the minimal difference tends to be overlooked, we could compare the states of yesterday and today, concluding that they are the same. Likewise today and tomorrow, and so on. We then expect that A1 = A2 = A3 = A4 to last forever (till An), only to be surprised when we realize that A366 does not equal to A1, because all the ignored tiny variations accumulate enough to become significant.
Fascinated and perplexed by this everlasting puzzle (knowing the mechanism does not alter how our brain is wired), I tend to be drawn to recipes that are technically not difficult, yet time-consuming. I like the practice of preparing the right conditions for the ingredients, then leaving it to nature for the miraculous transformation.
This past weekend, we decided to make a batch of kimchi. It is a process that we have done a few times before, but many subtle adjustments in the cabbage, garlic, scallions, and apples, as well as the environment can have an impact in the final outcome, so we did not know how it would turn out (as usual, I was more confident than my husband, having already counted the friends as recipients of our homemade delicacy).
The operation took place, filling the house with a distinct aroma. Yuuki was too curious for her own good, with several failed attempts to dip her paw into the sticky rice flour paste mixed with Korean chili powder (I would love to see a successful one and the following hilarious response as she licked her toe beans, though my husband disliked the thought of cleaning the carpet or brushing Yuuki’s teeth afterwards). Eventually the pickling jar was filled (to the top), and several other bottles too.
The first couple of days, nothing noticeable seemed to have occurred. Then, on Tuesday, I came home to a strong pleasing fermented smell. A few days later, it was time to slow down the microorganisms.
My husband carefully picked out a sample, and we both tried a bite. Brightly refreshing, tangy and spicy, with layers of flavors. In the hundreds of thousands of “di – da”, a marvelous product has been cultivated.
I have again witnessed the magic of time.