For those who really care about it, breakfast is a ritual, and for others - at least a routine. There is something systematically repetitive, if not for the love of that ritual itself, for the efficient use of the precious and sometimes a bit overwhelming first minutes or hour of the day. Some might set the eggs to boil prior to measure the ground coffee to the filter and take out the toast from the the freezer, then put on the socks just in time to take the eggs off the stove and pour the coffee. Same drill. Every day. Some might prepare that thermos mug of black tea with the intuitively "lagom" amount of oat drink and grab an apple with one hand while locking the door with the other on the way to the bus and finish the apple just when the bus turns around the corner. Every day. Some might enjoy oatmeal with cinnamon in the same bowl used every morning since the 1970's. Never ever considering making the oatmeal in the microwave oven. Few of us chose to enjoy a completely different breakfast menu every day of the week, at least as long as we stay in the same place and are busy with the same occupancy.

Changing places forces changes to some of the habits. However; even in a big business hotel in an Asian metropolis; (you know the type with the design and features and location that can enable a feeling of being just anyware and nowere at the same time, the very dream of anonymity). With that seemingly never ending choices of breakfast options ranging from Asian noodles, ten types of kimchis, sushi, congee, via amercian eggs and waffles, omelette stations, continental pastries and nordic rye... No matter how curious minded or hungry, staying a few days in that place would probably find us creating a routine; a selection. That beaten track of "my breakfast". We search for the routine. A concept to go with. To save our day. We will also find ourselves using the same corner of the breakfast room. Probably the same chair as well. Looking at the same people, eating that same selection.

Changing places, moving to a new home base, challenges the routines. You don't have to move far to break the ritual. Actually, just letting somone replace things, reshuffle the kitchen ware in your cupboard, might prove to be a challenge to your morning, to break the ritual. You probably don't think much about it until it happens. Worth trying, just to know.

A new kitchen, in a new home, in a new street, in a new city, in a new country, will indeed break your ritual. Your favourite go-to brands are not available in the store once you find that store, and you are not quite sure about what the closest substitute brands and products might be even if you could read the labels in the new language. Your kitchen does not look or function as your old one did and you will need to look for every item in cupboards and drawers at least twice until you find what you might have been looking for. You need to understand how the coffee machine works and you need to chose which chair to sit on. You need to get to know the sound design of your new breakfast base camp. Whether water kettle or house mates chewing.

Writing this, I am a few weeks into what might be the beginning of new morning routines and rituals. For the first time in ten years, I share a kitchen. Except for shorter time periods, I have ruled over my own kitchen, or had my breakfast in hotel restaurant. I now try to find my way in a big kitchen in a big co-living space. I realize that redesigning the rituals takes so much more of my energy than just going with the old habits. Just finding out how to prepare that breakfast and anjoying it with some of my new housemates around me and finding my way to my office, takes energy, enough to make me need another breakfast or two, to be quite exhausted already at 9 am. It amazes me although it shouldnt.

Then, there are already parts of the new routines that almost unnoticed, became precious rituals, that I find mysel missing when I spend a few days back in my old bubble. The milk foamer, with which I found the perfect, intuitive blend of dairy milk and barista oat drink for my coffee to be just... perfect. The local fruit jam with a mix of apples and mangos or the big cinnamon sprinkler. The favourite glass. The small talk with the other early birds in the co-living space, not forced and very optional, conversations over cereals or sandwiches. The "enjoy your day" when we, one by one, leave for work. The rituals. Redesigned.

Thanks WG4U house mates for helping me with the current redesign!

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