The same thing can be seen on some MIUI device that i used before. Need to quickly press the recovery keys combination to enter TWRP. Entering recovery command from terminal would directly boot into OS.

I tought it was around 30 minutes

Well i do agree with this. The best way to win the game is by not playing at all.

My 1st android device would be 2nd hand xperia x10, i remembered installing cyanogenmod 7 on it and learning about rooting through it

Hey i too used to have the same device, altough not the 1st one