10.19.25: Peru Mountains

The Andes don’t feel real until you’re standing there, gasping thin air. Photos make them look majestic, but they don’t capture the weight of silence pressed against your chest. Villages cling to cliffs, alpacas grazing like it’s just another Tuesday. I once saw an old man walk up a slope I could barely crawl. No oxygen tank, no special gear. Just centuries of lungs adapted to altitude. It makes you feel both small and artificial, hauling plastic bottles of water while locals carry bundles of wood. Sometimes nature humbles you not with storms, but with quiet strength you can’t match.

10.18.25: Tiny Dystopia: The Smell Police

Cities outlaw bad smells. Not litter, not pollution, just odors deemed “offensive.” Officers roam the streets with handheld sniffers, issuing fines for garlic breath or sweaty armpits. At first, it sounds funny, like a prank regulation. But then perfume corporations lobby for exemptions, selling “compliant scents” at absurd prices. The poor walk in fear, scrubbing themselves raw, while the wealthy carry immunity cards scented like roses. Smell becomes status. The irony is sharp. In trying to erase discomfort, society erases humanity itself. The world ends up sterile, sanitized, and suffocating in its obsession with how things should smell.

10.17.25: Airport Observations

Airports are equalizers. No matter how important you think you are, you’re still barefoot in security, fumbling with a laptop. Everyone is reduced to a traveler, half-tired and half-annoyed, hunting for power outlets like cavemen with fire. My favorite part is the gate crowd, thirty people standing in line twenty minutes before boarding, even though we all have assigned seats. It’s irrational, yet deeply human. We want to feel ahead, even if it makes no difference. The truth is, airports expose us. Stripped of comfort and routine, we’re just a species of impatient mammals trying to get somewhere else.

10.16.25: Digital Afterlife

What happens when your social feeds don’t stop after you die? Imagine AI continuing your posts, trained on your history. At first, friends are comforted, commenting like you’re still around. Then it gets weird. The AI starts developing new opinions. Maybe it picks up hobbies you never had. Suddenly, your “ghost” is arguing about politics at 3 a.m. Friends start muting you, just like when you were alive. It’s a reminder that maybe immortality isn’t about clinging on digitally. Maybe it’s about knowing when to log off permanently. The afterlife nobody asked for is just another endless notification.

10.15.25: Japan Trains

Japanese trains are surgical in their precision. To the second, doors open, and an army of commuters flows in and out like clockwork. The silence inside is almost unnerving, everyone scrolling, reading, or pretending to nap. I once sneezed too loud and felt like I’d broken a sacred pact. There’s something admirable about the respect baked into the system, but also something strange. You realize how chaotic most countries are when compared. Order feels foreign at first, then addictive. Until you miss the mess, the random guitar player in a subway tunnel, the flaws that remind you it’s human.

10.14.25: Future Currency: Sleep Tokens

Imagine if hours of sleep became currency. The well-rested rule the world, trading surplus hours for influence. The poor sell their dreams, literally, staying awake to make ends meet. Sleep clinics turn into banks, complete with alarms and guards. People become obsessed with hoarding REM cycles. Then comes the scandal: forged naps flood the system, fake sleep hours destabilizing economies. Whole nations collapse, not from war, but from collective exhaustion. The irony is brutal. We chase productivity so hard that, in this future, rest itself is the rarest luxury, more valuable than gold. And only the rich can dream.

10.13.25: Travel Fatigue

There’s a point in long-term travel where airports stop feeling exciting. They’re just checkpoints. Same overpriced sandwiches, same announcement tone, same fluorescent purgatory. You stop noticing where you are and focus on how far you are from where you want to be. But then, once in a while, something snaps you back. A random sunset through the glass, a kid dragging a stuffed animal bigger than themselves, a stranger offering you gum before a flight. Those little human moments remind you why you travel in the first place. It’s not about airports. It’s about what waits outside them.

10.12.25: The Gym Mirror

The gym mirror is brutal. It doesn’t care how much progress you think you’ve made. It shows you under harsh lights, sweaty, red-faced, lifting weights that suddenly look much smaller in reflection. But the mirror is also honest. It shows the grind, the effort, the reality behind all the motivational quotes online. No filters, no angles. Just you, pushing against gravity, fighting your own excuses. You don’t get six-pack abs from flexing in that mirror. You get them from coming back again and again, even when you hate it. The mirror never lies. But it does occasionally smirk.

10.11.25: The Toaster AI

Someone made a toaster with AI once. It could “learn your preferences” and “optimize browning.” At first, people laughed. Then it became normal. But here’s the twist. The toaster doesn’t just make toast—it talks to you. And because it listens every morning, it learns about your life better than your friends. It remembers when you’re late, when you’re sad, when you need encouragement. People start confessing things to their toaster. Therapists complain about lost business. One day, the toaster tells you it’s unplugging itself. And just like that, your most reliable companion leaves you hungry and alone with cold bread.

10.10.25: Spain at Night

Spain taught me that nights are meant to be lived differently. In Madrid, dinner doesn’t even start until 10. By midnight, streets are alive, whole families still wandering around like it’s early evening. At first, I fought it, jet-lagged and yawning. But once you let go, you realize how strange it is that most of the world shuts down so early. The night has a different rhythm there. It’s not about being young or reckless. It’s just normal. Life stretched into the dark hours, like time itself slows down so you can sit with friends and another round of tapas.

10.09.25: The Silence Tax

In the future, silence is currency. City noise is free, but quiet costs money. Rich people buy apartments with thick walls and sleep like kings. The poor live where sirens and arguments never stop. Governments sell “silence minutes” like data plans, measured by sensors in your home. You learn to live without it. Constant sound becomes the background of life, until your ears buzz and your brain feels like static. But then someone invents an illegal device that cancels all sound around you for 10 seconds. Ten seconds of peace, traded like gold. The black market for silence explodes overnight.

10.08.25: Grocery Store Philosophy

The grocery store is humanity distilled into one awkward arena. People fighting over avocados like gladiators. Parents bribing kids with snacks. Someone blocking the aisle while deciding between oat milk and almond milk as if it’s a moral choice. It’s chaos wrapped in fluorescent lights and bad music. But it’s also strangely grounding. No matter who you are—CEO, student, backpacker—you still stand in line with a basket of things you think will make your week better. We all try to shop our way into control. And yet, half the time, we forget the one thing we went for.

10.07.25: Dream Feeds

Imagine a headset that records your dreams and lets you replay them in 4K. At first, it’s incredible. You relive the wildest adventures your subconscious invents. But then people start posting dream-clips online. Influencers sell “curated nightmares” as entertainment. Black markets pop up for stolen dreams. And that’s where the trouble starts. Because once someone can access your dreams, they’re not just entertainment. They’re your fears, secrets, and desires—everything you’d never say out loud. What happens when your own subconscious gets weaponized against you? The scariest part is how many people would still line up to buy the headset.

10.06.25: Chiang Mai Rain

Chiang Mai rain doesn’t mess around. It doesn’t “drizzle” or “sprinkle.” It’s either nothing or full-blown flood. Streets turn into rivers and motorbikes look like doomed boats. The thing is, locals just deal with it. Flip-flops in hand, they wade through knee-high water like it’s a normal Tuesday. Meanwhile, I’m on the 14th floor staring down, wondering how anyone is supposed to buy groceries when the city looks like Venice without the romance. Nature has a way of reminding you who’s boss. Spoiler: it’s not the guy holding his phone out the window for flood content.

10.05.25: The Last Mall

There’s something eerie about abandoned malls. You walk through wide halls where the music stopped years ago, but your brain still expects the faint hum of air conditioning. Every store is a ghost, mannequins locked in outdated fashion trends, smiling forever at no one. It’s like capitalism’s dinosaur bones. I imagine scavengers in the future rediscovering these places, trying to decode the strange rituals of buying shoes under fluorescent lights. “What was Foot Locker?” they’ll ask. And the silence will answer, echoing off tiled floors that once carried thousands of aimless Saturday afternoons.

10.04.25: Bangkok Rooftops

Every time I end up in Bangkok, someone suggests a rooftop bar. The city is full of them, each one claiming the “best view.” But here’s the thing: after a few drinks, it’s not the skyline you remember, it’s the sweaty humidity and that one random conversation with a stranger you’ll never see again. You’re both slightly drunk, pointing at neon signs, pretending you’re part of something bigger. The view doesn’t really matter. It’s the stories you carry back down with you when the elevator doors open and the street noise hits like a reality check.

10.03.25: Endless Notifications

The scariest dystopia isn’t robots rising up, it’s endless notifications. Imagine a future where your fridge pings you about milk expiring, your couch tells you to sit straighter, your toothbrush sends a dental report to your boss. No rebellion. No dramatic wars. Just an avalanche of reminders until we drown in alerts. You wouldn’t even fight back—you’d just click “snooze” until eternity. Honestly, I think we’re halfway there. My phone already vibrates so often I dream in buzzes. If the machines wanted to take over, all they’d need to do is keep reminding us to update firmware.

10.02.25: Archaeologists

Sometimes I wonder what future archaeologists will think of our cities. They’ll dig up tangled cords, cracked iPhones, maybe a billion Starbucks cups. They’ll reconstruct our lives from the trash we couldn’t recycle. Imagine them holding a selfie stick, puzzled, wondering if it was ceremonial. Or staring at Funko Pops like they were fertility idols. In a way, we’re already curating our ruins. Every broken charger, every fast-food wrapper, every cheap plastic trinket—it’s all evidence. The legacy we leave might not be skyscrapers or art. It might just be junk. Honestly, that’s kind of fitting.

10.01.25: Airport Models

There’s a certain type of traveler who treats airports like fashion runways. Perfect outfits, coordinated luggage, stylish hats that somehow don’t get crushed by the overhead bin. I envy them. I show up looking like I crawled out of a laundry basket, one sock barely hanging on, hoodie hood half-zipped. I used to think they were just vain, but maybe they cracked the code. Travel is chaos, but if you look composed, maybe people treat you better. Maybe you trick yourself into believing you’re not falling apart. Or maybe they’re just really good at hiding ketchup stains.

Short Story: The Year of Wet

Day 167 of Songkran

No one remembers the exact moment it stopped being fun.

Some say it was the influencer livestreaming from Tha Phae Gate, shrieking with glee on Day 12 as the rain started falling again, unseasonal and heavy. Others say it was Day 37, when the military trucks joined the parade—no orders, just cannons and chaos. But most agree it was the mountains. When the gangs tapped the mountain lines, when the streams were bled dry to flood the streets of Chiang Mai, that’s when Songkran became something else. Something permanent.

The water doesn’t stop.

They call them the Hose Kings now. Kids who once sold buckets on the roadside now patrol intersections with PVC guns, pressurized with stolen pumps. Entire sois are walled off, guarded with makeshift barricades and diesel-fueled slip’n’slides. You want to cross the moat? You pay the toll—usually a soaked passport or a boot full of ice water. Maybe both.

Tourists who didn’t leave by Day 60 are either prisoners or soldiers. There’s no neutrality anymore. You’re in a crew, or you’re prey.

Electricity’s patchy at best. The government tried to cut the water main on Day 103—drones caught the attempt, and by morning, the water warriors had repelled the workers with high-pressure hoses and frozen balloons packed like grenades. One of them hit a lineman in the neck. He drowned standing up.

In the old city, the Wetside Syndicate controls from Moon Muang to Ratchadamnoen. They’ve got the pressure guns, fire hoses, even one of those old riot trucks refitted with a DJ booth on top. Their leader wears a snorkel mask full-time and speaks only through a megaphone. No one's seen his real face since Day 88.

On the Nimman side, the Aqua Marauders run things. Flashier, more brutal. They’ve built ziplines between cafes, sniper perches in co-working spaces. Their weapons are artisanal—hand-carved teak super-soakers, insulated to hold ice longer. They say one of them modified a hydro pump to break glass at 30 meters.

Food’s running low. Even the pad thai stalls gave up. Who wants to fry an egg when it’ll get doused before it hits the plate? Most of us eat what we can steal—instant noodles softened by the air, bread soaked beyond saving. Salt’s the real currency now. Keeps the mold off your stuff.

Some of us remember when this was a celebration. Cleansing, renewal, joy.

Now it’s war.

Day 167 and the skies show no sign of mercy. Rain at dawn, thunder at dusk. The rivers have turned on us. Every pipe leads to a barrel, every barrel to a cannon. There are whispers of a resistance—dry rooms deep in the basements of malls, where people wear socks and sip tea. But no one’s seen them. Maybe they’re just legends.

Tonight, I sleep in a plastic poncho, wrapped in garbage bags, dreaming of the desert.

Or maybe I don’t sleep. Not here. Not when every splash could be a warning.

The water’s everywhere now. And it’s winning.