January 16, 2024

It was already dark out by the time I got to campus on my bike. I bumped into an old friend on the stairs and asked where he was headed. He told me that he was on his way to catch a train bound for New York.

I peeked into the building through the window and saw that students inside had just finished standing for the American anthem. I waited for them to settle back into their seats before entering the room despite not being sure of what to do. I found an empty seat and asked the person behind me what was next on the agenda. They said it was an “X to Y test”, named so because the tests were passed from the front of the classroom (X) to the back (Y). It was a kind of collaborative assignment that didn’t require us to write our names on the paper.

After handing the rest of the stack behind me, I looked at the sheet on my desk. It was a bunch highly specific questions about the gameplay and lore of Dark Souls, a game which I hadn’t played nor really watched anyone play. I wasn’t able to even begin answering any of the questions. Fortunately there was a freebie on the test, which was to simply identify what game was being asked about.

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My brother and I were about to leave the convenience store when he turned around in the doorway and asked me to get a sports drink. I walked back to the shelves and spotted a bottle with bright yellow fluid inside. I picked up the bottle and turned it over to the label but everything was written in Thai. It looked very similar to yellow Gatorade but I still wanted to be sure so I walked to the fridge which also stocked bottles of the same shape.

On closer inspection, my gut feelings were confirmed: the bottle on the shelf was some kind of cleaning agent while the ones in the fridge were in fact sports drinks despite having the exact same packaging. I picked out the Tang flavored “Tufine” from the fridge and walked over to the counter. The cashier was out but the barcode scanner was positioned in a way that seemed to be a makeshift self-checkout counter. I scanned the drink and and dropped some change on the table before heading out.