Category: Me Myself&I

Question: how do you not freak out about technology right now?

AI passing exams? Coding? Making music? It’s right now, not soon.

Soon, it’ll be so good that it will be enough for us.

The question screaming in my head is:

HOW DO WE SUSTAIN A SOCIETY SO RICH THAT ITS SALARY-BASED SYSTEM IS STRAIGHT UP INVALID? HOW? HOW DO WE COMPETE WITH SOMETHING DOING BETTER THAN US 24/7 AT QUITE EVERYTHING?

After the start of the pandemic, printing money, inflation and AI exploding this conversation should be in every mouth out there, seriously.

It’s so crucial and urgent. And the answer is simple:

Print money (UBI), give it to people, house us in very sustainable and healthy housing (so that we relieve earth from our growth’s impact and sustain ourselves into peaceful communities), and let us work collaboratively with AI (we keep doing what we’re doing with printed money as a constant supplement). No need for competition. No need for cyberpunk fantasy.

Simple. Not easy.

Rest in Power, brother.

Somewhere in the past. I don’t exactly remember the context or why I’m standing like a NPC or select-your-character in a fighting game, but I think I’m about to roll out with grandma’s car that I just bought for 1500 euros, about 15,000 dollars today probably.

I’ve had so much fun with this car, which is the best in the world hands down. It has to be experienced.

Sheeee. That’s how it started. My second trip ever in the US. I barely speak any English. I’m in love. The man behind me is about to take us in the sky on the 4th of July (my first one!) right when the fireworks start. Unforgettable. He sadly passed away not so long ago doing what he loved, flying a plane.

The other day, tradition was back! Before lunch we drink a Pastis or two. Or three. ANYWAY. It’s strong and has a unique taste. I had forgotten about the taste, smell and packaging. Memory lane indeed.

I haven’t changed much, in the end. Just add glasses, and pants that cover my ankles.

Smells. How do they work? I don’t know but we underrate the sense of smell wildly.

It’s unique to each of us, even more than hearing and digitally quite impossible to synthesize for now. Yet, it’s so powerful.

I have a perfume, I think it’s Star from Thierry Mugler which automatically reminds me of a friend and a bunch of situation, a particular laugh etc. From 25 years ago. In a second. My trip last week was an olfactive, Nose-apalooza festival.

It feels like smells capture time and space, with a pleasant or non-pleasant odor. It’s Whole. There’s no discrimination. The smell is this, then [insert super vivid 3D Dolby Atmos 16K HD memory].

I don’t know. I never lost my sense of smell in the past 3 years, it might even have gotten better.

Now I have a suitcase that I don’t really want to open because well, smells. They’ll die if I start using those clothes and tools! Please understand and respect my privacy in this difficult moment.

(title of this post)

I’m still on it from my trip! It was amazing.

I don’t recommend holding on to do something for close to ten years, but when it happens it’s… It keeps on giving.

I’m so glad I went to visit. It gave me some perspective to who I became too.

It also kind of deletes the long wait, as if now that the moment happened, that I made it back, the wait hadn’t existed.

Still going over everything in my head.

I’m super impressed about Japanese people’s ability to rethink the strongest elements of our lives. No one in the West would try to build a house like this one. Check out the floor plan and imagine living like this everyday.

I’m sure it’s pretty great! First cooling and heating (aka feeling good in your home) are probably excellent with this shape. Second, while providing privacy and views, this shape is also nice to the neighbors; you can see on the first picture how it lets sunlight flow into the house next door when a square, traditional house wouldn’t have allowed this.

The ability to question, re-invent and adapt is core to design. Japan excels at that.

I have a book with the complete works of Zaha Hadid. She designed that bad boy:

It looks like a frozen Eva. This is a real building in Hong-Kong.

It is spectacular, but I can’t stop thinking about layouts and how it feels inside. Does it feel great? How are heating and cooling? Are you constantly lost between floors? How expensive is it to maintain a state-of-the-art building like this? Say a custom panel needs to be replaced, how does it work?

Inspiring for sure.

Who’s paying for this?? Oh I see. Why so many men want dystopian cyberpunk fiction to exist. Did y’all even like, you know, the lessons??

Architecture influences us and a belt of towers around Paris suggests “why not more?” real quick and that, I don’t know man.

Outside Asia, Paris is already the most densely populated city in the world. And it already barely works.

My grandma didn’t die from COVID, but she kind of did.

She was in her retirement home and my parents were visiting her basically five days a week for a good hour each time. My dad would tell me how much they were making sure that she was alert, making her work her memory and talk about everything.

Then the pandemic.

She spent months without seeing them. And then it was in a giant room with all the other retirees, many screaming in this highly reverberating space, masks on, no touch, 10 minutes at a time, once a week only.

She couldn’t understand. They tried to explain the situation to her but this flu like thing with those hardcore precautions didn’t make sense. She even asked what did she do to them for not coming to see her. That made her completely give up. She shut down.

My parents have been deeply affected by this experience.

It is what it is.

• It was immediately clear that I was waiting for a flight going to France: I’m in line with no one close to me and this French dude shows up and stops right behind me, speakerphone blaring, not wearing a mask, speaking loudly. I move a few inches forward and this mf just moves accordingly, staying 10 inches from me. I leave and go to another line.
• I hadn’t been on a flight for a minute so they almost called HelpDesk when I failed to scan my boarding pass for 30 seconds straight.
• Aquaman in the plane was watery.
• We hit 995 km/h at some point on that flight, which is quite fast.
• Temperature/rain in Paris was about the same as in Los Angeles. Kind of odd.
• I couldn’t wait to see my dad. Masks on. Pandemic still fucking human moments left and right.
• We rode back home rather quietly. I couldn’t stop saying “wow” at all those changes and new buildings.
• My hometown streets felt like bicycle lanes, it’s so cute.
• My sister and my mom in my arms after the antigen test went “You Good”.
• Mom was so happy. Nine motherfucking years. Afghans refugees can go to Europe on foot and get to see their relatives back home faster than that.
• Realizing that many things here that I’ve known my whole life will end up being sold, demolished.
• Realizing my parents mortality like I had never felt it before.
• Realizing the same for my foster mom, hitting 86 this year.
• Fuck jetlag entirely because it’s really annoying.
• I’m sleeping in my teenage bedroom. Outside of my frantic typing, it is dead quiet.
• My beloved radiant heating floors. Goddamn.
• Smells from my closet, my clothes, the family house, nature violently bringing memories.
• Okay, now it really feels like it’s way colder here.
• Wine and stinky cheese at every possible occasion which is twice a day at the very least.
• My foster mom almost passed out when I showed up at 7 in the morning at her door.
• We’ve been talking for hours. I mean, she is and I nod back.
• Nothing has much changed in this little village. There’s something soothing about the consistency of that fact through decades.
• Gossips and alcohol are ruining everything, families, situations, futures.
• I haven’t seen the sun since leaving L.A.
• The road back to the family home was basically a river that I was at 75 mph on, passing trucks every 5 mn. Definitely tiring.
• I drive my dad’s Toyota RAV4 which feels like a Hummer on these tiny ass suburb streets.
• Quiche aux lardons so good.
• First normal night from 10pm to 7am, awake by street car so loud I thought there was a spaceship rapture-like event going on. It cleans the streets once a month?
• Went to Vincennes to go to my favorite little hat shop to get a new one.
• Traffic everywhere, so much construction I want to barf. It’s so dense it’s not possible to be denser. I can’t fucking stand it.
• More homelessness than I have ever seen on the periph’.
• Mom’s pot au feu soothes me a bit. Simple, tasty food FTW.
• Going through my boxes smelling exactly like when I left my apartment, I have to suppress memories if I want to make progress. Nine fucking years.
• I can wear everything I’ve been wearing since 1998.
• Joy of finding old items from my beautiful cream Stratocaster to shirts I loved to death and cassettes. All coming with me.
• The sun has been out for five minutes. Sort of.
• This constant thinly veiled French racist attitude, lol. Well, I had forgotten about it.
• Last supper is rabbit and a little parfait au chocolat.
• Dad has become addicted to chocolate, he tries to sling some to me at every occasion.
• I already have to get back to Cali. I barely sleep.
• I give my parents a kiss on the cheek for breakfast, we’re happy and sad. My presents drying on the rack in the other room.
• I say goodbye to mom and we head back to CDG with dad.
• 7am, crazy traffic, pitch black sky.
• We know CDG pretty well and still getting confused where to go.
• Dad drops me off at the curb. I want this moment when we hug and hold each other’s face to last forever. I feel his nicely trimmed, white facial hair over my fingers and try to absorb this moment as much as I can.
• He’s gone. I’m about to.
• CDG. Such a mess it deserves its own post. Or not.
• We take off, 45 seconds later I see the sun. I missed you, boi.
• I sleep the entire flight minus the last hour.
• We land. Los Angeles, its sun, its beautiful mountains covered in snow.
• Everything’s a breeze at LAX. I’m quickly back to my car. Robert Glasper playing J-DILLA starts playing and I start crying uncontrollably. It’s all good.
• The sensation that I just had a very vivid dream starts, but I know it was real.
• Back to my routines. I’m up at 6am the next day and shooting my basketball at 7am, before work.
• As always, I finish my session with a swish 3.

You know what love is? It’s effort. It’s focus. And I’m good at it.