An Age of Enlightenment

Or: Things I've Learned This Past Week While My Phone Has Become Unusable Due To Water Damage

It’s so important to get out of your bubble. Honestly—it is. There’s so much of this world that is beautiful and real and hidden, and to think the average person will never get to see it all? To think of all the hot girls who will die not having been to Paris? To think of all the cool cool sexy guys who will not be able to experience the beauty of the bathroom at an Indian Coffee House, complete with a smell that feels like it was not meant for the human nose? That just makes me so fucking sad, dude.

I’ve been traveling for the past two weeks, machete-ing my way through the forests of northern Thailand (guided trekking tour), renouncing all my clothes and worldly pleasures (staying in a hostel during one leg, ugh), and befriending locals with my near-mastery of the local tongue and specific dialects (bowing my head at appropriate moments). I’ve also decided to go without my phone for a week or so (got completely fucked by water damage on aforementioned trekking tour).

I know what you’re thinking: Nabeel, wouldn’t you be stressed traveling halfway across the world without a phone? But I’m not like you. I’m different. I’m literally being so fucking chill about it it’s crazy (three friends with me all have phones + data). So don’t assume things.

What has it been like without a phone, you ask? Depressing that you even had to. We used to do things without phones; we used to just sit there and chat, and laugh, and discuss the pressing issues of the day, and scan the other members of the group for sexual compatibility, and talk about Nixon and the fall of Saigon and freaking art. We used to do all this without Jobs’ and Wozniak’s venal creation…

But now? Please. It’s a miracle if you can even get through a meal without your bitchass son filming a TikTok in which he asks you if you had W rizz back in the day! Owing to my phone succumbing to water damage, and also definitely because I 100% chose to do so, I decided to spend the last week and a half of my trip simply Experiencing. Living. Being Present. None of you fuckers could ever understand. Here are some things I learned, around plates of Thai seafood curries, as my friends scrolled away, limp-dicked, on their ph*nes, and I contemplated life and its attendant mysteries.

Life is too short to keep looking up on your phone what someone you hate is up to on Twitter every day.

This was honestly a huge lesson for me. As I was forced to stare out at the beautiful beaches of Southeast Asia, or the swirling chaos of the Hanoi streets, I realized that if you’re just on your phone looking up tweets from someone you hate, you honestly don’t have that good of a life. Sure—objectively, your life is probably materially better than a lot of people if that’s where you’re at, but I’m now at a point in life where the succulent, seductive fruits of the real world mean little to me. You can also just look up the tweets when you get back to the hotel or Airbnb, because you have Wifi and you can use your laptop.

My parents are going on a trip next week to celebrate their wedding anniversary.

Despite not having a phone, I was still able to keep in contact with my parents, via Apple’s seamless two-way connectivity on iMessage between iPhone and MacBook. In fact, I FaceTimed them, and learned they were planning a trip to Moab soon. I did this all on my MacBook Air 2020 with M1 chip, when I had Wifi in the Airbnb, but outside, in the real fucking world, I learned so many other things I swear.

The Denver Nuggets swept the LA Lakers en route to their first NBA Finals appearance ever.

F u!!!!

I was able to catch the tail end of Game 4 via CrackStreams, an illegal streaming website for sports games that I used on my MacBook Air 2020 with M1 chip. Thank God I have someone to root for now, because without the Warriors in the playoffs, I’m lost.

What I will say, though, is that because my phone is currently unusable due to water damage, I wouldn’t have known this happened if I were outside the range of my Wifi. So that’s something.

Harrison Patrick Smith, a.k.a. The Dare, is hosting NYC’s hottest Thursday night parties at Home Sweet Home in the Lower East Side. His EP is poised to make a big splash, and his music is reminiscent of early Beastie Boys or LCD Soundsystem.

After spending a day out on the town in Bangkok, I came back to the hostel to use my Apple MacBook Air 2020 with M1 chip and read a GQ article about this guy The Dare. I listened to his stupid fucking song ‘Girls’ and got annoyed. I’m learning so much about myself since my phone became unusable due to water damage.

There’s so much out there we can learn from people who come from different backgrounds.

This is something I’ve picked up on while traveling abroad, and also while not being able to use my phone because of water damage. People have so much wisdom to offer us, whether they’re from Vietnam or Thailand.

That’s probably the end of the list at the moment, but if I travel some more, I’ll update it.

Greta Gerwig’s Barbie will be a candy-coated, acid-tongued, self-aware rejoinder to the patriarchy, coming to theaters on July 20!

Watched this trailer in my hostel on the Wifi, on my MacBook Air 2020 with M1 chip!

Ritam’s Footnote

Hey man, you missed this thread that someone did trying to self-immolate because they went to a Taylor Swift concert while she was potentially dating a problematic white guy (everyone involved in this was white). So that was pretty big!