During a recent trip, I felt like documenting it. To fulfill my deep urge to document, I had 4 writing sprees over close to a month. In each of these writing sessions, I managed to write an average of 2 paragraphs.

Sadly enough, they are not true documentation that a fellow traveller can benefit from when venturing into these uncharted territories, but unresearched, opinionated, and self-proclaimed “deep contemplations” on life.

I have learned to celebrate small successes. So, here are the four pieces + two bonus sentences, in chronological but illogical order. Yes, they are completely unrelated. I edited and formatted them later to make them more readable.

Thousands of words – 3rd day in a new country

Sat, 25 Jul, 2026

How do you best learn about a culture? By experiencing it firsthand.

Now I am not answering ‘why’ you want to learn about a culture. I’ll leave that to you. But the ‘how’. How do you best experience it firsthand? By interacting with it through as many channels as possible.

What are the best channels? I am not listing all of them, but only want to dive into one of the main ones.

Language.

Experience the culture through its words, or palabras. A culture is best described in its native tongue.

Well, I am also not getting deeper into what is ‘native’. For simplicity, by native tongue I mean the widely spoken language at the time you are learning about the culture. You are, in fact, learning about the contemporary culture, not the history, the layers, not the trajectory of the land’s occupation. Just a snapshot at a given moment, while trying to extrapolate into the past, but all those extrapolations are speculative.

I digressed. I wanted to write about language.

What do I want to write about language? I’ll start with my handicap in experiencing a culture to its fullest: my inability to speak Spanish.

I am missing out on the friendliness, the humour, the warmth, the power of expression, the ability to capture moments, make more of my time here, and enjoy the music to the fullest.

I don’t even know if someone just cursed me. That’s the first thing you learn about a new language, right?

The one thing I want most right now is an accelerated language-learning ability. The ambitious boy in me wants to commit: henceforth, not to visit a new land before learning the local language.

Antropología

Sun, 26 Jul, 2026

Humans in the AI era, and for a few centuries before it, discovered a new pastime. They started building and preserving structures, recording human history from previous periods.

These accounts were figments of imagination based on artifacts and objects found while excavating the earth. Their primary methodology for writing history was to interpret these findings from beneath the earth. It was probably random, opinionated, and heavily dependent on the person writing the records.

When did we start building museums? What is the oldest recorded museum?

It will again be speculative, but a meta-search of our records suggests it is from a Sumerian city – Ur. Clearly, those people were prosperous, or why else would they dedicate human capital to this “noble” act if they had other priorities, like feeding mouths?

Will humans, or other creatures, in the post-AI period continue with this pastime? Will they attach importance to our fantasies? Will the skyscrapers be scraped by the future intelligence when they fold underneath the dust?

Fear, greed, envy, curiosity, blah blah blah

Mon, 27 Jul, 2026

One way to look at it is that often the most timid folks in our society are called adventurous. They probably are adventurous, but adventure itself is an expression of timidity.

The people who left their homes to venture into the unknown were, deep down, scared that the unknown would come after them when they were unprepared; they wanted to get familiar with the unknown before it became scary.

Scouts were needed to identify enemies you aren’t prepared to fight. Adventure often stems more from fear than curiosity.

Are aliens dangerous? Will an enemy nation get hold of a valuable resource before we do? Will something or someone hurt me badly before I get used to getting hurt in incremental intensities?

Attack is the best defence.

If you have read Nassim Taleb, you are familiar with the concept of optionality – a large number of small bets with low downsides and inordinately high upsides to insure against a black swan event. Option traders are not adventurers but truly timid folks drowning in fear of the unknown.

Fear drives humanity’s progress, not curiosity.

Explorers, missionaries, entrepreneurs. All those people who went trans-Atlantic, conquered Everest, or journeyed thousands of miles in harsh conditions were fearful people fighting the greatest fear – death.

The civilizations that stopped adventuring perished.

Go after death before it comes for you. Be fearful. Be adventurous.

Sentence 1

Sun, 2 Aug, 2026

“Past tense is hard in Spanish.”

– A fellow traveller

Sentence 2

Sat, 8 Aug, 2026

Adiós – the land of Optimus Primes.

The last time we spoke

Mon, 10 Aug, 2026

Most of the time in life, you speak to someone for the last time ever without realising it. Recently, I have been getting the hang of predicting WHEN I am speaking to somebody for the last time.

Now, two conditions here:

1. We are not talking about people we meet in passing. For example, someone who sat next to you on the bus or a vendor you purchased a one-off item from.
2. Nor are we talking about a relationship gone sour in which we voluntarily decided not to speak with the other person, although we rarely stuck to it under various circumstances.

I am talking about people who come into your life and become a significant part of it, even if just for a few days, or months, or years.

They are people you did not just speak with at the surface level. They exposed you to hidden sides of yourself, to the unexplored parts of worldly reality, and left an impression on your psyche.

Their paths diverge from yours at some point, just as they coincided with yours at some.

Those people.

I am getting better at predicting when I am speaking with ‘these’ people for the last time. Now, a question arises: if you realize someone has left a lasting impression on you, why do you still decide not to reignite that fire?

Because the paths diverged…

The blessings of time are taken away by time itself, and we walk on with the remnants.