Week 7 — Time Capsule — Part 1

The Chosen Objects and Their Narratives

Brendon Rasombath
8 min readMar 28, 2021

Before we begin…

For this project, I was tasked to think of at least three types of objects that I own and have personal meanings/experiences for myself. These three objects will serve as the selected artifacts that I will preserve within my time capsule.

I had thought to myself, “what kinds of items should I include in my time capsule?” So, I decided to come up with these questions in terms of thinking and deciding which items I would like to choose:

  • What items would you like to showcase the future about?
  • Which items resonate with your most personal experiences?
  • What items were considered unique or special to you?
  • Which items did you think were the most interesting to you?
  • Any items that you could still potentially use in the future?
  • Any items only preserved for display use?
  • Any items associated with people/objects/places that you interacted with?

Here is the generated list of objects:

As I was generating the list, I felt like some kind of categorization needed to take place so I have used Miro for this process by separating into four different categories: cultural, personal experiences, personal interests, and interactions.

Cultural: objects that represent some form of my cultural heritage

Personal experiences: objects that represent the places I have been and explored

Personal interests: objects that represent my interests in various subjects

Interactions: objects that represent people/animals that I have associated with

Please view the diagram in the embed link below!

Thip Khao

Thip Khao, or “rice basket” in English

This is called a “thip khao.” It is a woven basket made out of bamboo which it is used to make and store glutinous sticky rice, a key staple in the country of Laos. This particular item represents a small token aspect of my cultural and family roots. Growing up as a kid, I have always eaten rice at every meal, whether it was just plain jasmine rice or sticky rice. My parents would always tell me that rice has always been a “sacred” item in our culture and consuming it would bring life to our bodies. They would also tell me that we should never throw away rice since it is considered as a taboo thing to do.

As Laos is considered as one of the poorest countries in the world, many people are resourceful with whatever items that they could manage to get their hands on. Rice is a prime example that people rely on heavily as their main food source. It is also easy to harvest and sell, thanks to the year-round subtropical weather in the region. Having this unique and handy item to help store freshly cooked rice in a special way definitely hits home for me. I can imagine going home to my family with the fresh and aromatic smell of steamed rice hitting my nostrils the moment as I open the front door of their house. My parents have graciously gifted me one of these before I moved out of the family house as I began college.

It is such a memorable item to have as I will always cherish the moments I have had with my family eating many different kinds of meals. I have grown to love eating rice and will always consider it as one of my comfort food and my home.

Here is a picture that shows a typical Laotian meal served with sicky rice as a main side dish to go with the nicely grilled chicken and the spicy papaya salad dish. My family and I would always eat sticky rice in this particular combination of dishes. It is our version as a combo meal, similarly when ordering a Chick-Fil-A chicken sandwich with a side of fries and a fountain drink altogether. Yummy!

Here is a video on how to make sticky rice!

The iPhone 4

iPhone 4S using iOS 5 software

This was my first exposure to the era of smartphones. I wanted to give this a round of applause as I still believe that to this day and age, it was the best smartphone device of its time!

Technology has always had a major influence in my life as I have seen the evolution of many technological advancements. Being a 90s kid, I am a part of the generation that has experienced the pivotal period of time where exciting new technology, music, video games, and pop culture were all introduced. One prime example was the telephone metamorphosing into the smartphone. At the time when the iPhone 4 was released to consumers, I was gifted by my parents to officially receive my first cell phone.

I instantly had fallen in love with the innovative and aesthetically looking device. I would always fiddle with the phone and discover all the tech savvy features that it had to offer. Taking my very first “selfie” picture on this device was absolutely amazing! I constantly enjoyed using iMessages, FaceTime, and downloaded social media apps to stay connected with everyone on the web. It was a grand time for the introduction of social media in the mobile world, which nowadays, greatly impacts my daily life. I still remember that I had the 32 GB model of the device and it was a good amount of memory size at that time for smartphones.

Ultimately, this sparked an interest for me to investigate the world of technology and computer science as I began to enter high school at the time.

Whenever I think about the iPhone 4, I vividly remember the revolution of the FaceTime functionality. In the video above, here is a YouTube video of former CEO Steve Jobs showcasing the audience of how to use FaceTime on the iPhone 4!

Currencies From The Far East

Paper currencies from the countries of China (left), Thailand (top right), and South Korea (bottom right)

Each individual country that I have visited has given me so many eye-opening experiences! It was truly mesmerizing visiting these three individual countries one-by-one back in 2018: China, Thailand, and South Korea. It was the last time since I have traveled outside of the U.S. before the COVID-19 pandemic had started. It was also actually my very first traveling experience alone on an airplane domestically and internationally.

I vividly remember when lining up to get on the international flight from New York City to Chongqing, I immediately experienced the culture shock as I was not aware that many people returning to China did not know the social cues of forming a line. People rushed up and cut in front of each other to get in the line first. It was absolutely chaotic.

Once I arrived in Chongqing, I felt super excited but yet, out of place and insecure as I was in a foreign country who did not speak the language natively. From the moment I had received my personal luggage, I went to go to a currency exchange center within the airport itself. As I was still a beginner in speaking Chinese. the process went well! I handed in at least $1000 US dollars in exchange for ¥7000 Chinese yuan. I was absolutely stunned of how colorful each Chinese dollar bill was when compared to the US counterparts! It was quite the experience as it was the first time looking at money so beautifully. Though, the person at the counter ended up telling me that it was actually more common to use digital currency than cash. This also gave me another episode of culture shock as I began to see people purchase literally everything with their smartphones so easily, while I had the traditional American mindset of using cash or credit cards for purchasing. Though, I ended up keeping the cash for emergency and aesthetic purposes.

This also applied to the other two countries, Thailand and South Korea, when I had visited them. This was definitely a technological advancement that China, Thailand and South Korea had against America as it was still progressively slow to make mobile payments on everything as a standard.

Here is a video of explaining a wallet-free society in China!

Also, here are several pictures taken in China.

Self-Reflection Time!

Overall, the selection process on choosing three objects for the time capsule was actually quite challenging at first. I began to question a lot about what items should go into the time capsule and take in considerations of what values do the items present to me personally. Upon doing some general brainstorming, there was a decent amount of objects to choose from. I ultimately decided to pick three out of the many objects. Though, after categorizing the objects into four main characteristics, it was much simpler for me to choose three objects that were the most meaningful to me.

Upon writing the small anecdotes of each object, I recalled on the first impressions and experiences that I have felt. I also had emphasized on the personal connections that I have shared with each object and why they matter to me at a personal level. I felt like presenting the visuals and videos of each object would become clear to showcase those experiences. Ultimately, I wanted to convey that each object has left some personal value to me in their own respective ways, regardless if they are not interconnected with each other.

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