Time Capsule I:
Objects & Memories.

I got my Nintendo DS Lite when I was in elementary school. It was a gift from my parents, and I spent almost every day playing it after school, sometimes all the way until bedtime.

Unlike many people whose favorite games were Pokémon or Mario, mine were Inazuma Eleven 3: Sekai e no Chousen!! and Kirby. Inazuma Eleven was my favorite anime when I was a kid, so naturally I loved playing the game too. As for Kirby, I simply found the gameplay really fun.

What I find interesting looking back is that all the games were in Japanese, a language I couldn't understand at the time. But that never really stopped me from enjoying them. Instead, I would actively search online for walkthroughs, guides, and information whenever I got stuck.

Thinking about it now, I feel like this might have been one of my earliest experiences of learning how to research something on my own, simply because I was curious and wanted to figure things out.

I got my first guitar when I was in middle school. Growing up, I was a pretty simple kid who spent most of his time running and playing basketball. In my parents' eyes, I didn't really have many interests outside of sports.

One day, when I was about to go play basketball, my mom told me that I had to sign up for guitar lessons before I could go. I really didn't want to, and we ended up having an argument. But eventually, she took me to buy my first guitar and signed me up for lessons anyway.

At first, I was very resistant to the idea. But once I started taking lessons, I completely fell in love with playing guitar. I would practice what I learned in class and even look up tutorials online to teach myself things ahead of the lessons. My guitar teacher also told me that I had a talent for it, which gave me a lot more confidence.

Looking back, it's funny how something I was almost forced into became one of the most important parts of my life. That guitar was the beginning of my journey into music, something I probably wouldn't have discovered in the same way if my mom hadn't insisted that day.

I've loved taking photos since I was a kid. I used to borrow my parents' phones to take pictures of whatever caught my attention. Back then, I never really studied photography techniques or cared much about cameras. I just used whatever I had and took pictures of whatever I found interesting.

It wasn't until one of my birthdays in college that I bought my first camera, a Canon 5D Mark II. Having my own camera made me start taking photography more seriously. I began taking a lot more photos and spending more time exploring photography.

Looking back, I think this camera marked the moment when something I had always enjoyed casually started becoming a more intentional hobby. I didn't suddenly become a photographer, but I finally had a camera of my own to explore something I had been interested in since childhood.

This Polaroid was taken at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, right before I boarded my flight to New York. It's a photo of me with my family and my girlfriend, taken by the friends who came to see me off.

This was my first time leaving home to study in another country. Although it wasn't my first time visiting New York, this time felt completely different. Before, I had only been here as a tourist, but now I was moving here to actually live.

I currently have this Polaroid on the wall near the entrance of my apartment in New York. I see it every day when I leave home and when I come back.

I think it's interesting how a photo taken at the moment I was leaving home has now become something that welcomes me home every day.

I-Mei Chocolate Mini Puffs have been one of my favorite snacks since I was a kid. There isn't really a special story behind them. I just think they're really delicious, especially the chocolate flavor, and I've loved eating them for as long as I can remember.

After moving to New York, I attended a gathering for Taiwanese students at NYU, and I received a box of these mini puffs as a gift. I was surprisingly happy to see something so familiar, especially something I had been eating since childhood.

What I find funny is that I was so happy to get them that I almost didn't want to eat them. Back in Taiwan, they were just an ordinary snack I could easily buy, but here in New York, they suddenly felt much more special.

I guess sometimes the meaning of an object changes simply because you're in a different place.

I've always thought of student IDs as small pieces of evidence of different stages of my life. They might seem like ordinary cards that we use to identify ourselves at school, but to me, they also represent a particular period of time.

One thing I find interesting about student IDs is that they always have a photo of you. As time passes, your appearance changes, but the person in that little photo stays exactly the same.

Eventually, a student ID expires, and you no longer belong to that school. But the card remains as proof that you were once there, at that age, living that part of your life.

I like the idea that something originally made to prove who you are in the present can eventually become a record of who you used to be.