letters to myself

Last post I made a promise that I'd talk about my EDC. I've been into carry "hobby" for a while now, and I've dialed in a unique carry that fits my current lifestyle needs.

The bag

The bag I use for my everyday carry is a sling, specifically the Aer Tech Sling 1. This bag fits all my gear, including my Steam Deck, comfortably, and can sling around my body very easily. This specific bag is actually a fake, but it's a fake with the same make and materials, just never sanctioned by Aer themselves.

I attach a bag hanger to the carry handle, in my case it's a Stream Trail Cliff Hanger. Any bag hanger that can attach like this will do however.

The essentials

If I had to ditch the bag, I'd grab these first. This is the EDC staples that everyone carries.

Keys, in a key organizer. I use a pleather key wrap I got from an Aliexpress clone. So many people tout the Orbit keys or the Nomads or whatever, I just needed a way to stop the jangling that isn't a rubber band.

Wallet, a simple leather bifold in my case. This one is a gift from my father, so despite how battered it is, I will keep using it till it breaks. This isn't the trendy card-only wallets that people love to shill, because newsflash westerners, not all countries are cashless. Where I live, cash is still king, which leads me to:

Coin purse. This is a three zippered coin purse made by a local company, and it's so good because I can organize my denominations. The government did a funny (incompetence) and decided to change the coin designs to make them worse. You quite literally cannot feel the difference anymore, and you have to look closely as all the denominations are silver with no color accents and similar sizes. Lovely. Anyway I have four denominations to keep track of, and this wallet can do so. I do groups as 1, 5, 10/20. This also doubles as a weapon of desperation if fully filled.

Stack of identification. This is just documents I need to keep on me. Two forms of identification and proof of immunization.

Lastly, a bit of a frivolous thing, but a flashlight. At night, the streets can get dark in some places, and not all sidewalks are paved or even exist. This is a necessity over here unfortunately, instead of a nice to have. More powerful and wieldy than my phone's flashlight, this is also the first line of defense as I can dump 700 lumens point blank into anyone's eyes if need be. This is the Nitecore Tip SE, but I advise you to find a different model with removable batteries. It'll be bigger than this, but will last years more.

I keep my phone in my pocket on a leash, but it would be a part of this collection if it wasn't in the pocket.

Entertainment

I don't actually like using my phone for entertainment. My phone serves as contact, hotspot, food/parcel/people mobility, emergency camera, and for music. For entertainment, I turn to either of these two.

The first is my Steam Deck. If I have the room and the time, I will whip this out in public and play on it. This fits in the sling's dedicated laptop compartment, and thanks to the travel cover, I need not worry about any of the buttons or the screen getting damaged. This devices has singlehandedly taken over my entire gaming life. I exclusively play games on this thing now. Being a Linux gamer before this, the transition was super smooth, but Windows gamers might be sad that their ~~spyware~~ video game of choice might not work (Valorant, Fortnite, etc.). Since it's basically a Linux PC, I also do my Refold language learning on this. I have my whole immersion + sentence mining setup on this, and my Japanese learning has accelerated as a result.

For smaller gaps of time, or for when I'm in packed-like-sardines public transportation, I use my ereader instead. This ereader is the Onyx Boox Leaf2, and holy shit it is 90% of my perfect ereader. For reference, the features it has are:

• has a Micro SD slot
• manga sized screen
• runs Android
• has page turn buttons

You'd be surprised how many ereaders lack all of these functions in one package. What would make this ereader perfect is if it had Wacom pen or similar style of pen support and color e-ink. One can only hope that holy grail would come true.

Since it runs android, I'm free to use any reading app I choose. I use Tachiyomi for on-demand manga, and I use KOReader for epubs, pds, prior-saved manga in cbz, and for other misc documents. KOReader also has the bonus of being able to connect to Calibre on my laptop for easy book management.

It's in the stock case that came free with it, but if anyone knows of a nicer case, please let me know!

Audio

I previously mentioned that I use my phone for music as one of it's primary functions, and to support that, I have my audio gear here. I'm not really an audiophile, I describe myself as "someone who is in love with music". I used to produce music and thus it defines a sizeable chunk of my life. It only makes sense to min-max my audio setup.

For when I need to be agile or when cables get in the way, I use the Samsung Galaxy Buds2. Samsung are kinda dickheads and while I love the sound of these, I say don't get these cuz they actively make the sound worse if you're not using it with a Samsung phone. The Samsung-exclusive bluetooth codec is hardware locked, so yeah. Go get Sony Linkbuds and AutoEQ them to Harman, they'll sound just as good as these. Of course, they do all the TWS things good, active noise cancelling and transparency and calls are all competent. Sound is most important tho, and these are tuned to be Harman with a bass boost. Essentially, all of the music is clearly audible with extra emphasis on the bass. I like it, and statistically most people would too.

When I have the time to really appreciate music, or when I need to have the highest quality audio I can muster, I turn to my Moondrop Kato. These in-ears were damn expensive (even through the 2nd hand market!), but they were worth every penny. I use them in concert with the FiiO BTR3k paired to my phone. You may think bluetooth audio is bad, but modern LDAC over bluetooth is near-indistinguishable from wired connections. Again, music lover, not audiophile. The main utility of the FiiO is that it has physical controls, which is important to me. Weird brain stuff. Personally, I wouldn't recommend these simply because there are better, cheaper options on the market that were released after I got these. Truthear's Hexa and Hola are solid options if you wanna dip your toes into higher quality audio.

Support

This kit keeps everything powered. All my gear is USB-C, so I need only a USB-C male to USB-C male cable for everything. The pouch holds several cables of that variant, along with other misc adapters should I need to help charge someone else's gear. I also carry a USB-C hub in the pouch, for when I need to present something on my Steam Deck. Fun fact: I used my Steam Deck and the USB-C hub to present one of my thesis presentations.

The power bank is a simple 20K MaH affair with 65w fast charging. I just needed something that could fast charge my Steam Deck and a future laptop upgrade.

It gets hot where I live, so I need a fan. Lots of people use the electric ones cuz it's trendy, but I don't wanna have to remember to charge yet another thing. Manual power babeyy. Sunglasses are also a necessity, as I've found myself needing to walk through urban environments in the dead of noon. Cities get bright yo.

I also keep a reusable shopping bag for when I pop into a convenience store or something like that.

Always keep some writing material on you. The pen is a weird thing, it pressurizes when you press the pen-button-thing but it doesn't actually write like a pressurized pen. It works tho so I use it.

The shoe lace is for when I need to tie a waterbottle to my bag cuz I get lazy to carry it. Chapstick cuz dry lips are real. My multi-tool is actually a nail clipper, which comes in handy if I ever get a hang nail. You never wanna have a day ruined cuz you got a hang nail randomly. Similarly, the tweezers are for when you need to pull something out of something (the second something most commonly being your own body), and the anti-histamines are there to prevent gods wrath on my sinuses after I breathe on dust or a flower. Alcohol because obviously.

Conclusion

That's my EDC! I bring this with me most everywhere I go if I'll be out for more than an hour. This comes with me to college, to malls, to hangouts with friends, and to family dinners. Not everything gets used always, but I'm comforted by the fact that I have most that I need.

This isn't perfect, but it's 90% of the way there. I'd love to get a memobottle or some insulated thin waterbottle, but I haven't found any that fit this bag. I want to get something like an Alpaka Modular Sling, since I'm a fan of matryoshka-style carry. The idea would be that the modular sling holds the essentials, then it gets attached to the tech sling for everyday stuff, then the tech sling can go in a backpack with the modular sling on the backpack straps for travel or work. I'd also like to add a rain kilt for when the season changes, to pair with the rain jacket I wear for that season.

For now though, that's it! Next time, I'll prolly talk about some music production stuff next, so stay tuned. Peace.