Hi everyone, My name is Steve, and I’m currently working at RBC as a Banking advisor in Richmond, BC. I came to Canada 11 years ago with my wife, and we have lived in Vancouver since then. Last year, my wife and I went back to China, and I worked as an English teacher at a private tutoring institution. However, the English tutoring business has been negatively impacted due to unexpected policy changes. Therefore, we decided to return to Canada to continue my study and work. Also, this is my fifth course in the MET program.

I usually don’t carry a bag with me, so I took a photo of my lunch bag when I went to work.

Here are all the items from the above picture.

Apartment Fob and Car Keys: the apartment fob allows me to access my building garage, main entrance, and floor through the elevator by the taping system. The car keys fob is an essential item that I mainly use every day to drive from home to the bank.

Wallet: the wallet is more used as a cardholder; with the digital development, I rarely use cash to make any purchase. Furthermore, I’m using more often through apple pay, Wechat pay, and Ali pays by my phone than using my cards.

SimplyProtein Bar: an energy bar with coconut flavour and low sugar for my daily healthy routine or my afternoon “dessert.” The texts on the label indicate that the person is on a diet and focuses on healthy food.

EVE Pain relief medicine: this is the most essential item for me because I have a migraine problem.

A Chinese brand Lens Cleaning wet tissue

Sephora Blotting films: many people wonder why a man has this kind of item in his lunch bag? The truth is my wife brought it for me because she could not stand my oily forehead and provided me with this solution.

A Japanese medicine for stomach illness

A Japanese medicine for sore throat relief

Mask Strap: this is another essential item for my daily use. I have to wear a mask every day to work in my branch. The mask strap would help me to relieve the pain in the back of my ears after wearing a mask for eight hours.

Hand sanitizer: Since the COVID, I care this item with me the whole time, even without carrying any bag. Now, I could easily take this item in my lunch bag. This would also indicate to others that I’m a very cautious person about safety and health concerns.

What would this same bag have looked like, say, 15 or 25 years ago?

I would say the bag would look significantly different 15 years ago. The main difference is that I would definitely not have a car key, and hand sanitizer and mask strap would not be my everyday use item. At the same time, the wallet I used 15 years ago would carry cash more than cards. If 25 years ago, this bag would only have food and a water bottle.

How do you imagine an archeologist aiming to understand this temporal period might view the contents of your bag many years in the future?

The archeologist would be very confused about the time of health safety because I put many medicines in my lunch bag. The archeologist may consider I’m a multi-cultural person that buys many different items from different countries. Also, The person would think the world is in a globalization environment, and many individuals can communicate in diverse languages.