Everyday Carry: Balazs in Asia, 2026 Edition
Everyday Carry (EDC) is a special genre of YouTube videos, shorts and websites, focusing on gleaming, precise, luxurious items that men carry on a day-to-day basis. I’ve seen one end of the spectrum that is very tips’n’tricks-oriented with special items from Muji or other consumer brands. Examples include mini pouches that you can hang on your main pouch and make you look ridiculous. The other end of the spectrum is a slightly twitchy guy showing a phone, then a Swiss Army multitool, then some big freaking blade and then the handgun that is his everyday carry.
Let me present to you, Dear Subscriber, my Very Unglamorous Version of the Everyday Carry genre, optimised for my Asian travels. These are the things that I want to have with me, if not in my Everyday Slick Manly Purse, then at least somewhere in the hotel or apartment I’m staying at.
The Samurai Special Edition Swiss Army multitool. This item could be in any of the above Everyday Carry subgenres, but I use it in a more wussy way. I mostly open AliExpress or Shopee packages with it, sometimes containing very humble products. I try to use the Swiss Army Knife when my wife might see me, casually opening up the blade, like a normal macho man would. If we have any other ladies around, I specifically wait for my wife AND any female guests to see me flipping open the Limited Edition Manly Pocket Knife With Samurai Themed Decoration. So far, no luck, nobody ever saw me opening up my package.
Item #2: Yellow Duck Folding Laundry Bag. This is something that my wife packs in my suitcase to make sure I’m not inviting any ladies up in my room when traveling alone. It’s an ugly, yellow folding basket that magically flips open when unpacked, and presto, you have a comfortable, organized way of dropping your laundry and looking like a Completely Domesticated Uncool Husband. I really love the Duck Bag, but right now it’s in storage, so my wife packed me a regular shopping bag from Lotus that is bright orange and says More Than Just GROCERIES - it’s an ADVENTURE. I think it works almost the same way.
Ok, this third thing is Brand New, but I fully intend to carry it for the rest of my life. I was in a BBQ restaurant in Singapore, and was completely blown away by this device that is a tiny two-prong fork, with twisted prongs, designed to smoothly pull the meat down off the BBQ stick. Did you, Dear Subscriber, ever struggle with the following challenge? You order a nice round of Satay BBQ sticks. Maybe mutton. Maybe beef. Maybe the Ma-la chicken meat. It arrives, you dip the first, delicious, promising bite into the nutty satay sauce that arrives in a tiny container, and eat it with pleasure. Now you have a BBQ stick, but the meat is way up on the stick, and you have no way of dipping Bite Number Two in the sauce! And I’m not even going to mention Bite Four, Bite Four is just you gagging yourself trying to pull off the meat almost at the top. Yes, you could try to get a fork to pull the meat, but the gap between the prongs is too tight, and it’s a struggle. Or you could attempt to do it with chopsticks, pressing the damn things together but they slip off the gooey surface and boom, now you have fat marks on your favorite pants. This thing, this Everyday Carry beauty, has JUST the right gap, and a great grip on the meat, smoothly sliding down, and now you can dip every single bite, even Bite Four, into your nut sauce. The waiter at the BBQ place took pity on me, and gifted me one of these beauties. I shall have it with me forever!
I do actually Everyday Carry wet and dry tissues. Maybe these are the only real-life EDC things that the Adventurous Eater needs in Asia, with a neatly tucked Imodium blister pack right behind the tissues. This week I was proud to have The Pill on me and give it to a colleague in need, and, of course, I promptly retrieved my backup stash from the other backpack that has my Not-Everyday-But-In-Exceptional-Situations collection.
Finally, my Holy Trinity of EDC: a Small Camera, Good Headphones, and a Watch That Isn’t My Apple Watch. Why do I need these items? If I don’t have all three of these, for more than three days, I will inevitably convince myself that I NEED to buy the missing thing to survive the rest of the trip. If I don’t have a Small Camera, just a regular large one, then I will be too shy to carry the camera when I’m out and about with clients, and miss the photo opportunity of a lifetime, so I must immediately buy a discreet camera to carry. Don’t ask me how many times this has happened. Let’s just say, it’s not three or five. If I don’t have good headphones, then I get jealous of all the cool people in Tokyo in their headphone isolation, and then there’s the Apple store and boom, I have AirPods Max. The watch thing? I’m so bored with my Apple Watch and its same-ness and I see myself as an Adventurer with analog things and I see other watches and then… Boom, I have another watch. But after a couple of months, I always return to my Apple Watch, because it’s so damn functional.
Point 5 is actually fully in the EDC genre. Maybe I should turn this into a YouTube video and get brand deals.
Actually, can I include a side note to my wife Olga here: Sweetie, I wanted to tell you about this trip I’m on now, you see, I was very bored with the Apple Watch and then I couldn’t get to our storage room where I have my other watches, and you know now I’m in Singapore (thanks for the laundry bag, I love it!) and I saw this HUUUGE discount on this watch. Anyway, love you, I’ll call you tomorrow!
