While sitting in my loft bed, I reached for a large binder that was near the top of the shelf that stands next to the bed. It was a binder of Europe maps, volume 2, from one of those publishing houses that will sell you the equivalent of a book, page per page, through a magazine that you will end up paying hundreds for but in tiny amounts, once a week.

The first map I looked at looked like a map of Madagascar, but with Singapore as its capital. It was followed by some maps of France, particularly Brittany.

A rain storm had apparently caused trouble on a train line in Brittany, and somehow, one of the Brittany maps in my binder was updated to reflect this interruption of service.

My dad and I went to a McDonald’s somewhere in northeastern France. We took some roundabouts going the wrong way, turning clockwise, and we were driving on the left. We were thinking this was completely normal, as driving on the left side was now the new European standard. We went to order in drive through, but for some reason, we decided to go through it by foot, standing in the middle of the cars. My dad made his order and did not ask me for mine. He then let me enter the restaurant while he waited outside so I could make my order inside.

I had been told that a burger might be too much for me, so I hesitated, but in the end I got a borgar anyway. I wanted a 280 combo with fries. I thought of using the points of the loyalty card, but I wondered if I could really just show that card at the cashiers. The restaurant was almost completely empty, and a cashier was looking at me, expecting me to walk towards him to say my order immediately, but I instead went to one of the touchscreens because of those doubts.

The touchscreen was idling and displaying its usual “Touch to order”, but it also included a message for an incident on the rail network in the west area, probably the issue in Brittany mentioned earlier. A small map showed that the issue was instead in the northeastern quarter of France, and I was wondering if this would cause an issue with my borger order.

I vaguely remember standing in a large square with square stone tiles, surrounded in contemporary office buildings. I was talking to a doctor about a surgery that I was supposed to have done to my stomach, and asked if I could receive the dental care that I also had to get at the same time as this surgery. He said no, particularly because we would have to wait until the summer of 2025 to book the surgery.