Haystack | Countryhumans ASEAN

haystack [🌾]

[edited: july 1]

The Association of Southeast Asia.

That one unfinished project, turns 60 that year.

If it wasn't for that to happen, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations won't have any experience whatsoever.

It's been quite a long year, well the last two years anyway. It's only June of its second year, and heck, a lot had already happened.

That ukulele? He definitely did get back to it for the past decade. He started learning more tunes, with the help of some countries of course, including Phil's "donation" of 7 music books he had on his shelf.

For cooking, Vietnam actually invited ASEAN to a cooking contest one time. He was extremely confused why, but it turned out it was a whole lot of fun watching them. Thailand was actually one of the contestants and won, then he was forced to cook with her. It became a monthly thing starting then, Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia would go together and either watch, or cook together. There were still some instances that the kitchen burned down, though.

An unusual thing he somehow got back into was flying. The European Union started visiting him since 2015 once every three months to have 'practice'. He hasn't really considered it as fun, but he enjoyed EU's company nontheless. He hasn't come back ever since 2020 due to some reasons to be delt with, however.

Brunei and Singapore did contribute a lot for the past year, due to the most obvious current events. They also gave another thing, a portfolio. It was given when ASEAN had it's 50th year, and it was on his desk right now.

But it's not all sunshine and rainbows around that century, the economy was literally crashed that year.

The UN and the EU really did a good amount of support ever since, and it made him think that maybe, forming the organization wasn't that bad after all.

We all know that the ten countries are just, childish in a light-hearted matter. However, they all contributed as one.

Nothing else could bother him.

If there was something he learned, communication was important. Whether online or not.

The vaccines are being distributed, and they really hoped it would be over soon.

Ah, he really missed the feeling of going to a farmland. Stumbling across some wheat and throwing a coin... that strangely resembled him in a really amazing way.

Coins... They're valuable, are they? The purpose of ASEAN was economy after all, no wonder why it was. If he was a coin, the would would be... Who even knows how the countries would react?

He smiled light-heartedly at that thought, as he looked through the city window. He missed going outside his apartment so badly. He just can't, things had been chaos ever since then.

Standing up from the window seat, he approaches his freezer and grabbed a bottle of cold iced tea he had just bought online. He opens it, and drank it.

Closing the cap back, he began to realize. He really needed to go back to that Vietnamese farmland soon. That's where he spent his 30th year anniversary after all. He wondered what even happened to them as erll. He shrugged off the thought and placed the bottle back down.

He walked across the apartment once more, before landing onto the (laptop) desk and pulling out his tablet from a cabinet. He stared at it for a bit, before noticing his own reflection.

A blue organization, with a red circle in a middle surrounded with white, and 10 lines vertically in a strange shape.

People often mistake it as an hourglass, or just a plain old weird shape. It wasn't.

10 lines represents all of the ten countries in the organization, before it was five. The yellows represented the wheat in the wheat farms, one strand per country. A haystack.

He was agricultural based after all, right next to economy anyways. That meaning often goes unnoticed, sadly. Maybe because it wasn't too obvious to see.

He sighed and turned on his tablet, to be greeted with a really familiar background picture.

A family picture.

Not just any family, the ASEAN family.

This was taken back at 2019, when everyone was alright and well. He started at it for a little, dozing off on how much they missed them. It was until that point where he forgot why he picked up the device anymore, so he just placed it down.

He glanced at his apartment once more. The newly installed kitchen with the help of Laos and Myanmar. The ukulele on his bed, which had been given by Malaysia, Indonesia and The Philippines. That one picture on his desk on the second day he was on Earth. The color scheme he chose for his 30th birthday with Cambodia and slightly Vietnam. The photo album on his desk which Singapore and Brunei gave. He smiled.

He missed them so much.