We moved back to Seoul in August. The school that I got a job at was offering us a studio apartment for the three of us, so we took money instead and went searching our own place.

We found a perfect new complex in our price range on the south side of Gangnam. Yes, the same Gangnam that Psy introduced to us those many years ago. Now, everyday of my life pretty much looks like this:

All it took was a simple move and *bam* I was blasted blasted decades into the future. Just like that, I’m now at the precipice of urban innovation and technological development.

I now live in the Asian version of Marty McFly’s imagined future in Back to the Future II… minus the flying cars and pizza hydrator.

In the future, the commercial and the residential have a seamless marriage. Everything we need at our place is just a ride down the elevator.

The basement of our apartment building contains the following amenities: a movie theatre, an indoor waterpark, a fancy grocery store, a hotel, every brand of coffee shop, four convenience stores of the same brand, abundant restaurants, and a place called ‘Monster Crab’ that has cheap patio beers.

That means, in a month’s span, I could go on vacation, try a new restaurant every night, have a family trip to the water slides, and get Monster drunk, all without ever leaving the apartment block.

The apartment itself is tiny and computer-based. I spend my evenings squeezing through tiny openings between walls and furniture that we’ve tried to fit in the floor plan. Jio has a glorified closet off the living room which seems like Buckingham Palace compared to our study (which may actually be a closet).

Touch screen computers now dominate my life. Our light switches are so complicated that Jio and I have about the same understanding of how they work. They not only turn on lights, but display watt usage and two temperature readings.

When somebody arrives at our front door, it lives broadcasts their face to a TV on the wall. The toilet even has a computer next to it that lets you heat the seat, wash and blow dry your butt, all to your level of preference.

The developers of the building had an odd obsession with white lights. The elevator has bulbs so powerful that they penetrate three layers of skin. You can see a mark for every blemish you’ve had on your face in the last half year. Our bedroom looks like an operating theatre for a heart surgery.

Though we don’t really need to drive any where, we bought a car. I’m amazed at how advanced driving now is. The last car I truly owned was a ’92 Subaru Legacy. Now I have a Hyundai Tucson that starts with a button and says ‘Hello’ and ‘Goodbye’ to me.

Our car has a built-in GPS screen with a rear-end camera that I strictly now use to back-up. On that same screen — in what is possibly the stupidest invention for passenger safety of all time — I get a range of TV channels. That means, if I ever get bored of the road while driving, I can just live stream the baseball game and pay attention to that instead.

Seeing the way the politics are going with North Korea, it may be technology like this that we come to rely on to stay alive.

We live near a military airbase and I see fighter planes coming in all the time. I hope the airforce observation and missile defence system is as advanced as my light switches.

Through all the hate and fear, at least my building is still sending the right message. It gives me heart emojis on my evening walks home:

Now that’s love.