A Beginning

By Johnny Nghiem

March 2^nd, 2017

I'll tell you something my mom always told me whenever I felt a bit stressed:

"Stress is when you're being shot at during a war and your friend gets shot and you have to make the decision of whether to run to them or to run away from the bullets. That's stress, you're not even close."

I grew up with the hard knock truths though I wish I had thicker skin for it.

We didn't travel much when I was growing up. My parents were two immigrants working blue-collard jobs and always had the opposite schedule so besides seeing Niagara Falls and Cullen Gardens, that was the extent of our travelling. I never held anything against them as my imagination and lack of friends was all I needed plus Mario, Luigi, and of course, The Princess.

It may have taken me almost 19 years to first set foot on a plane and another 13 years to get to England but with a little bit of patience, it was worth the wait.

I feel like I have some responsibility when it comes to my travels as my family doesn't really get out of Canada let alone Toronto much. I need to do it for them as my parents are too proud of their hard work to travel and their constant excuses of "no time and no money" often leads to a dead end. Let's not even get into the conversation of surprising them with flights because growing up Asian, you know they'll scold you for spending unnecessary money.

Last summer however, I met my best friend Fraser and sister in New York. My sister has never been on a plane and is 24 and has never been outside of Toronto aside from a school trip to Montreal eons ago so hopefully it'll trigger her to leave more often.

My grandmothers especially like to hear about my travels and it's not like I'm going anywhere mind-blowing but it's because they never got the chance to go outside of their comfort zones aka Vietnam and Chinatown in Toronto. I think they know when I'm a bit excited so they want me to gush it all out in my interpretation of the Vietnamese language or they just want to see me struggle with the language as that's also entertaining to them.

The last few places I've traveled to I went with zero expectations and almost no knowledge of what to do and that's the way I like it. I'm never super organized but I'm always well prepared and I just go with it.

Real life.

Faces.

It was Valentine's Day when I left London and as someone who embraces the idea of romance but never has the chance to perform it, it was also nice to celebrate it alone.