eric tsui

I was stuck in a mental and emotional rut. Clinging to safety is easy even if it’s uncomfortable. I felt sustained in our pre-pandemic world through regular travel. This was my first trip abroad since then, when in the past I would often be in LA for work with Ian. When safety becomes too much to bear, sometimes you just need to pull your pants up and live a little. 

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I went with Luke to visit and stay with our friend Hugo, another talented musician in his own right. When we first met—I can’t lie, he annoyed me a bit as our personalities were complete opposites. We have a five year age difference. We only really became friends due to his persistence in talking to me online; that’s just another beauty of the Internet. He told me he didn’t have any Asian friends growing up in New Zealand half-white and half-Cantonese. I would often hear him have a dismissive and joking tone about his Cantonese side, and it clicked to me then. A lot of folks growing up with a minority background in the West try to push it down out of their psyche until you hit an awakening where you begin to understand and appreciate it. We really bonded once I realized that about him, while simultaneously I took myself more lightly as a person.

 

The Getty was one of a few stops in LA I had. Funnily enough, this exact point of view is the same as the reference image on its Wikipedia page. The skies were clear, and the people visiting were happy to feel a brief moment of respite from the divisions clouding the globe. I don’t actually recall any pieces of art I saw there. Just who I was with and the laughs we shared.