Last week, I officially moved out of my apartment in Toronto. For two years, my shoebox of a room became my home as I gradually fell in love with the city. My immense adoration for life in downtown Toronto is what makes leaving so hard – was it Winnie the Pooh that said, “how lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard”? I’ll miss the feeling of familiarity of streets and storefronts as I walk from one end of the city to the other. I have known this move was coming for the past ~7 months and yet, I still felt ill-equipped for it. The end all came so fast – it always does, doesn’t it? It felt like one day, many months ago, I was starting to make a list of all the things I wanted to see and do in the city before leaving.…

I don’t use Snapchat anymore, but occasionally, I will open up the app because I like the “Flashback from XYZ date” collection that they put together. I started using Snapchat in the 11th grade, so there are certain memories that will re-surface from six or seven years ago. While six or seven years doesn’t seem like a bewildering amount of time, I’m always shocked when I see the photos that come up. I disassociate for just a moment because it doesn’t feel like the person in that photo is me, simply because of how many life milestones have happened – high school graduation, starting university, international exchange, graduating university, starting full-time work – since that photo was taken. Julia today feels like a completely different person from Julia 6 Years Ago. Is that a normal feeling to have? The other day, “Flashback from April 21” came up and I clicked…

This was my first year attending TIFF and despite having only seen seven films, it still feels like I’m mourning the end of an era. In a way, it feels like the end of a vacation. I was physically in Toronto this entire time and yet, I had gotten to escape to different time periods and different geographies. One day, I was an aspiring filmmaker in post-World War II Arizona, the next day I was a young Korean immigrant boy growing up in 1990s Canada. The seven films allowed me to become a different person, with different (always more interesting) problems compared to my own life. I have no clue how I’m supposed to log on for work tomorrow morning, and act as if I didn’t just live seven very different lives over the span of just a few days. Because it was my first time attending the Festival, I…

My five days in New York City this past weekend have shown me a lot. One of the biggest things I’ve realized is that its energy is on a different wavelength when compared to Toronto. It makes Toronto seem boring, too timid. On our first night in the city (Friday), I remember going out for dinner and then going to Katana Kitten for late-night cocktails. I felt a different energy walking around the city that night than I normally feel walking around Toronto late at night. Maybe it was because it was a Friday night. Maybe because it was a Friday night during the long weekend. Maybe because that is just how New York simply is, be it Friday night or Monday night.   I’ve realized this weekend that there is no average in New York. There is no average rent price, no average meal price, no average income. There…

Florence is a city that I will always remember for many reasons, namely for its architecture, for its history and culture, and for its gelato. But what will live on in my memory the longest will actually be the story of Filippo Brunelleschi, the architect, designer and sculptor of the dome of the Florence Cathedral.             We were told the story of Brunelleschi while on a walking tour we had signed up for. Our tour guide was taking us from one tourist attraction to the other, and did an amazing job in adding lots of colour to what we were seeing, all in the form of stories. It can be easy to pass a building, a statue or a cathedral, snap a picture of it, and move on. Storytelling, on the other hand, can make a place or a thing come alive, and she helped us to see Florence in…