I’d been toying with the idea of moving to London, so my dad thought it might be a good idea to meet with a couple of friends of his who are familiar with the place, to talk to them about jobs, visas, that sort of thing. Somehow it turned into a thing where this woman, born here but raised and educated in America and England, tried to convince me to move back to Singapore. “It’s time you came back,” she said, “Nine years is a long time to be away. Any longer and the re-entry becomes even harder.”

“And you know,” she said, “the government is doing a lot to make Singapore a fun city nowadays. They recently legalized bar-top dancing—”

“Wait,” I said, “are you being ironic?”

“No,” she said, confused.

“What is it you like about New York?” she asked, finally, but it was too late, because she was never going to get it.

“It’s something in the air,” I said, lamely. Because how to tell her about coming out of my apartment in the mornings, hearing the heavy iron door close behind me, and then on the stoop, breathing in the cool, saying hello to the trees in Prospect Park? About smoky nights in nothing bars on Ludlow or Rivington or East Second; about walking up Thompson arm-in-arm with Tom, heading for sushi; about the sunset over New Jersey from the loading dock on 140 Watts? A patch of green on the Columbia campus, me and Maud and Jason, and the sun, and finals over, and Marquee Moon our soundtrack. Indie rock shows, sneakers, skinny boys with shaggy hair, pixie girls with studded belts. Her place, my place, a bottle of wine, coziness, Schmio. If you’re going to tell me about bloody legalized bar-top dancing, then you just won’t get the diagonal line the sun cuts across the brownstones on Ninth Street; the subway rumbling under my apartment; walking out into snow falling at three in the morning, the snowflakes glittering like magic; the breakfasts at Balthazar, when the black-and-white penguin waiters perform their ballet du sel et du poivre to silent accompaniment. Clearly you won’t understand Jeff phoning from a couple of streets away for an impromptu Blue Ribbon brunchlunch; television and take-out with Kat; cheering and whooping for George and the U-Bolts in the basement at Lit; the smiling waitress at 69 Mott Street who always called me mei mei—“little sister.” If you’re going to try to sell me on a government initiative for fun, you don’t get to hear about walking home from the subway late at night, just me and the moon and the perfect deep blue; stepping into a cold puddle on a cobblestone road in Dumbo on the way to a chocolate croissant at Jacques Torres with Jill; crossing the Brooklyn Bridge in the direction of Brooklyn, downtown Manhattan on your right always lit up all twinkly office lights no matter the time of night, and feeling good, good, good because going home.

I guess I’ve been writing this blog for almost a year now, and it’s been me and it’s been New York and maybe all this while it’s been a farewell, a preparation for a farewell, maybe all this time it’s been: Don’t forget, this is what it was like, and you’ll always remember it because it was written, you wrote it, you lived it, you owned it.