The thing about New York City is, it’s New York City: it’s crawling with famous people (also, subway rats. But that’s another story.). At some point or other, you’re going to cross paths with some celebrity. Bono. Warren Beatty. Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman in happier times. Seth Green, Julia Stiles, Heather Graham. Liv Tyler, hello, like fourteen times, just chillin’ out around the Village. Big deal. You don’t miss a step, you keep talking to whomever you’re talking to, you remember you need to pick up a carton of milk from the corner bodega before you go home.

But then one day you find yourself in a coffee queue with Colin Goh, and all of a sudden, you’re Keanu faced with a bus that can’t go below fifty: What. do. you. do.

The thing about Colin Goh is, in one of his columns in 8 Days, he wrote that if Harry Potter and his little wizard friends went to wizard school in Singapore, they would learn in Potions class that there are two kinds of potions: heaty and cooling. I recognize that this is understandable by like maybe six of you reading this, but that doesn’t take away from how extremely funny this is. Over summer, the last time I was back in the tropics, Yumei said, “You know, Colin Goh lives in New York now.” “Shut up!” I said, hoping she actually wouldn’t. It turned out (I am not stalking the man, this information is totally offered on his Web site) he lives in Brooklyn, probably not too far from me. “Whoa, maybe one day we’ll be on the same subway train home and somehow we’ll start talking and end up being BFF,” I said. To which Yumei probably replied, “Mm,” because she is kind and humors me and knows when to leave well enough alone.

So okay. Months ago, this giant, gleaming mall opened at Columbus Circle, and it was kind of big news I guess, but who cares, because who goes to a mall in Manhattan, and who goes to Columbus Circle. Well, well, “who” is me, because this afternoon I found myself heading up there to kill some time at the Borders bookshop while waiting for Jeff to get off work at his midtown job.

I was in line at the café getting the $1.75 paper cup of house blend that would allow me to sit and read Benjamin Constant undisturbed for a couple of hours when I heard someone several people in front of me order a cup of tea, and—I don’t know, it wasn’t an overly Singaporean acccent or anything; really, I think it was the unassuming politeness of tone that struck me; in any case—I found myself craning my neck to see who this guy was. And I saw him, and I wasn’t sure, but I had a feeling. And I stood there and wondered and wondered, and then finally, when he passed me on the way to the milk thermos, I said, “Um, I’m very sorry to bother you, but are you Colin Goh?” It was all very “Excuse me, are you a model?”

He took a startled step back, truly he did, and then, holy crap!, there we were, me and Colin Goh, face to face. He introduced me to his wife, who asked if I played mahjong, and like a fool, an honest fool, I said no. Three minutes too late, I realized that of course the correct thing to do was to have said “yes” and then, after being invited to their next mahjong game, immediately sidestepped to the self-help aisle to look for a copy of Mahjong for Dummies. It would have been like when Keisha Castle-Hughes was auditioning for “Whale Rider,” and they asked her if she could swim, and she couldn’t, but she said yes. And look at her now, the little liar, and look at me now: When she is not riding whales she is wearing fancy dresses and going to movie premieres, whereas I, I am not playing mahjong with the Goh family. And, apparently, she still can’t swim, which means I might not even have had to flip through Mahjong for Dummies, I could have just shown up at the Goh household with a box of mooncakes and a tin of Chinese Restaurant Tea from Kam Man, and I could have simply paid my dues talking all night in Singlish, and yelling “Pang!” every now and again.

Anyway, we chatted for a bit; and they were lovely; and when Colin Goh asked what I was studying and I said French literature, he said, “Oh, thank god you’re not doing an MBA.”

Just before I stepped away, I told Colin Goh it’d just been my Quentin Tarantino moment, which I think he appreciated, and which, really, it kind of had been.