Because my life is surprising sometimes, Saturday night saw me flying to Dhaka, floods or no.

The tangent is, I e-mailed Maud a couple of weeks ago and told her I was going to Dakar, and she e-mailed back, That is so cool you’re going to Africa, and I was all, eyes darting, thinking, Where did I go wrong, where did I go wrong. Ah, geography.

Sunday morning at the Sonargaon Hotel was a breakfast spread that included a giant bowl of thick local yoghurt with honey on the side for drizzling purposes, littler bowls of dates and pistachios and almonds for the picking, and a selection of curries to start the day.



Off and driving, we stopped in a market, the low tin ceiling held up by bamboo poles, all around us baskets resting on jute sacks and wood stacks, piled high with dark red chillies and deep yellow tamarind and happy potatoes and loops of water lily stems; gorgeous mounds of dhal in yellow and orange; garlic white and onions golden; all sorts of greens in all shades of greens; chickens in black and white and brown under pyramid netting; an affable barber in a small mirrored room with four dirty chairs. Every here and there a bare lightbulb glowed.

In Lalbag—the old town—with its narrow, dusty streets and crumbly façades on either side, I was as much a sight to them as they were to me. When I stopped at a guava cart and turned around, I found that I’d gathered an audience behind me.



At the Lalbag Fort, where Mughal emperors once upon a time lived it up, a pink tomb and shiny blue hammam tiles hundreds of years old, and young couples talking under shaded arches. At the Parliament building, a nutty concrete 1960s construction with big triangles cut out the sides, Pritham with the thick black spectacle frames and a neat blue tie. “I like to make new friends,” he said earnestly. “Especially with girls.” He bought me a white jasmine gazara from a street vendor. At the Armenian Church, the milky-eyed caretaker uncle searched for the keys to the padlocked gate, throwing his hands in the air. Inside, painters worked on bamboo ladders while a ceiling fan turned lazily. At the door, a butter-colored dog slept in the shade on worn bluegrey planks.

On the way to dinner one evening, Zahid said, “We’re actually a bit early, so let’s stop by my place for a cup of tea.” Apparently “a cup of tea” is Bangla for a trolley of treats, including pudding and pudding cake. Before we left, his mother kissed her hands and patted me on the back.

A group of boys pushed a battered blue car out of the flood waters, the tallest one all big eyes and wide, cheeky grin.



One afternoon, a fortune teller and his green fortune-telling parrots predicted I’d get married in the next five years for five minutes. What? Um, maybe something lost in the translation. In the sun another day, I walked to the Chittagong train tracks, the rails stretching out into the overwhelming brownness. Brown people balanced brown baskets on their heads. Brown kids played by the side, their exposed bellies round and brown.

At a train crossing, Zahid and I got out of the car and walked up to the stop bar. First there was nothing, only the unremitting Dhaka traffic—trishaws and mini-taxis and bicycle carts and people everywhere—come to an unnatural quiet halt. And then, over on the left, from the dark, an aureole of light, and then the train rushing past, rails clacking madly loud, wind in our faces. And somehow it was like we were not just motionless but also stuck in time somehow, and the train was the only thing moving, the only thing that mattered. Like we were figurines watching life—real, living life—in scenes lit up through open windows whipping by. On top of the train, a group of skinny boys sat, propped up on arms pushed back.

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.

House smells like bread baking. All is well.

Also in Ho Chi Minh City is Ben Thanh Market, all long tubes of flourescent lighting and peering down narrow aisles to see what lies beyond, where beyond is heaps of marinated fish and picked bits, and geometries of fruit, and tins of tea and weasel shit coffee. Around one corner are Communist-star T-shirts and bags of nangka chips and embroidered lace tablecloths; around another are Zippo lighters from the American war and jars of preserved plums and a small woman chatting with a friend. As I squeezed past her she turned and cackled harshly in my ear: HA-HA-HA.

After, avoiding dirty puddles and ducking raindrops from awning to awning, we stepped into Pho 2000 for a bowl of bun cha gio, crispy and hot in rounded mouths.

The thing that can be surprising about fathers is that after they arrange unexpected soirées at the horse races, they might also take a little business trip to Vietnam and bring you along for the ride. And even if that means you are only going to be in Ho Chi Minh City for two days, and with some work friend of your dad’s who “won’t eat street food,” you should totally go, because it will still be some kind of incredible.



Saigon is relentless. It is loud and filthy and people matter-of-factly step in front of you in queues and one morning a motorcyclist turned toward me and sneezed as he sped past: ha-CHA!. The motorcylists, good god. You think you know, but you have no idea. Swarms of motorcyclists in mad direction, engines buzzing. You stand on the narrow, cracked pavement, contemplating the fray. In your head, maybe, you start with a silent moan: mmmrr. Implicating yourself, you put one foot on the road proper. The moan comes to life, escapes through nervously pursed lips, a low, groany mmmrr. One foot in front of the other, you make sure to keep a steady rhythm so—you’ve heard—the motorcyclists can time you and seamlessly speed around you. Mmmrr-mmmrr-mmmrr!-MMMRR!! But after a couple of practice crossings, it all comes together like some kind of magic. You know how Keanu figures out the Matrix and it’s all glowing green numbers floating down the screen, and he’s all, “Whoa.” ? It’s kind of like that. That bit in “The Fisher King” when Robin Williams and Jeff Bridges are shoving their way through the crowd in Grand Central Terminal and with nary a transition the rush-hour commuters pair off and waltz? Yeah. Once you step into the street, the honking and beeping are but a percussive soundtrack to your own modern dance.

In Vietnam, you can carry anything on a motorbike. A bunch of all-color balloons, madly bobbing. A girlfriend, eyes closed and a content smile, who hugs you tight. Three kids and a wife. Rolled-up mattresses. Piles of clothes tied with string. A large white dude. Massive wooden frames an arm-span wide and several high. A whole bloody fridge.

In the monsoonal shower, the raincoats materialize—raincapes, really, that cover both motorcycle and rider. The rain slows nothing down: blue and green and orange and yellow and silver and pink flap by under darkened sky; the honking, insistent, continues to weave its way through the raindrops.

Saigon is plenty hot and sticky and noisy, yet somehow Cholon, its Chinatown, achieves a state still hotter and stickier and noisier. In the unforgiving morning sun, I sought refuge under the awning of a bakery on the corner of Trieu Quang Phuc and Tran Hung Dao with a chocolate-covered strawberry ice cream on a stick. A trickle of sweat made its way past the small of my back.

The city fades away inside each one of Cholon’s many dusty temples, with their cool, tiled pavilions of stillness and quiet. Sometimes, even the curling smoke from the hanging incense spirals seems suspended in the air. At the Tam Son Hoi Quan Pagoda, a low murmuring prayer chant. Sheltered in the doorway of the Ha Chuong Hoi Quan Pagoda on Duong Nguyen Trai, a biscuit seller across the street through the late-morning drizzle.

When you have a Ren, you can go to a fancypants ninety-nine-dollar lunch at Maison de Fontaine on Scotts Road, where you will order the trout tartare, and the salad of greens and figs and proscuitto and roasted cherry tomatoes, and then the chocolate-ginger mousse and stewed pear, and the white chocolate–raspberry tart with dried fig ice cream. Because girls like to chow down, each time more food arrives, you will forget what you were talking about just a half-second before. Ren’s scallops will be served in shells, in a dish shaped like a shell. The maître d’ will wear shiny pants buckled tightly around his little waist. The tea will be a Twinings tea bag, which will make you scoff “Ch!” because you really do expect more from the most expensive lunch in the world. Somehow, luckily, you will be the only ones in the room, and over a languid two hours you will bitch and natter and laugh loudly and longly, and the waiters will leave you well alone.

After, there was Mowmy for an excursion to the Print Institute, where I bought a gorgeous Suzanne Ramberg etching in which a bird is telling a girl a secret, and the girl has a secret smile of secret sweetness, and she is blushing a little blush, and maybe, quietly, she is saying, Hee-hee-hee. And there is a flower blooming here, and there is a flower blooming there. And then because it was tea time, there was a second excursion to Blood Café, where there were capuccinos and orange cake with orange compote. Blood Café has a respectable selection of magazines, and I said, Mowmy, what will we read today?, and she said, Something gossipy, and then popped over to the magazine rack and came back with a British Vogue and a Vanity Fair. Hurrah for Saturday afternoons.

Massive, shameless storm woke me up in the early hours of dark morning, all fat rain and big thunder and wicked lightning.

So the other day we wanted to throw a party, and Ren and I couldn’t find a place in which to throw one, ’cause we couldn’t find a house without parents (this is the point in the story at which Mowmy said, “Why do you need a house without parents for a party?” and I said, “Because we like to break things,” and she said, “Oh, have it here and break all my dishes so I can go buy new ones!”), and then I was like, Hello, clearly, the races. So then I unsuspectingly mention to my father that I want to throw a party at the races, and he’s all, Oh, do you want to go and look around and see about a party and be in the owner’s box?, let me call my friend. So already this thing is getting more and more unexpected by the moment. Anyway, the next day my dad says, So Doctor Tan is going to the track on Friday, you can go with. And I’m like, Um, wait, are you going? And dads is like, No, no, I’ll be out of town. Right. So, y’know, I’m thinking, Hang out with my dad’s friends all night? At the bloody races? I don’t think so. But then I think, Weeelll, so, but, why not. Because, sure, let’s try something new, and how hard can it be.

So come Friday, I’m all Ascot chic—black tank top, white skirt with black embroidery, green Campers to go with the turf. And it turns out Doctor Tan and this other dude, Omie, are totally into horses, Omie is from like horse-racing family in India, and we get to the Turf Club and it’s all Good evening, Doctor Omie, Hello, Hello, Hello, Nice to see you again, bow bow bow. And we head into a fancylike room with air conditioning and a dress code and waiters and wine and buffet tables of food. And these huge glass windows looking down onto the track. At one point Omie’s like, I’m going to try to get you to place a bet on the next race. And I’m like, You got it! Don’t take much to make this girl bet on a horse! So I put twenty down on Polanski to win or place (like, place first, second, or third), and then the horses are off, and then not only does Polanski not win, he also doesn’t come in second or third. And then he comes in last. Hello, gimpy. After that I reverted to my original plan of backing horses (mentally, anyway, there was no more money in the horse budget) based on the jockey’s outfits. Or the horse’s crazy name.

Eventually I also moseyed on downstairs to where the hoi polloi was hanging out, and that was very cool because downstairs means the men in shorts and short-sleeve button-downs perched on the aluminium banisters, punching their fists in the air as they cheer; downstairs means the jockeys in shiny get-ups, funny little birdlike men who must have hollow bones, more than one of whom has skin pulled tight on his narrow face; downstairs means the stands selling hotdogs and coffee and kaya toast; downstairs means you’re at street level, which is to say track level, which is to say horse level—which is to say downstairs means that the horses race right past you in the open air, close enough that you feel your mouth drop open when horse number seven comes up from the rear, running past one, two, three, four, five horses, and comes in a close second. Which is to say that even though it meant I was hanging out with my father’s friends for like six and a half hours on a Friday night, the horse races totally get an A-plus.

Ren and I were at a party feeling old among a bunch of mid-twenties while diluted gin-and-tonics sweated on the table in front of us, when in the middle of a sentence about something or other, she stopped short and said, “I think we need to go to Newton.” So we made our exit, and, man, sometimes there is nothing better than rockin it hawker-centre style—cold watermelon juice and fried carrot cake, the black kind—at half past one in the morning. We also almost got ice cream sandwiches but ice cream uncle didn’t have the special rainbow bread on hand.

Quietly home, put on Saloon and sleep with the windows open, the orangeyellow streetlight floating in on the cool air.

I have done not so much today except wake up around 10, have three breakfasts in quick succession, and then retire to bed for phone calls and Internet surfing. Two hours later, it is just past noon and lunch is nigh.

Sleepily, sleepily, in the car after a duck rice dinner at Buona Vista, the lull of the evening drive coming to a stop and me thinking we’re home. The unexpected treat is that we’re instead pulled up to a makeshift stand in a faint pool of neon in a Dempsey Road carpark. Said stand is piled high with durians, backed by a hand-painted sign of thick red letters: DURIAN DURI N. Really, who knew. Um, apparently everyone but me, because when I say to people, simply, “Durian, Dempsey Road,” they make noises and looks of happy recognition. So, okay, a fruit stand in an after-hours carpark. In no time at all, the uncle has set us up a small wooden table and is picking out durians for us, one sweet and one bitter. We sit on four filthy plastic chairs, with a newly opened box of O’Darling tissues, and empty paint buckets by our sides for seeds and husks. In the cool air, the portable power generator grinds and buzzes while a small television topped with its antenna V plays a Chinese melodrama. The black tarmac is shiny from rain all day.

What is nice is, you go into the kitchen to a little snacky, maybe a raisin bun spread with homemade apricot jam from Prades—

the story about the homemade apricot jam from Prades is, I was clearing and setting the table for dinner, and I got done and went into the big room all satisfied with myself, and Maud looked up from hanging out by the fireplace and said, “Did you throw out the apricot pits?” and I stood there, eyes darting left to right, thinking, What’s the right answer?? Because, okay, yes, but, um, I could fish them out of the trash, I mean, they’re sitting right on top. . . Anyway, who knew, apparently one likes to chop up the apricot pits and mix them in with the jam when it’s on the stove. Oh. Later, we used chopped almonds instead.

—but, so. What is nice is, you go in search of a little snacky, maybe a little gustatory memory of summer in the French countryside, and the kitchen is hot with not one but two pots on the stove, steaming not one but two lang chia kways—literally, rickshaw driver’s cake—sweet potato cakes studded with sweet raisins and candied melon. I cannot wait: a thick slice of springy lang chia kway, a curl of steam rising, margarine melting, and me with one leg up on the chair.

I woke recently from what seemed to be several dreams. Maybe bits of several dreams. Dream trailers? Don’t know. Argh, I wish I remembered everything. Over a cup of soybean milk this morning, I had remembered flashes of things happening, and I couldn’t figure out if they were things that happened in the dream or, like, in real life yesterday. Like Ren eating with the spoon in her left hand and the fork in her right. But that must have been in the dream. Or must it?

Whoa, but wouldn’t that be weird?, if you had dream trailers?, then it’d be like, Akan Datang! Coming Soon! on Tuesday night or whatever, and then come Friday you’d have that dream. Oh, and maybe it’d be good also if then at the end of the dream there were credits, like, This discomforting dream brought to you by that massive platter of fried onions you thought it was okay to eat five minutes before pulling the blanket up to your neck and tucking in for the night. Oh, and the DVD! I wonder what the extras would be. Dreams dubbed in French! Alternate endings! Oh, what would be cool would be the director’s cut, like, This is the ending you would have gotten had you not been awoken right at that crucial moment by your mother phoning. But, also, wait, what if you went to sleep, and the moment you shut your eyes, all you got was “Sorry, sold out.” ?

Meanwhile, that reminds me that the other day I was talking to Jacq and I said, “I’m concerned that I have such a bad memory.” And she said, “Gingko biloba, take gingko biloba.” Of course two hours later, I was like, “Um, what was that herb you were talking about?”

Swimming really does make it all better.

Last night I opened the fridge to get some chocolate and a lizard jumped in. I tried to get him out of there, but he kept skittering in deeper among the Tupperware. Is he going to drink the milk? Eat the blueberries? Nibble at my Lindt? Is he cold? I saw no sign of him this morning.

I don’t know why I take afternoon naps when I always wake from them in a melancholy. But it’s hot here, hot and sticky and humid, and some days I feel like I can’t do anything but feel my brain slow into the tropical languour, and the fan swooning back and forth is a rhythmic lull, and my book slips out of my hand, and Satie’s Gymnopédies carry me off. It’s really the Gnossiennes that get to me most, I think. Somehow the Gnossiennes will always be to me driving in France, heading back to Paris from the country, with the summer sun hot on our arms and necks, the sharp cigarette smoke, the wind and the road whipping by through windows rolled down. Number Five was on when I woke to the Gnossiennes this evening. Fuzzy and displaced with sleep, I remembered a kiss from a boy, downstairs in the dim yellow.

Hooray for days off. I mean, well, yes, I’ve been having days off for the last seven weeks, and hooray for every single one of those days, but also hooray for other people having a day off their civil service job to hang out with you.



A good day off starts with lunch at the Project Shop Blood Bros café in Paragon: grilled duck, rocket, garlicky garlic mashed potatoes wrapped in a Vietnamese rice crêpe, and a berry compote; a massive lemon pudding larger than my fist, swimming in sweet-tart lemon syrup and topped with vanilla ice cream; and a winning cappuccino just bitter enough and perfectly crowned with thick foam. Fed, we made our way through the surprising weekday crowd—did everyone else have the day off, too?—in Orchard Road, trying on tacky-chic clothes at This Fashion (“Can’t go wrong for sixteen dollars!”), making friends with cosmetics salesgirls and gathering product samples, scheming to be friends with Colin Goh, spending way too much time exploring the $1.99 deals at the stuff emporium that is Watson’s, turning the kinky-sex books at Borders cover-side out, laughing till stomachs hurt, and buying oh my god I’m so excited about this, these incredible little speakers for my iPod, before having a sit-down at Olio Dome for chocolate-and-banana (me) and berry (Yumei) smoothies. At Haba, I stood, confused, in front of a display several shelves high of products, doing that thing where I think out loud: “Oh, so what’s th— oh, okay, so that’s cleanser, and that’s, oh, right, toner, oh, ohh, okay, oohhh, so Step One is at the bottom. Right.” Silence, then the salesgirl: “Yes.” But really, who puts Step One of Three at the bottom?

Ren came and joined in time for Crystal Jade dinner, where salt and pepper squid was served up, hot and salty and peppery, with crispy seafood noodles. Somehow it’d never come up between me and Ren before tonight that what we both want to do with our lives—job-wise, anyway—at this point, anyway—is buy apartments, do them up sweet, and sell them. Crap, what have we been talking about all these years? Boys? Oh, yeah.

Later, Ren gave me a lift home, which dissolved into screaming all the way down the creepy, winding Mount Pleasant Road because we kept imagining ghosts appearing—a headless pedestrian, maybe, or the classic pontianak with her long, straight hair.

You know when they say not to go swimming with your contact lenses on? Well, you should listen, ’cause otherwise you wake up two days later with an eye infection. Gross.

I don’t plan for this to happen, but sometimes the day just goes by, scheduling itself around eatings. Jumped out of bed this morning sometime just before noon, awoken by my cell announcing a new text message. It was Andrea, wondering if we were still on for lunch. Oh, um, yes, please, and sorry about the late. Lunch at the Viet Café in Suntec City was beef noodles, of course, followed by Vietnamese drip coffee, of course, and sweet condensed milk. Andrea sent her cappuccino back twice because it was too milky and not foamy enough, before finally canceling the order. As we were on our way out the door, one of the army of young, affable, clueless waitstaff approached, with a triumphant grin and a cup of coffee. “Will you try this?” “Well, we didn’t want another one, and now we’re leaving. . .” “But we tried our best!” So we sat back down and Andrea, after quietly debating whether their insistence signaled a poisoned cappuccino, took a sip. Better, but still too milky. It’s an unusual thing when a restaurant tries really, really hard to do things the way you want it. And then stands there eagerly and makes you try each of its tries. And then fails anyway.

Just as we parted, Ren called, announcing that she’d just discovered all her files deleted off her computer. Because Citibank is seconds away from Suntec City, clearly this meant we needed to meet and have a drink. Turns out her boss deleted her files last night while trying to create a back-up program. AH HA HA HA. Really, this is a good thing, because from now on she can do anybloodything she wants at work, because the response to anything her boss may say will be: “Oh, wait, was it I who deleted all your files from the last six months? Oh, no, that was you.” Also, if she ever needs to make a quick getaway from the office, she can put a cupped hand to her ear and say: “Excuse me, I hear my files being deleted.”

Just as we parted, Jacq called, and because Jacq works elsewhere at Citibank, and because I was still right there, clearly this meant we needed to meet and have a drink. And then because Jacq was involved in this escapade, a drink meant a hazlenut latte and carrot cake at Millenia.

Pause for a quick trip to the gym. . .

. . . and then back in action with Jacq for a nasi padang dinner: plates of curry squid, kang kong, brinjal curry, tempeh, and chicken rendang; glasses of lime juice and hibiscus juice; mounds of rice on banana leaves. A table away, three large men with smaller plates waffled on about how they’d ordered too much food. We scoffed between mouthfuls, and then went and got scoops of Kuri Kuri chestnut ice cream at Bugis Junction.

Oh, Singapore, how tasty you are.

Yesterday I was at the Singtel shop buying a new mobile and when the guy took it out of the box, I said, “Oh! So cute!” and he said, “Cute like you!” Oh! Hee hee hee.