early autumn as a laundry list
of standout moments:
It is the Mid-Autumn festival and mooncakes will be sold out online, everywhere, but on a Tuesday afternoon someone you love will find the last half-dozen of mooncakes “on the internet” (you’d never be told exactly where) and this is how he surprises you with them — six small golden rounds of pastry dough, buttons on a plate. You chew, tasting salted egg custard, buttered pastry flakes, and the sureness of something that feels very much like contentment.
You two will go to an early dinner in central London, and, after eating your way through a spread of ox cheek ragu, cauliflower mac n’ cheese, braised duck gnocchi and, lord — lychee crème for dessert — you end up falling asleep during the ride home. That same someone you love will take a photo of you in the car, the moonlight carving a pale crescent across your left cheek. You were out almost immediately, he laughs, and you smile, but really you are only noticing the bottom corner of the picture, the easy lacing of your fingers with his, two hands nestled against each other for the entire duration of the ride. How lucky it is to have, and to hold.
A friend you miss will arrive from New York with six fresh bagels as a surprise, a celebration of poppyseeds, onion granules, and garlic powder exploding in a Ziploc bag. You open it, inhaling the heady scent of dough, and in that moment you will miss Brooklyn just a little bit less. For the next three nights you find yourself already dreaming of breakfast, your heart singing.
October keeps shedding its leaves. One Saturday morning when the clouds look their usual gray but not heavy — you will go to Camden for the first time and delight in coming across a café hidden behind a lofted warehouse full of plants. You try not to buy any more plants, and instead settle for a most over-the-top hot chocolate drink (12oz of Valrhona with a torched marshmallow top) at the market.
You start submitting your writing, for real. It feels terrifying, but you will keep at it.
You get your first rejection and celebrate it as a milestone.
Around the same time, you will also get accepted to a craft workshop on language activism in poetry, where you will be the only person dialing in from outside of America. You mention you miss bagels, cheap LES eats, the 24/7 cacophony of New York traffic — and everyone laughs. This is how you find joy: in a tiny literary community spanning nine people, five cities, and two continents.
Halfway through the month your flatmate will announce that she’s moving back/ home to Austin — which kickstarts a two-week frenzy of hunting for replacement flatmates, packing, and coordinating moving logistics. How many times can you hear the rip of a packing tape roll without flinching? You’ve always been a good packer. See — the secret to that is moving often, and almost always alone. To be honest, you wish you were a terrible packer instead.
You get your second rejection. Your third comes with a note from the editors, and you tuck it into an email folder, still resolute in hope — however small. Each new submission feels as terrifying as the last, but again, you will keep at it.
Then completely unexpectedly, to your greatest surprise — you get your first acceptance (!): an email you open at 1am late Saturday night after gorging on three consecutive episodes of the West Wing. Immediately there is a well of warmth rushing up your throat. You swallow, hard, trying not to spill the growing wet behind your eyes.
You try a new restaurant — this time in Belgravia — with that same someone you love, and fall asleep again during the car ride home, super stuffed, super happy.
The second acceptance (??!?!!!) lands in your inbox and this time it’s from a dream magazine, a literary journal that you’ve stalked since your college years. The email finds you between work calls on a Monday afternoon when London is absolutely pouring and everything is just the same shade of gray outside, and you feel very lucky, also very nervous, thinking this must be some sort of mistake.
But this is what I promise you: that somewhere out there, beyond London’s second lockdown orders and this incessant, unrelenting autumn rain — the rest of your life is aching to blossom. Trust in the waiting.
simon says, turn the page
2019 // not quite a prayer and not yet a monologue:
I rang in the new year at one of my favorite theater-bar-restaurant spots in East Williamsburg, got confetti in my champagne glass and might have accidentally downed a piece anyway, then proceeded - bubbly-blushed - to get chicken tenders off the kids’ menu at Kellogg’s Diner as my first meal of the year. The second Tuesday evening of January I marched into my regular salon on West 4th, pulled out two sheets of “hairstyle specifics”, and got bangs for the first time in 5? 6? years. It’s britney, baby. *without the shaved head obviously, I text a friend, and get a string of exclamation marks in return. I catch my reflection in a car window and pause. No looking back now.
So much of February and March was spent prepping for the move across the Atlantic that I honestly don’t remember much else. The new: checking out the capitalist mecca that is Hudson Yards, finally going to Brooklyn Steel to catch Beirut live, finally going to Nom Wah (to the great shame of my ancestors, I’m sure). The old: wandering around Greenpoint, Brooklyn Bridge park, LES. Brunches at Concord Hill/ Clinton Street/ Wild Son/ Five Leaves, buying Pocky in bulk in Chinatown, picking our favorite murals up and down Stanton Street, saying goodbyes over wine at Spuyten Duyvil/ Hotel Delmano/ Woodhul, did one last tour around WSP to say goodbye to Kimmel, Goddard, 19W4, but not Bobst. When we finally got a Lilia reservation at 10pm i told the waitress that it was going to be my last nice meal in New York. I’m so jealous, she smiles, I’ve always wanted to live in London. I hope it’s amazing for you. I let the tines of my fork poke staccatos in the bomboloni and try to fight past the growing lump in my throat. I hope so too, I look up and say, quietly. Hoping that saying it aloud makes it true.
I sat in JFK watching the evening sun set. Delta called my boarding group, and, just like that, we were off.
London spring and summer was a blur of easing in, tasting rain on my face, learning to love blooming flowers against a sky that flushes in all shades of blue-grey, pushing myself out - and out - of my comfort zone. Lying outside in parks with a book, squinting in the heatwave, getting grass bits all over my denim shorts. So many wine-tinted evenings. Did you know orange wine is actually white wine? Did you know 7 is the maximum number of times you can fold something? Did you know that I could look at heartbreak in the eye and say, yes, jump? I love how we are most vulnerable half-asleep, at night. Some days my internal compass still orients me south of the Thames. Tell me again how we forwent slow heat and went straight for the fireworks. I am not usually this careless, and yet. Perhaps. We are inconsistent in hopes of being someone else’s exception.
In September I took myself to my first formula 1 race in Monza and, sitting there amongst the tifosi, bright red everywhere, hearing the engines roar as the drivers rev for lights off — that was everything 8 y/o me could have ever wanted. I promise I only got the tiniest bit emotional. Then wandering around Milan and Como, mesmerized with the way the Italian sun drapes over pale yellow walls, the way each window seems to be vined with so much greenery, the soft springiness of handmade gnocchi between my teeth. Waking up one crisp Sunday morning and saying, why not, to a spontaneous day trip out to Windsor/ Eton where we laid on the grass, barely touching, our breaths the smell of M&S strawberries, elderflower yogurt, and dark chocolate. Then, closing out the month in a dark hall, acid/ techno/ bass thumping in the back of my head, lasers and lights and bodies everywhere. My hand in the small groove of your spine, feeling the staccato ripples of your back, so so so close that I could almost unfold your shirt and trace the thin breath of sweat just above your waistband. All this music in us, and nowhere to go.
By the end of fall I got fully primed with a rudimentary understanding of rugby, what it means when there’s a knock-on, and most importantly — why you should never wear a green jacket over an all-black outfit (even if its a camo print). I said goodbye to too many people. Took myself to book readings and NYT talks — all places where I learnt that courage comes in so many different ways. I got invited on nights out, did karaoke, and found that The Bad Touch is almost as hard to sing as Don’t Stop Me Now. And then, at the beginning of winter — took the craziest 4-flight combination halfway across the world to New Zealand, a place I’ve never been. Ate burgers two nights in a row. Luged in the rain; at the end of 6 rounds, I no longer knew if I was shivering because of the wind chill or the wet. Caught a sunset like fire. Wore proper hiking boots for the first time. Rediscovered my allergy toward sports tape. Learnt to identify birdsong. Camped properly - also a first (**multiple days, through cramps… who’s a city girl now?!). Fell in love with the way tree roots gnarl across the forest floor, the crunch of tussock under my feet, the sound that glacier runoff makes across smooth rocks, the soft rush of tiny waterfalls after rain. Such a wild kind of beauty, that land, and so different from everything I’ve ever touched. On my last night in the South Island we unzipped the tent at 11pm, closed our eyes for five minutes and opened them to a sky, half-cloudy with fog, but the other half absolutely bursting with flecks of stars. Wow, I breathe, near tears. The Milford sky a dark swath of fabric, and the Milky Way glittering everywhere.
I finished the year on a balcony overlooking a tennis court, the warm night air a heady mix of cut grass and rain. I have not been home, this home particularly, in a very long time. I look at my childhood photo albums, staring at the girl with wispy bangs and one-and-a-half dimples grinning out from the pages, so hopeful of adulthood then. A quarter century feels like forever. I hope I did that kid proud.
Here’s to never losing heart. Here’s to my body and all the ways it brought me through the year, the decade, the quarter century. On to the next.
the other side of the Atlantic
London, the lush coral bleed of a sunrise thirty-two thousand feet above ground spilling through the crack of your window seat on this one-way flight. Packing for this is how you learnt that five bags on the baggage carousel can represent a lifetime.
The weekend you move into your flat, you spent all day cleaning that you forgot to eat, which is how you found yourself in the hot dog stall at Ikea Greenwich at 6.30pm, a giant among all the children clutching their parents’ hands, fumbling with change that you couldn’t properly count for just yet. Frustrated, you empty all of the coins onto your palm and hold them up to the cashier like an offering, trying to make a joke about having just moved. There you go, love, she says, and picks out £1.75. Later, while waiting in line for the delivery van to come along, you get into a conversation with the guy who’s organizing the delivery requests; he asks, are you new? and you laugh. 72hours-new, my friend. You both end up exchanging an American dollar note for a £1 coin, as ‘souvenirs’. When the van driver comes along and you finish hauling your things into the car, he waves you both down and yells across the pristine wood floors, take care of her, she’s new!. You lean out of the window and raise an imaginary toast, the rings on your fingers flickering in the post-sunset light. Here’s to another chapter.
There are two and a half seasons in a day. There are office workers packing into and spilling out of pubs on balmy Friday evenings, their idle chatter a soundtrack to the start of yet another weekend; empty pint glasses standing at attention in a street corner amid the remnants of a broken wine bottle, the concrete stained a deep grey in blotches — a blush gone rogue.
London is. Having to remember to tap your card at the turnstile again as you exit a tube station. Once, maybe a week in, your muscle memory walked you up the escalators and right into the turnstile, the sharp smack of metal on ankle bone jolting you back into this place - or, I suppose I should say - home, now. You reach for your Metrocard out of habit and pull out a teal green contactless in its place, its pristine surface still showing no signs of card machine teeth, shiny with the promise of what this city could be for you. If you let it.
And so you try. You get the Spotify notification that Arizona - the band, not the state - is playing at a club off Charing Cross Road and you get a ticket and go, alone. You realize that Bon Iver, Leon Bridges, Mumford & Sons, AND The Tallest Man on Earth are all playing at this day festival at Victoria Park, and instead of trying to corral the two friends you have outside of work in London to come along you say, fuck it. So you show up on day one alone, and on day two with a complete stranger that you’ve met off the internet (note - not a dating app..!). And you have a blast both days, regardless.
London is. Being taken to Drake’s sold-out show at the O2 with someone unexpected.
London is also accidentally making friends with someone who works at Formula 1, who gets you a pin from the F1000 race in Shanghai, whom you show around Brick Lane where you try to convince him - albeit unsuccessfully - to get his first denim jacket.
It is leaving work late and finding joy in practicing your faux British accent with the security desk, trading Americanisms with your coworkers, getting invited to go on a rowdy night out in Shoreditch and coming to the pleasant realization - in the sweaty, bass-filled basement of Old Street Records - that you never forgot the lyrics to Mr Brightside.
Nothing lasts forever. But if it can last longer than you can love it, that should be enough.
to have and to hold
for my roommates past- if i ever stole a thesaurus the first thing i'd do would be to look for synonyms of you four. i say this a lot, to all of you, but i am honestly so so so glad we met.
for Sara- my first friend in America, really, and the one person who taught me how to pronounce "tortilla" properly in the chips aisle of Kmart at 10pm on a stupidly chilly September night, thank you for all of freshman and sophomore year.
for Lauren and Ami- it is such a terrible cliché to fall in love in Paris, because that just seems so blindingly obvious, isn't it. but that's honestly how i feel about us, our silly asian trio of 7 Rue Albert de l'Apparent sitting around the rickety dining table with its polished wood, the french sun spilling itself across our living room floor, talking and laughing in a patois of chinese, japanese, korean, french. i will always run out of ways to say, je t'aime, always.
and finally, for Nikky- who saw the worst and the best of me through senior year, for the long nights and the wine, for putting up with Thesis Wen even after i wallpapered our living room with my statistical results, thank you. so much.
my Berlin friends- especially Fay, Nat, Jade, and David, ich liebe dich. it is probably the only phrase i can properly enunciate in German, but that doesn't make it any less true.
the Singaporeans i've met at Penn, Chicago, NYU, (and that one DC kid..)- one thousand thanks for putting up with my annual (persistent) cravings for hokkien mee. a million more for having me as your adopted countryman. you guys are the sweetest.
my Model UN team- it takes a lot for me to regard Stern UC (of all places at NYU...!) as a second home. here's to four years of literal sweat and tears, maybe a thousand nights of arguing over systems, and exactly 3.5 days each year of yelling myself hoarse. it was once a high school dream of mine to be able to do Model UN, and regardless of how many damned times you guys drive me to the brink of combustion- i am so happy to have all of you. for my mentors- Harini, Jonathan, Cathy, Victoria; and my standout peers- Arnav, Luiza, Victoria, Anna et al, thank you for believing in me even when i almost stopped myself.
my thesis friends- so proud of us. no other words.
and, my favorite brooklynite- thank you for you. the Q train may run southeast across the brooklyn bridge, but if my body were a compass its true north will most probably be prospect park. i am so glad you exist.
finally, for papa- who holds the burdens i cannot. for mama- who makes the sacrifices so we don't have to. thank you for letting me traverse this whole crazy, crazy journey from that day in december when i first moved to singapore alone, till that wednesday when i graduated college at yankee stadium in new york. and for may- stay tender. please. there are some battles i fight so you don't have to. i love you all so much. such a tiny family. such a big hug, across oceans, continents, timezones. even on long nights i never feel alone.
one last one, for grandpa- nineteen years later, and i miss you still. at yankee stadium, at radio city- i whispered a prayer for the both of us. wherever you are i hope you saw me graduate, and i hope i made you proud.
