So I’ve been thinking of keeping a journal for some time, of recording my thoughts and posting regular entries to my Web site. A few things have been driving this idea.

The most obvious rationale is this recent sea-change in my life. My relocation to Singapore has been nontrivial – it’s a big deal in fact, at least to me. I’ve been reckoning with an immense docket of changes and challenges. All of which seem like ideal fodder for posterity; an amateur writer in me feels compelled to record what I can.

Last Sunday night, I flew out of New York and began a twenty-two hour trek around the world to Singapore. By the time I finally arrived on Tuesday morning I was beleaguered with jet lag, but Singapore greeted me indifferently with its usual, unforgivingly hot and humid weather. The equatorial heat is nearly always a shock to the system and it compounds travel exhaustion, so I was lucky to spend only a day in Singapore before returning to the airport. That same evening, still unrested, I flew out to Sydney, Australia on a business trip.

Fitzgerald wrote: "The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and beauty of the world." He was writing about a particular approach-way to Manhattan, but it’s the same sentiment anyone feels when the city is just out of reach. Seen from beyond its limits, it’s a tremendous promissory oasis — the greatest repository for possibility ever constructed by human hands. This is its elusive sleight of hand: New York is never so romantic than exactly at those moments when it cannot be had.