She’s not wrong. At this point the Cho twins are basically my only friends outside the industry. It would be nice to meet some new people…

It turns out when it comes to Leah or the Cho twins, I’m a complete pushover.

Me: Ok ok ok. You guys are completely extra, but I love you too. Tell Alex I’ll be there in 20.

Petal’s not too far away, but I can’t wave down a car to save my life. An MRT station looms across the street, and I decide to take a leap and try it. DB managers usually chauffeur me wherever I need to go, so it’s been a while since I did the whole public-transit thing. I laugh at myself thinking about nine-year-old Rachel, who used to duck under the turnstiles with confidence at the West 4th station on her way uptown to spend an afternoon with Umma at the Museum of Natural History. I used to know those eight stops like the back of my hand, counting down each one as we passed through the stations on our way to the big blue whale. Come on, Rachel, you may be a K-pop star, but you’re also a New Yorker. You can handle this.

Luckily, like most things in this city, the MRT station is bright and clean and easy to navigate. I grab a ticket from a kiosk and make my way down the escalator. So far so good. Just gotta make the next train…

… that’s already at the platform!

I rush down the last few steps of the escalator, careful not to collapse in my espadrilles. Back in New York, harried commuters will jam an arm between the doors to halt the train, but here, there’s a double layer of doors—the second one divides the platform from the tracks—and it makes forcing yourself onto the train near impossible. But I manage to leap through them both just as the train doors slide closed behind me. I let out a breath of relief. Success! That was close.

I move to take a seat, but suddenly I find myself tugged back. What the fu—

My bag—the ancient Prada boho—is wedged between the inner set of doors. I try to yank it free, but it’s stuck tight. The train starts to move. I tug desperately at the bag, trying to ignore the people on the train staring at me. In Singapore, where even drinking a sip of water isn’t allowed on the train, metro manners matter, and I’m making a spectacle of myself. If only this was my Manhattan commute, where a mariachi band could board and start playing, and no one would bat an eye.