Sometime in the early 1990s, my family and I lived in Fairfax, Virginia, one of the suburbs of the United States Capital city of Washington, DC.  We had a Malaysian family as neighbours.  The husband was a diplomat, our children attended schools in the same neighbourhood, and we were close friends. Then, they moved back to Malaysia; but we stayed connected. No WhatsApp, IG, or FaceTime then.  However, we did quite well use email, post mail, (snail mail?) and the occasional long-distance telephone calls.  Not too long after their departure back to Kuala Lumpur, I needed to visit Singapore on business. I looked forward to it because when I told my friend that I was coming to Singapore, he said to me, “Oh, Malaysia is just a hop across from Singapore. In fact, did you know that Singapore used to be part of Malaysia.” I didn’t realize that up to that point. So, I went to Singapore.