Iceland and Singapore, two nations separated by climate, geography, history. Photographs help bring back memories across these oceans, to bridge that divide—a diminishing iceberg, a towering mountain, the babbling of a brook. But photos don't only look backwards. They look forward, too.

It's neither crime nor the weather that's on writer Myle Yan Tay's mind as a student in Chicago. It's booze. Yan tracks his relationship with alcohol and newly made friends in the "Windy City", as a frigid winter approaches.