Ahhh --- the very first entry of a new book. It's almost as exhilarating as the feeling of cracking open a new notebook and entering the date. I used to keep a journal fanatically, beginning with a very perfunctory diary in my teenage years (hardly more than a jotter of what I did each day), graduating to full-blown verbal diarrhoea in my senior high and college days, before winding down to absolutely nothing after my husband-then-best-friend and I had a meeting of minds, and I found myself not needing to write things down anymore.

This is not to imply that I need to write things down now because he is no longer adequate as a repository for my thoughts and fancies. No, I blame this reversion to old habit firmly on my friends who keep avid online journals, got me hooked reading them and finally guilted me into keeping my own.

So here's what I did today.

It's been a light week at work because the JC2s (examination-bound graduating class, for you non-Singaporeans out there) are having their Preliminary science practical examinations this week and the Arts students whom I teach have mostly decided to give themselves the week off, even though they aren't officially exempted from school during this time. Most of my classes have been sporadically attended for the past few weeks as JC2 students swot up at home for their big year-end examinations. I'm not complaining. I'm finally getting a breather after the absolute madness of the last two months and I need this breather because come September 12, I will be inundated with examination scripts and have less than two weeks to finish grading them all 228 of them. You heard me right: 228 English essays (most of which promise to be illegible, given the fact that students are writing them under conditions of extreme heat and emotional duress) in less than fourteen days. In fact, if I did the math right (and I do, sometimes), I have nine days to grade them all. Yay me. This is why I became a teacher, you know.

And already I digress beyond the tried-and-true diaric formula of "what I did today".

So today, I taught some classes, which generally entailed giving students reassurances of how much they knew and pretending I knew all three books I'd taught them inside out, even though I hadn't touched one of them in almost a year. I also spent a good deal of time surfing the internet. I love surfing the internet. I go through phases of being phenomenally addicted to it, then hating the very sight of a web browser (and no, it's not just IE that brings out this side of me), and right now I'm in addict-mode. I blame it firmly on my International Relations class, which gets me all excited about interpreting current international affairs by applying all the theories we're studying -- but if you ask my husband, he'll tell you I've been addicted to the internet for as long as he's known me. Heck, we had some of our best conversations over ICQ in the early days.

Again, with the digression. Bah.

After school, my delightful husband picked me up, dutifully interrupting an impromptu college counselling session with one of my students. Fortunately, she was easy-going enough that she didn't care that he parked himself right next to us and proceeded to interrupt us appropriately whenever he could bring up his alma mater. (I'm a college/guidance counselor in my high school -- a shocking number of our students apply to US universities.) After I was done with her, the husband and I met my aunt/insurance agent at the bank to do some boring adult foo, then went for coffee, during which she again inadvertently depressed me with these exorbitant calculations as to how much money one needs to save now in order to have sufficient money for retirement in fifty years' time (assuming you die at 82). I tell you, someone's calculator must be broken because these numbers just can't be true.

That's too depressing to think about. Happy thoughts: we bought a printer that now resides on my computer table because there's no room on Terz's for it. It's a Canon LBP-810 and it's the standard computer hue of white-gray. It was a spontaneous purchase, which means I'll regret it when I evaluate my finances on the eve of the next payday, but we've been putting off getting one since we moved here two years ago. All we have to do is find another low bookshelf so that we can rearrange some stuff in this computer room, and we'll have space to set up the scanner as well. Check back with us in about a year regarding this -- my husband and I are both equally procrastinatory about things.

Post-printer-purchase, I returned home and designed this journal website, which made me late for my 8 pm appointment, which made me late getting home here, but now this is done and I can go to bed. I'm dutifully taping Gilmore Girls for G (hello, London boy!) and will watch it tomorrow; it's the episode after Lorelai's ex-boyfriend aka father-of-her-beautiful-perfect-daughter shows up and I have a feeling he is going to irritate me a lot. Get back with Luke, you foolish Lorelai!

But I'm starting to sound like MightyBigTV so I will STOP NOW thank you. Goodnight!