I spent ten minutes this morning staring at our overflowing bookshelves, and I still couldn't pick out anything to read. So here I am piddling away on my Palm again, which at least is something I can pursue in close quarters, unlike all the people around me reading tabloid-sized papers.

I wonder what most people used to do on the train before the two free morning weekday dailies appeared on the scene last year.

So last night, I distinctly remember dreaming that I was back as a teacher, and it was after the preliminary examinations in September, and I was panicking because I had only eight weeks or less to teach my kids The Scarlet Letter before the A Levels, and I hadn't so much as cracked the book open yet. It was pretty serious panic, dream-wise, though I didn't recall anything till my eyes fell on the book when I was perusing the shelves just now. (I needed close to twelve weeks to teach my kids that book last year; trust me when I say that eight aren't enough.)

By the time I publish this entry on the web, the press release would've gone out, so I can write this with impunity: the A Level results will be out on Wednesday afternoon, and the whole Scarlet Letter dream, I have no doubt, is symptomatic of that. I'm the only teacher who taught it, it's never been attempted before by kids from Singapore, so I might have singlehandedly fouled up the literature grades of the smartest kids in Singapore. I'm just sayin'.