Dreams

I am having my mock exams. The teacher passes down the Chemistry Paper 2 question papers and I ready my pencil. My watch is in front of me, my calculator is on the ready (that little underline thing blinking on off on off), my mind is set on Go.

"You may begin," she says, and I open the booklet.

The first question is about the periodic table - I see the familiar four-group diagram, and I am about to write when I realize that the question is in Chinese. I blink; and then I turn the pages, hurriedly now - and I discover that ALL THE QUESTIONS ARE IN CHINESE.

I am horrified. I turn to the front page, where all the instructions are, and I realize that it says there, right in the first line: 'This paper is bilingual. Students are expected to answer in their mother tongue.' I look around at my classmates and I find that they are all scribbling away at their answer scripts: Teck Chaw is biting his pencil as he thinks, Tay is making clucking noises at the first question, and I realize that I am alone in this -

I wake up in cold sweat.

A few days later I receive my Macbook in the mail. I open it, remove the instruction manual, the Apple stickers, the adapters, and then I tear open the bubble wrapping of my new Mac. I am happy as it chimes on, I type my name into the necessary fields, and I marvel at the beauty of OSX.

Then I go downstairs.

I cannot stop myself. There is this magnetic compulsion to leave my mark on my new laptop - as strong as whatever drives dogs to pee around their property, so I go downstairs and enter the kitchen and take a knife. And then I return to my Mac and I take out the knife ... and I carve my name onto the soft white plastic, under the lacquer Apple logo. As the cover peels under my fingers I am silently screaming in my head, unable to stop myself, but the knife keeps going on and on at the C of my name, deeper into the laptop -

I wake up in cold sweat.

We are in school now! St Thomas's is under monster attack! A dragon-creature lands right smack outside our classroom, sends a couple of cars flying, and starts to blast fire at the nicest vehicles in the immediate vicinity. My classmates go crazy and begin running about, screaming, and quickly I am enveloped in a throng of scared, brainless plebeians who want to get as far away as possible from the monster. I stare at it, and as I am wondering how best to bring it down and kill it my friends start to point at something running helter-smelter right at the monster.

It is my Physics teacher Pn Loh. I am about to shout a warning at her when she stops and rummages in her handbag. The monster turns its fearsome head to look at her; I see its red pupils contract into angry maroon pinpricks. Then - and this is the most improbable thing ever but I swear to you I saw this happen - Pn Loh takes out a plastic star and puts it on her forehead.

And she turns into Ultraman.

I wake up in cold sweat. Exams are not a good time for me to dream in.