Saw a watch advertisement today with a cocky looking Daniel Craig standing there like a fortress, his arms crossed, saying this watch was the same one as the one the new James Bond wears.

So…

Does that mean if you buy it and wear it, you’ll have something in common with James Bond as played by Daniel Craig?

Putting it like that…doesn’t it sound ridiculous?

I can just see some paunchy middle-aged slouch wearing the same watch as James Bond, just so he could say he’s wearing the same watch as James Bond.

And yet it happens with everyone doesn’t it?

This afternoon, after an exuberant storytelling session, some little boy came up to me and said, “I’m from Canada too!”

I grinned at him, and then thought to myself, “Why, really, did he say that?” And then I realized it was like the James Bond watch advertisement. He wanted to have something in common with me. I was ‘cool’ enough I guess, for him to feel that way.

And I thought…Cool!

And then I thought of how I did that too.

I’ve been raving about my wonderful hosts, well they heard how much I wanted to visit Raffles Hotel…yup, because Somerset Maugham stayed there and I’d read his book The Razor’s Edge!

Same thing…me wanting to have something in common with a dead British author named Somerset Maugham!

And I thought, is it a sort of pilgrimage?

Weird huh, but yeah, I guess so. Kind of.

But anyway my hosts knew I wanted to go, so wouldn’t you know it, they arranged for high tea there!

High tea! At the fancy schmancy Raffles Hotel!

And this was our dainty little party!

Here's the four of us, From right to left: Kate Brundage, (the head of the intermediate library at Singapore American School), Alison Cuthbert (the head of the primary library at SAS) me, and Rosa Shin-Gay also a librarian in the intermediate library