Am I losing it?

Given:

$ ls -ld .
drwxrwxr-x  2 itcba  itcba  512 Jul 12 14:21 .

and:

$ id
uid=303(eugene) gid=20(staff) groups=20(staff), 0(wheel), 5(operator), 75(informix), 510(compupay), 511(dynagen), 512(itcba)

and

$ uname -a
NetBSD giggle.iba.co.za 1.3.1 NetBSD 1.3.1 (GIGGLE) #0: Sun May 31 02:17:14 PDT 1998     root@:/usr/src/sys/arch/i386/compile/GIGGLE i386

why does

$ touch index.html

produce 

touch: index.html: permission denied

??

Are there alternatives to installing a more recent kernel or entire NetBSD
distribution?  Am I missing a perfectly obvious point?

++L