At what age should a child be given a mobile phone? Increasingly, children seen with one are getting younger.

I had just finished my coffee and my cup was still on the table. I had to step away for like 10 minutes.  When I returned to pick up my empty coffee cup that still had like a sip of coffee left in it and who should I see "ANTS". Not one, not two, not even three but a whole load of them!

After working for the past 21 years....i just became a homemaker.....housewife...homeminister....stay-at-home-mom.....etc  there is a new phrase coming up every now and then.

It is exciting, scary, wonderful, tiring, mind boggling.....but there is one word that best says it all .....REWARDING!!!

SPACE meaning taken from Riverside Webster's II New College Dictionary "The infinite extension of the three-dimensional field of everyday life."

While I was working on my notebook recently, Craig was intrigued by the little contraption I was using, called a “thumbdrive”. After understanding what it was used for, he asked for one so that he can use it to store his files as well. (Yes – he has a few files in my notebook. I have been showing Craig how to create powerpoint presentation and word documents).   As with everything that he ask for previously, I told him that I would think about it. In less than 10 minutes, Craig paraded to me his own thumbdrive, made of Lego. I was very amused. In any case, he seemed very satisfied with the lego thumbdrive and hasn’t really bothered me for one since. End of episode.

Today I read in Mind Your Body (the ST Thursday supplement) that exercise alone does not prevent heart disease. It must go hand in hand with eating right. That's obvious, one might say! However, I do come across people who think otherwise.

I 'meet up' with my 14-year-old niece Min quite often - via  MSN IM. Though she lives like a 3-min drive from my home, it's tough catching up in person. So sad but in today's context, relationship is built through the click of a button! Well, at least there's the click...

I had dropped my son off at school along Bukit Timah when I decided to turn on my Global Positioning System (GPS) device to see if would bring me along the normal route that I've been using. 

Maybe it's just me or perhaps my kids' circle of friends. Of late, I have taken a special interest to observe our children's social etiquette  in particular, the ability to greet and thank another. Sounds odd but yes, I am talking about "Hello, auntie"  or "Thanks for the ride uncle." No, it does not come naturally anymore. I think I must be the most to-be-avoided auntie because I will tell my kids' friends that they have forgotten their hellos, goodbyes and thank you.  So many times, I have received my kids' friends at home without being acknowledged and times when I have the opportunity to offer a ride to my son's classmates and not being thanked for the gesture. This did not occur once but repeatedly.

What is it about computers that reduce our capacity to process information effectively? Noting that being computer literate is different from being information literate, most of us computer users are quite adept at manipulating this tool to our advantage. But does this skill help us to think and analyse better?

A Royal Economics Society study of 100,000 15-year-olds in 31 countries around the world recently concluded that avoiding computers in the classroom and at home improved the literacy and numeracy of the children studied. The authors, Thomas Fuchs and Ludger Woessmann of Munich University found that when social factors were taken into account, computer literacy should not be more valued than our ability to use a telephone or the internet.

 "Holding other family characteristics constant, students perform significantly worse if they have computers at home," the authors conclude. By contrast, children with access to 500 books in their homes performed better because children with computers neglect their homework more.