Kid torches his own house, OVER GUNDAM

Source: Yahoo

A Japanese man has admitted to burning down his family home after his mother threw away some of his favourite robot toys from the "Gundam" animation series.

Yoshifumi Takabe, aged 30 and living with his mother, said he had become suicidal after she dumped some of the robots, of which he had enough to fill 300 boxes stacked to the ceiling, the Sports Nippon said Wednesday.

The blaze on August 9 last year completely destroyed their two-storey wooden house in Kasai, Hyogo prefecture, but no one was injured.

"The Gundam figures are like the partners I spend my life with," he reportedly said after pleading guilty at western Kobe's District Court. "I wanted to die with them in a fire if they were to be thrown out."

The Mobile Suit Gundam series, based on an animation TV series which started in the late 1970s, is about space wars fought by gigantic robots.

I won't totally blame the kid here. Parents just can't just ignore things and let it get out of control. 300 boxes! Obviously he like Gundam! Perhaps mom should have said something at 50 boxes? 100 boxes? If it's a concern, put a stop to it. It's been 30 years! At this point, it's too late and drastic actions will result in drastic responses.

Mum's catching up with with me ... on Facebook

Source: Asiaone

WHEN his mother added him to her friends' list on popular social networking website Facebook, SIM University student Chris Chen accepted the request readily.

But she soon discovered photographs of the Honda motorcycle he had secretly bought and things quickly changed.

Mr Chen, 22, had not told her he had learnt to ride a motorcycle, or that the money he saved from working part-time had been spent on the two-wheeler.

'She got really angry about it, so I blocked her on Facebook,' he said, matter-of-factly. 'I don't want her to see the offending pictures till she can come to terms with my riding a bike.'

Mr Chen's situation, though prickly, may not be such an unusual one. An Australian survey last month found that one in four children has his or her parents as friends on online social networking sites such as Facebook. Adults aged 35 to 54 using Facebook doubled from 7 per cent of its total users last year to 17 per cent in January.

A final-year project by a group of students from the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information from Nanyang Technological University (NTU) found that parent-child relationships actually improved when they used networking sites like Facebook.

The study, funded by the National Youth Council, interviewed 20 sets of parents and children who were online friends.

Project member Lee Weiyi, 22, said parents read about activities and pictures their children put online to feel closer to them and to find common topics to talk about. But this works well only as long as the parents do not find objectionable content in their children's profiles.

'Of course, the children are generally more tech-savvy than their parents and know how to censor what they put online,' said Ms Lee.

Some youth, she added, delete images they know their parents will disapprove of, or prevent their parents from seeing certain photo albums by limiting access to 'safe' content.

Student Dew Low, 17, was amused, but not surprised, when her mother, Madam Dorrianne Yeo, sent a request asking to be her friend on Facebook. In fact, Dew's grandfather, Mr Eddie Yeo, 71, is also on her list of Facebook friends.

They use Facebook mainly to share pictures with relatives living overseas.

'It's a little unusual, but I think my mum is quite hip,' said Dew. 'I don't worry too much about what she'll see on my profile, since I only upload things I don't mind sharing publicly.'

Madam Yeo, 45, is not worried about what she might find in her children's online profiles. 'I won't intrude into their privacy. But if I see anything I am uncomfortable with, I would talk openly with them about it.'

If you're a good kid and have nothing to hide and then adding mom isn't a problem.
But we were never good kids were we? :)

Mum’s my Facebook friend

Source: Asiaone

FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD Sheryl Seet does not just share photos with her friends on her Facebook profile.

She also shares them with her mother, whom she added to her list of friends on the social-networking site last December.

Sheryl’s mother, 41-year-old manager N. Seet, also sometimes receives messages on her Facebook profile from Sheryl and will chat online with her at work using MSN Messenger.

In fact, it was Mrs Seet who introduced the teenager to Facebook.

As Mrs Seet can reply to Sheryl’s online messages even at work during periods when she is less busy, Sheryl said that “it’s easier to communicate with my mother online than to call her”.

Sheryl is part of a generation of Internet-savvy children who are “friending” their parents on online social-networking sites.

An online global survey done in the last two months of last year found that one in four children aged eight to 17 added their parents to their list of friends on online profiles on sites like Facebook and Friendster.

Although kids will never admit it it's probably a good thing to have your parents involved in facebook. It would make the parent-child relationship more healthy and parents are pretty hip (they were kids once too) and would easily learn how to facebook as well.

Here's our own poll.

Are you friends with either of your parents on facebook?

Robot Babysitter

Would you give your kid to this Japanese Babysitter!??

One day kids will hate their parents!!!!!