Walk-about.

The kid still doesn't speak much. He knows lots of words and will happily point at toes and eyes and Mama and Papa, but he rarely makes the effort of saying the actual words. He prefers his own onomatopoeic versions: He imitates the sound of running water when he wants to wash his hands and of course, there are cars and trains and lots of animals. Kikiki is the sound we brought home from our excursion to SmallTown. (And a bloody lip and forehead but this is completely unrelated to this picture.)

Craze.

There is this new fad: Buy ridiculously expensive instant ramen noodles at the corner shop, throw away the sachet with the oily soup base, pour the seasoning into the opened package and then crush the noodles, until they're small bits covered in E-numbers, salt and spices. Eat straight from the package.

First witnessed at school, when the garlic-flavoured oil ended up on a table and sabotaged half a lesson.

Signs of this practice can also be found right at our door on the street where the empty packages and discarded sachets grace the pavement.

The empty packages are also ubiquitous on the playground and yesterday our son was offered some dry noodle fragments by a small girl about his age, maybe a little younger. I'm glad that he wasn't impressed.