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Parenting advice from mom-in-chief Michelle Obama

Mom-in-chief Obama makes sure the kids have a normal life, go early to bed and observe ground rules both at home and out in public space. That probably explains why Sasha and Malia seem to be well brought up kids with no tantrums and boorish behaviour.

Once a mom, always a mom and that, perhaps, explains why she recently gave some golden parenting tips to the mother of teenaged singing sensation, Justin Bieber, asking her to spend lots of time with her son and get to know him better so that he could reach out to her when he needed to.

The first lady, who has been the parent who has primarily brought up the two girls, reading books to them and taking shared holidays for bonding, told the now-perennially-in-trouble teenaged singing sensation’s mother to take time out to be a visible figure in his life so she would know what was going on in his life and who the people were in his life, present or past, who influenced him.

The young man has been the recipient of unprecedented success with hits such as the almost-cult Boyfriend but has recently been hurtling from one disaster to the other including driving under the influence, scrapping with his neighbours, and drunken brawls. There have been rumours about his urgent need to get into rehab.

Speaking from experience, Michelle Obama said that her own children sought out her company so that they could learn from her and seek her advice on all the things that they care or are concerned about.

Considering that Bieber is currently in one of his bad phases, we wonder what he thinks of the first lady’s comments on his life. We do hope he remembers the words come from a well-meaning person.

Fans in a flap over Nguyen flip-flop

We don’t know what prompted Dong Nguyen to do this but we can see a lot of angry people wandering around with feverish, panic-stricken eyes because Flappy Bird is no longer available to while away their time with.

The phenomenal success of the game — the mobile app has been downloaded 50 million times within a year of its launch in May last — surprised a lot of people in the industry who had been left wide-eyed by the success of the Angry Birds phenomenon. You should also know that since its release in May it attracts advertising of around $50,000 a day from advertisers who leverage their brands on the back of its huge popularity.

As of now the only thing the game’s founder has to say is that he just “cannot keep it up) anymore”. He has, however, been quick to point out that he did not take the game down from the app stores because he was thinking of selling it. And he said his decision was not made from out of any legal compulsions.

Fans of the game are, however, a dejected lot. Twitter has been flooded with messages and appeals to Nguyen to rethink his decision. The “Save Flappy Bird” Twitter account already has over 2,000 followers and is growing.

We are wondering what Nguyen plans to do in future. Will the Flappy Bird turn up somewhere else with its wings flapping in a whole new way? Only time will tell.

sudhamenon2006@gmail.com

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