Does mid-life crisis hits only when you turn 40? Think again. Evidence is growing that more and more women in their late 20s and early 30s are having sudden and radical panics abut their lives and going off the rails like, well middle-aged folks. Why? According to Ben Renshaw, author of ‘Successful but something missing’, the reason people are having an early mid-life crisis is that a lot of people are on to the fast-track to success and are achieving things much earlier. Watch out for these signs of early-life crisis.

• You constantly feel bored, exhausted or full of frantic energy
• You’re always questioning the decisions you used to make so easily
• You’re constantly daydreaming or fantasizing
• You’re highly irritable and snappish
• You drink a lot more than you used to and far more often
• you use other things to blunt emotions such as overeating
• You’re tempted to have an affair usually with someone younger
• you just don’t know where your life is going
• Your sex drive is either zero or overboard but never in between

Every parent denies it but all parents are guilty of setting standards “theirs” in measuring the happiness of their children. Parents do outline the future of their children. Some do it quietly, others a bit too loudly but they all think alike - children must finish something, land a worthwhile job or ( marry someone with a worthwhile job), get settled, have children and hold family parties every now and then.

There are parents who insist on their off-spring following in their footstep, doctors who want to hand down lucrative practices to their sons, piano teachers who want their daughters to be concert pianists, businessmen who want their children to enlarge the loot. It is all very well if the children nurse the same interests as their parents but doctors’ son may wish to be architects, piano teachers’ daughters may want to become fashion designers and businessman’s children may be more interested in hairstyling.

It is common enough for people to blow things out of proportion. The child who does not pursue the interest her parents ram down her throat often goes about feeling guilty and ending up unnecessarily sullen. It is about time a girl learn that. It is natural for parents to insist on certain things initially but parents are not blind an they are bound to see if the skills or the talent of their offspring can match up to the demands of what they are insisting upon.

Parents do listen and they listen more closely when they are not cross or worried. No point telling your mother that you are not interested in becoming a dentist when she is preoccupied in sorting out the bills. There’s very little to be achieved when you talk abut not wanting to be like him when your father is filling our his income tax form.

Choose the moment of truth. Make an appointment with your parents when you know that they are relatively relaxed. Sometimes children fail to be observant enough like some parents and they spring the most God-awful surprise at the wrong time and get terribly shocked and hurt when their parented do their best thing that people do to save their sanity: SCREAM…….

If you know your market well, have a viable product or service that is in demand, then all you need is money or capital to get your business off the ground. What if you do not have money or if your savings is insufficient? There are various means to get around this problem. First you can start by borrowing from the closest people around you. Start with your family members, your parents, your relatives and lastly your close friends. Promise them an interest rates for the loans they give you. And if that channel is not sufficient, then you can try the government agencies that are set up to help small business enterprises. These agencies offered what we called small business financing aids to assist entrepreneurs to start off their business. However, these small business loans are of a fixed amount and may not be sufficient for you to purchase your stocks. Next, you can try the banks that offer small business loans. Try to get a small business loan that do not require collateral. Also check around you for the various types of small business loans available from financial institutions and do make comparison in order to get a good deal. There are some financial institutions that offer very attractive small business loans at very minimum interest rates but there is no need for collateral and zero waiting time.

There are a few rules to abide by when using the Net for communicating through e-mail or through the chatlines. many new users and old aren’t fully aware of the do’s and don’ts unless hey pointed out to them. Having a few pointers on courtesy or the right etiquette on the net might be helpful. They are basically commonsensical stuff with just a few new strings.

• Be polite when communicating. Try to to say in an e-mail what you wouldn’t feel comfortable saying to the person face to face, though I admit, it is much easier.
• Avoid Flaming. That’s when yo type out everything in upper case. It’s the Net equivalent to shouting or screaming. Very rude indeed ed.
• Don’t tell secrets or divulge information that could ‘leak’ like your credit card number or other personal information. Remember, the Net isn’t foolproof yet and there are many ‘wizard’ able to hack into your e-mails.
• If you have received a private message, don’t forward it or post it without the author’s consent. He may not find it amusing!
• Stealing copyright graphics and text could get you into trouble as copyrights laws are getting stricter by the day. It is illegal!
• If you intent to get into chat rooms, you’d best learn your ‘acronyms’ and emoticons’ (icons that signify emotions). Check out acronyms.

If you have made some of these mistakes in the past, don’t worry about it. Be cautious next time. We’ll just have to hand in there and learn as we move along.

Don’t make a joke when….

• Your child is overly tired or hungry. Adult or child, nobody feels very jovial when in acute physical need of food or rest.
• When you’re not feeling lighthearted.Rarely can humor be carried off when you’re in the middle of a heated argument or when you’re feeling angry. Forcing out a funny comment under circumstances when it may come out with an edge you didn’t intend isn’t a good idea.
• When she is especially sensitive abut an issue. Some children have habits such as nose-picking that they’re ashamed of but find hard to stop. Comments such as “digging for gold!” won’t make anything easier for them.
• When your child is honestly upset or angry. Here, a hug will work better. She might think you’re not really listening to her or being insensitive if you make a joke. Even if you finally manage to force a laugh out of her, she might resent it.

With the fuel prices rocketing like nobody business, things are really getting bad. People are thinking of ways and means of cutting their traveling. If possible, it might be even be better to travel less. Companies are looking at ways to reducing transportation expenses, especially both land and air traveling. Transactions are mainly by way of electronic means. Transactions by electronic means usually involved credit cards, merchant electronic means or electronic wallet. The issues of security during these transactions is very real as hackers can intercept the transactions and direct them to their own accounts. Worst scenario is that they can even wait for you to finish your transactions and using their cookies, trace your security code and hack into your password. Then they are at liberty to use your credit cards as and when they wish. The smart ones will transact with small amounts, so as not to attract the attention of the banks or yourself. By having access to a few hundreds cards, they can quite frightening.

Some simple steps in protecting your identity includes the following way. When you are buying things in shopping malls, make sure that you are watching the sales people who are handling your card. Watch out for any suspicious movement.

On internet transaction, do not do internet payments at public internet cafes. Hackers may have installed viruses that can captured your password and username so that they can retrieved them later. Even on wireless unsecured zones areas such as in a coffee house or airport, try not to do internet business transaction. You never know who is your hackers.

If you do a lot of internet business transactions, make sure that your seller have secured transaction encryption coding. There are special symbols that tells you that this is secured transactions. There are also companies such as life lock which specialized on identify protection. Try to log in to lifelock.com and you might get a lifelock promo code that gives you peace of mind for your transactions online.

Here are 10 ways you can make sure you hang on to your handbag when you’re in the crowded places.

• make sure you buy a bag with a strong fastener and large flap.
• Always wear it with the flap against your body.
• Choose a handbag with a tough, thick strap, a thief will have problems trying to snatch it or cut it with a razor or scissors.
• Don’t dangle your bag behind you. Thieves can cut it off or use the strap to drag you to the ground.
• Don’t take your eyes off your bag while you’re in a phone booth. If you put it on the floor, the thief can quietly snatch it. Hold on to your bag tightly, between your knees even or attached firmly to your person somehow while you make the call. make it difficult for the thief.

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• Don’t sling your bag over your chair in a public place or put it by your seat in a restaurant or theater. Keep it on the table in front of you or on your lap.
• Don’t keep your address and your house keys in the same bag. Thieves often sell both to burglars. Your home could be completely turned over within an hour or so of your robber.
• Do keep your credit cards in a separate wallet. If the villain has your card, signature and cheques, he can go on a massive spending spree within minutes of robbing you, even before you have time to inform your bank or store.
• Don’t carry large amounts of cash and never under any circumstances flash a handful of notes when you pay for drinks. Bag snatchers are watching and they can never resist the readies.
• Don’t be a heroine. If you get robbed, scream. Some girls carry a whistle but its effectiveness depends if you’d use it in the shock of being robbed. If you’ve an umbrella with you, a bottle of wine even, throw it at the robber. Losing you bag is upsetting but being kicked, punched or stabbed is worse.

Handbag snatching is the villain’s favorite way of grabbing a quick, easy Christmas bonus. It’s the same everywhere. Police in virtually every country worldwide always predict a record number of bag thefts for the festive season not only in the street but no buses, in MRT, pubs, shops, restaurants, theater and even underground car parks.

In fact, wherever you get loads of easy pickings from the relaxed masses such as shopping, entertainment and relaxation areas, there you’ll find the bag snatchers. BEWARE. You would probably never recognize a potential bag snatcher. They blend into the background as just one of the milling crowd. That’s why they’re so successful. Since they don’t look at all suspicious, you obviously don’t notice them.

As they say, forewarned is forearmed. So you’ve got to be doubly on your guard, for you can beat the bag snatcher if you follow a few simple rules.

What happens when the people you trust in to nurture and protect you become the people whom you have to fear the most?  What sort of emotion does the thought of family who violate your body, betray you and make you cower in shame, evoke in you?  Does the very thought of it make you sick?  Well them, digest this.

These are emotions women who experience incest, go through every day.  And if you think incest is the kind of thing which happens to naive, unexposed girls who come from huge families and live in some village in the boondocks, think again.  Incest happens in all kins of families rich or poor, small or large, well-educated or not.  Anyone can fall prey to incest.  Studies show that girls and boys of all ages are sexually abused and victims sometimes include toddlers, young children or babies.

Probably one of the world’s oldest crimes and one of the most prevalent forms of child abuse, incest is defined as inappropriate sexual behavior among family or surrogate family members between persons whose blood relationships prevent them from marriage by law. Analysis from The International Journal of Child Abuse and Neglect estimate that 30% of women and 9% of men have been sexually abused at some point in their childhood.  Yet despite the grim reality while exposes itself, incest is still very much a taboo subject.

A woman wants a deep relationship with a man who understands and accepts her and her feelings. She wants more intimacy, affection, commitment, companionship and respect.

She wants help in resolving relationship conflicts.She wants him to express his feelings, particularly about her more often. She wants her man to be romantic and she wants good, satisfying loving making. That means sex within a loving, committed and intimate relationship with a strong, yet sensitive man.

A man wants to love and to be loved but in different ways from women. Men are most comfortable expressing love through sex, through shared activities, through being a provider and through just being together.

They want women to accept these actions as love. A man feels frustrated when a woman doesn’t perceive this version of love as ‘real love’ or ‘good enough, when she puts romance ahead of sex.

We tend to overestimate danger and underestimate our ability to cope. Crime fills our newspapers and TV screens and this gives us a false impression of the extent of the problem. We read about an incident and although part of us remembers there are millions of people on the planet,we can’t help thinking it could happen to me. Seeing and hearing about crime feeds our fear and women in particular feel very vulnerable.

A certain amount of worry about crime is good because it encourages people to take sensible pre-cautions. But being overly-concerned can disrupt your life, leaving you scared to step out of the front door. Get your worries in proportion. Surveys show that young men are much more likely to be victims of crime, than women. Meanwhile, actively doing something to lessen your risk of being a victim should ease your anxiety. Avoid being out on your own late at night and contact your local police for advice on how to make your home secure. Many women find that taking a self-defence course can help. This will encourage yo to face up to dangers and appearing confident means you’re less likely to be attacked.

With the coming of age of the internet technology, I foresee that education is going to be a big issue on the distance learning basis. Nobody is going to spend too much on on campus education. The reality is that if one is going to pay for the cost of keeping the buildings, the grounds and the libraries and at the end of it, you don’t get to own it but all you really want is knowledge, then you are wasting a large portion of your money for nothing.

The alternative is to really concentrate on distance learning, where you get the guidance, mentor ship on building up your knowledge and application of knowledge on the job. At the end of the day, what companies really recognized is not what universities or colleges you come from but rather, can you really PERFORM as your papers say you can.

Now, what they really want is evidence of performance. The pay is based on performance, so is rewards and bonuses. This is the trend. So why are we still sending our children to expensive campuses universities? Time for us to rethink about education for our children isn’t it? Share your views or opinions with us.

There has been a lot of internet marketing ploys to get one enrolled into an internet marketing program. They promised you thousands of dollars in a week, auto-run and you can enjoy your cruise or sunbathing on a beach while the money keep pouring into your account.

These are all so called money making programs. Notice, I said ‘Money Making’ but really for whom? These money making programs are making money for the internet rip-off gurus. They are only telling you the half truth.

I have been a sucker for a few of these schemes and I had enough.Now, what we are doing here, reading each other blogs and writing news and sharing our recipes and experiences are MAKING MONEY FOR YOU AND FOR ME. Now that is real, although there is a lot of hard work.

A happy home is the place where we make those first vitally important contacts with others which do so much to determine the way we deal with people in later life.

As we grow up, it should become a fountain of inspiration where we go to be encouraged by those who watch our progress with loving interest.

Later still, it is our refuge, not for running away, but as a centre of rest and refreshment where we can relax before taking up the struggle again.

Stores sometimes stack up items of different price ranges next to each other. And just like Goldilocks, you’ll probably end up going for the one in the middle. Perhaps your $89.90 blouse wasn’t such a bargain after all. It only looked like it because it was placed next to the $266 silk blouse.

Big, big sale! - When was the last time you walked past a sale and didn’t stop to ‘browse’? What shoppers don’t realize is that most of the marked-down items are placed near the entrance to lure you in. And like all sales, you end up picking up stuff you don’t need.

Retail detail - Shelf displays, music right up tot the lighting and scent are factors that come into play when trying to get customers into a store. It’s no doubt that the nicer-looking shops get the most customers and eventually the most buys.

Size does matter - Research shows that shoppers generally prefer shopping in larger stores. Female shoppers especially, hate being pushed and shoved in crammed stores while shopping and thus wider aisles usually attract them.

Changing room charm - When you try something on, especially after being well-attended to by a salesperson, you usually believe the item is yours and having to put it back on the rack is embarrassing so you just end up buying it.

Ever wandered into a shopping mall with the intention of buying one item only to end up coming out with a whole lot more than you expected? Don’t fret, it’s not your fault, well not entirely anyway. Here are some sneaky ways stores make you buy.

• Buy one and get another at half-price. Somehow it always seems like a good bargain when you can get two things for a discount even if you only need one.

• Sales assistance who never leave you alone. Another tactic used by stores to promote their goods is by using slick sales assistance. Say you pick up a skirt to try on. Before you know it, you’ll find a salesgirl running up to you with a top saying that it’ll look great with the skirt. Son, she’ll be telling you how the skirt and top were just made for you and how it’d be a total shame if you left without purchasing them. Minutes late, you’ll be leaving the store with two things, if you’re lucky she doesn’t get you to buy matching shoes as well.
• The happiness factor - Dept stores are pros on how to make you happy. This is because the happier you are, the more money you’ll spend. Something as subtle as the aroma of cinnamon buns, triggers off happy feelings which actually alters the way you think. So, if there’s a shoe shop next to a food court, chances are you’ll probably be walking out with a new pair of shoes.

If a lump hurts, it’s not cancerous. Usually, that’s the case. In fact, one of the key signals that can differentiate a cancerous tumor from a benign cyst or other harmless growth is pain. But don’t fail to have a lump checked just because it’s painful. “My doctor told me if it hurts that much, it’s probably an infection in the lymph system.” one woman said. She tried to ignore the intermittent pain in her breast. After a year,she had a biopsy and had a cancerous tumor the size of an almond remove. Pain occurs in fewer than 10 percent of cases , says Dr Abrams”but it does happen.”

Under-wire bras can cause breast cancer. Dressed to Kill, a provocative book that came out last year, advanced the notion that bras constrict the lymphatic system, causing breast cancer. This, said the authors (a husband-and-wife team of anthropologists), explains the high rate breast cancer in North American cultures and tech low rate in less industrialized areas of the world. As evidence, thy provided ostensibly scientific data, showing that cancer sufferers were more likely to have been bra-wearers. But cancer researchers don’t put much credence in the theory, arguing that the authors didn’t account for other cultural differences adequately, including such relevant factors as diet and reproductive behavior.

If you have lumpy breasts, you’re more likely to get breast cancer eventually. At one time, doctors thought his might be the case, but now it seems, there’s no connection between factors that cause most kinds of benign lumps and those that lead to cancer. One kind of benign growth, however called atypical hyperplasia (Abnormal proliferation of cells) could eventually become cancerous. But it’s rare only about 3 percent of all breasts biopsies find this condition.

A breast injury can cause breast cancer. Sometimes an injury will be the stimulus that results in discovery of a tumor an injury can cause you to pay more attention to your breasts but trauma to the breasts doesn’t lead to cancer.

If I find a lump, there’s a pretty good chance it’s breast cancer. Even if a doctor is suspicious enough to order a biopsy, chances are heavily in favor of a growth being benign, especially in younger women. In women under 35, most lumps are benign, solitary tumors called fibroadenomas. As women get into their forties, fluid-filled cysts become more common but among pre-menopausal women, at last eight out of ten lumps are not cancerous.

If I do get breast cancer, a gives me my best short at survival. A woman may make the mental leap of assuming “the more I suffer, the more I deserve to be cured.” However, “women don’t die of this disease because it comes back in the breast but because of a spread to the bones or liver,” says Dr.Jeffery Abrams of the national Cancer Institute (US). If the cancer hasn’t spread before surgery, a mastectomy and breast-preserving lumpectomy,followed by a course of radiation treatments offer the same outcome, he says, “And if it has already spread you need other treatment -chemotherapy and or tamoxifen to cure the distant metastasis.”

I don’t drink or smoke and I eat a low-fat diet, so my chances of getting breast cancer are practically nil. You may improve your odds, but healthful habits won’t give any guarantees. Even the more firmly established risk factors early first menstruation, first child at a later age, genetic predisposition aren’t found risk factors,” says Dr Jacques Benichou, of the National Cancer Institute.

Breast cancer doesn’t run in my family, so I don’t have much to worry about. You may have slightly less cause for anxiety, but more than 80 percent of breast cancers occur in women with absolutely no family history of the disease. Indeed, the main risk factor is being a woman.

As for how much family history increase your risk, it depends on which family member had it and when. If a first-degree relative (mother or sister) had cancer in one breast and became ill after menopause, your chances are one in seven, only slightly higher than the one- in-eight-risk all women face. But if a first-degree relative had the disease in both breasts before menopause, your risk of also developing cancer could be as high as 80 percent.

If you’ve had a negative mammogram, you don’t have to be concerned for a while. Although mammograms can catch a tumor long before you can feel it, they can have a high rate of false negatives, in correct assurances that there’s nothing wrong. The danger may be particularly great for pre-menopausal women. X-rays work by showing a contrast between a dense object (A tumor) and a less dense area (such a fat tissue), but younger women’s breast tend to be denser, making it more difficult to detect a tumor. That’s one of the reasons you should examine your breasts every month, even if you’ve just receive a clean bill of health from your radiologist.

The best time to do a breast self-exam is while you are showering. If that’s the only convenient place for you, it’s better than not doing an exam at all. But finding irregularities early requires an intimate knowledge of your breasts’ interior structure and wet soapy hands can make it harder to probe deeply. “Breast are three-dimensional,” says Dr Virginia E. Maurer, a breast surgeon at Winthrop University Hospital in Mineola, New York. “Women need to examine the entire depth of the breast tissue, starting at the skin surface, pressing midway through the breast tissue and finally feeling all the way down to the chest wall.” Also standing up isn’t the best position for the exam. “You want to feel the breast tissue in the thinnest plane you can get, which is lying down,” says Dr. Osuch.