So... I can finally catch a breather.

Three papers down and one more to go, plus I just turned in that final report for XD3102 this morning, so that means that now, I have a whole week to study for my SC4212 paper next Wednesday.

Earth Day was just a couple of days ago, and I figure now's about a good time to put down the things which've been running around in my head for quite some time now.

Global warming is a hot issue at the moment (pun intended). No reason why it *shouldn't* be. And lately I keep seeing all these pleas to the public to help save the Earth, to save it for your children and for the many generations which will come even after them.

And it kinda made me wonder about how fast kids seem to be growing up nowadays and how fast change happens from one generation to another now.

I see ten-year-olds playing with their handphones when I only received my first handphone at the age of 17. I see girls who look about twelve years old wearing lipstick and one-and-a-half inch heels when the first time I wore a pair of pumps was in secondary school.

And when I work during the holidays, I notice quite a few overweight kids (mostly boys) walking around with their parents, obsessed with their handheld games.

And that last one, most of all, makes me wonder.

It seems that what most kids do for fun nowadays is play on the computer; I had a Chinese tuition teacher whose son did that all the time-- he kept wanting to play on the computer and she wouldn't let him.

And I thought maybe that was why the small playground at the base of his apartment block was always empty, except for a few youths sitting around and chatting.

An entire generation which grew up in the "digital age", while the previous generation--mine-- still "went out to play" when we were allowed to play.

And one thing leads to another.

I wonder if soon, playgrounds will be the only space in which children have to play.

I wonder if, as Singapore and the rest of the world continues to develop, there will be less and less space to run around and lose yourself in.

I wonder if cities will become vast tracts of streets and tarmac and concrete jungle while parks become tiny spaces of isolation lost in all the smog.

I wonder if the children who are born twenty years from now will even be able to run outside and play; will there be anymore "outside" left? Or will the world just be a series of rooms and spaces enclosed in glass and plastic and metal?

I wonder if, with all our "upward development", and the recent fad of "aerial gardens", will these be the only green spaces left? Will the only space that your children can run about freely in, be a space that is sixty stories up in the air?

Will the only space that your grandchildren can run about freely in, be a space that is eighty stories above the ground, shielded by a plastic and glass bubble which contains manufactured "fresh air" pumped out by hidden vents?

I wonder if the world just a hundred years from now will be an alien one to those of us who know it now.

And I wonder if all this will simply be a fairytale for my children, yours and everyone else's.