Apparently, sending your team to paintball battles for team building is all a bit outdated. The latest way to boost team spirit is through cooking, says The Guardian.

Four thousand business people have been through the doors in two years, paying £120 per head for a half-day team bonding culinary session. I think this new team building activity definitely has some advantages over paintballing: 1) More civilised and less dangerous — in case someone takes the war game too seriously; 2) subsequently, insurance becomes less of a problem unless someone is particularly rubbish with knives (like myself); 3) I wonder if anyone has ever sued their company for any damage caused while paintballing on a company jolly?

Nintendo's recent success with the Wii and DS brought surprise to a lot of people, including the gaming giant itself.

Innovation obviously played a big part in this success, and we should applaud Nintendo for its creativty and willingness to try something new. However, the company's under-estimation of the market demand for a Wii also created a massive markeing benefit although for the wrong reason. The result was unexpectedly amasing; everyone started talking about it and rushing to get one wherever and whenever the Wii was available.

This is no exaggeration - some of the shops on Oxford Street would get a limited number of units during the week in the morning and they would be gone in a record of an hour or two. Web serivces were created to alert buyers of the location and stock levels each shop had. This continued to happen for more than six months until Nintendo sorted out its production line to support the huge demand. During this period, impatient and crazy gamers were willing to pay up to double on eBay or Amazon Marketplace to get their hands on a Wii.

Good news carried on coming to Nintendo, as its Wii Sports has also won the prestigious Bafta awards for video games whilst it was also named best sports game, best game for more than one player and best game for casual or social play.

However, Wii is not the only product that has been doing well - its DS has also been gaining momentum in the UK. It is now not unusual to see communters doing their brain training in the morning or after work. In fact, it made me smile to see two guys frantically moving the stylus on the DS screen and another one scratching his head over the brain training game in the same tube train carriage. I just love seeing Brits getting more into technology!

Perhpas it's because I am a girl, I love stationery. Lucy Mangan's theory on the matter double confirms this slightly strange behaviour. I had been trying to get hold of a discontinued Rotring 600 (old style - with knurl) ballpen to go with my pencil from the same series for quite a while, and recently found it from a French pen seller on eBay.

I was extremely pleased to receive the pen (after a long delay due to the bloody postal strike) and started reading about pens and pencils on the Internet. To my surprise, my obsession with stationery is nothing compared to a lot of guys. I started to discover blogs specially dedicated to pens and pencils, like Dave's Mechanical Pencils — an entire blog with more than 150 entries talking about mechanical pencils (no messing around with eraers, rulers, or pencil sharpeners) shows you how much he loves his mechanical pencils!

So I should stop blaming my female hormones for the slightly larger than normal collection of pens and mechanical pencils.

Although I've always been quite keen on video games, my passion has been boosted by the arrival of my little Nintendo Gameboy Micro. It's not any old Gameboy Micro, but a rare Famicom 20th Anniversary Micro. It's a gorgeous little machine that is smaller than a normal size iPod and plays all Gameboy Advance (GBA) games. It's small and light enough to put it my bag or jacket pocket. But what I love most is its nostalgic value - it reminds me of the Nintendo Entertainment System that I used to have and play with my brother. I wish we had kept that console. At least, I can still get some of the memorable old games (Super Mario Bros, The Legend of Zelda and the famous Donkey Kong) from eBay.

It's quite an unusual choice of book for me, but the fact is I thoroughly enjoyed it and would highly recommend it to my girl friends.

Lucy Mangan's Hopscotch & Handbags first came to my attention via an edited extract in the Guardian Weekend magazine. I was immediately won over by Lucy's witty and sharp capturing of female pyschology. I kept smiling when reading it on the train and nodding in agreement in places.

Some of parts that made me chuckle:

On Relationships

Feminists may weep, but we must face facts: from the age of about eight onwards (later if you are posh and have ponies to obsess about and so can sublimate your sexual urges by competing in gymkhanas), the race is on to get a boyfriend.

This doesn't have to mean much. To any suitably determined and self-confident prepubescent, any one of the following circumstances will entitle you to call an unsuspecting lad your boyfriend:

• He spoke to you.
• He looked at you.
• He ignored you - but that's because he is shy and not because he is three years behind you in maturity and would notice you only if you were made entirely of footballs and sherbet fountains.
• He was nice to you.
• He was horrible to you - in a clever attempt to disguise the tender inclinations he harbours towards you.
• The teacher made you partners with him for a broad bean-growing experiment and your romantic connection grows with every daily progress report you write together.
• You bumped into him on the street out of school hours and he recognised you.
• You haven't left his side for nine days and in the absence of a judge's willingness to grant restraining orders to pre-teens, he must, for the sake of his mental health and classroom reputation, give a gloss of respectability to the situation by letting it be known that you are his girlfriend.
• You just told everyone that he is your boyfriend and if he doesn't agree, well, it's 28 against one, so there.

10 Favourite Topics of Conversation for New Mums

1. Sleep
2. Blood
3. Shit
4. Sleep
5. Tears
6. Sleep
7. Vomit
8. Any story that starts, 'The doctor said he'd never seen anything like it …'
9. Any story that ends, 'And then the rest just dropped out in my hand!'
10. Any story that contains the phrase, '… it was like a FIST …'

• 15,000 miles
• 20 countries
• 12 weeks
• 1 bus

Anita Sethi embarked on her 3-month bus trip from the UK to Australia two weeks ago and kicks off her regular column in The Guardian today.

A totally eco-friendly choice to travel across the world and on the way, she's made 39 new friends and had loads of fun. A wonderful experience to read but I wonder how many people would have the time and energy to follow suit?

An interesting article written by Justin McCurry in The Guardian today called Tokyo dreaming. I was shocked by the estimated number of people regualrly sleeping in Japan's 24-hour cafés — 25,000 to 40,000 is quite a depressing figure.

Expenses:

Meal

a plate of chips, sausages, a burger, fried fish, rice and shredded cabbage for 830 yen (£3.60); soft drinks are free of charge.

Rent

a cubicle (not much bigger than a toilet cubicle) with a reclining chair, a desk, a PC with Internet connection and a lamp for 1000 yen per night (£4.30)

Less than £8 for a night's accommodation and dinner is obviously a bargain especially for an expensive city like Tokyo.

As I continued reading, I was surprised by the fact that many of the 'café refugees' are in their 50s and 60s, although a quarter of them are only in their 20s.

Living on 100,000 yen (£430) a month in Tokyo is tough but at least they don't have to live on the filthy, dangerous streets like the homeless of London.