I literally recited all of the 15 decades of the rosary and more during the hour-long Manila–Cebu flight I last took. And all the saints and angels must have never felt as annoyed as by the supplications I send their way each time I travel by air. Hey, walking by a travel agent's office causes panic attacks.

The thing is, and this may sound ironic, I love watching those air disaster documentaries on National Geographic and Discovery Channel. Now, I do not know which is triggering which — my fear of flying or my equally irrational urge to watch cable TV programs about airplane crashes.

Fear of flying, however, is not exclusively for middle-aged men. In fact, when I googled "fear of flying," the leading search engine returned 11.5 million results. Using Bing, meanwhile, produced 17.5 million results. Indeed, fear of flying, as with other forms of phobia, is more prevalent than we think.

Samsung's Shark of a Phone
Samsung Electronics recently introduced the Shark range of mobile phones, which include a candy bar phone and two slider phone models. Designed for active and multimedia-savvy users, the Shark mobile phones provide good value for money, and delivers style and intuitive user experience, the company says.

The phones come with Social Networking Services shortcuts, which give users one-click access to popular social networking Web sites. Samsung also installed security features to the phones, which should provide users with added peace of mind. The Mobile Tracker feature, for example, alerts the user whenever a phone's SIM card is changed.

This, definitely, is one feature we all would find useful in this country where mobile phones easily get lost everyday.

Robots Start Moving
Last week, scientists in South Korea have introduced a household robot that can walk and pick up things. Designed to perform household-help functions, the Korean robot can remove lots of stress from the daily lives of mothers and other home managers.

A couple of days later, a robotics engineer from Israel announced four types of robots that can climb walls. One design includes a robot that can stick on walls like a snail does; another robot comes with claws similar to those of cats. A third robot comes with wheels that include 3M stick tape that enables it to stick on smooth surfaces. The fourth robot uses magnets.

Soon, robots will move out of factory production lines where most of them currently are, and invade your homes.