Kids nowadays are getting funnier - and weirder - by the moment.

When I arrive back from camp, the first thing that my brother requests of me is to write a song for him and his friend to perform for their school music project.

"Okay," I tell him.

"The song must be about love," he adds.

My eyelids momentarily shoot up. What is this eleven-year-old kid talking to me about writing a love song?

My father advises me to write it easy so that they can handle the parts. My brother is playing the piano - interest only re-surfaced when the piano arrived back at our house about two weeks ago. He gave up his piano classes almost two years ago - he lost interest in it too quickly. Now he's in swimming and scouts. I guess he's the more sporty and outdoor, adventurous type. And he likes to draw, which makes me wonder why my parents want him to go the same path as me - developed in music, undeveloped in art. I personally feel that my brother should develop in art, and not music, since he lost interest in both the piano and erhu.

But my brother irks me by telling me to add A's and B's and "perhaps some B-flat here and there". Hello, music is not like cooking. You don't add notes into a song like ingredients. Of course you can do that with instruments, like how cymbals and triangles are spices in European orchestras during Mozart's and Beethoven's time, culminating in a craze for all things Turkish.

So now I'm wrecking my brains over what to write for a couple of kids to sing. One thing everybody misunderstands is: can the friend read staff notation? If not, HOW ON EARTH IS HE GOING TO LEARN THE SONG AND SING IT? Anybody thought of that before? And my whole family keeps telling me when I raise this concern: just write something simple for them to sing. Yes, I can write a simple song, as simple as Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, but can he even learn the song in the first place by reading the score? Because I won't be there to personally sit down and spend a whole day coaching them.