Archive for the 'Malaysia' Category

My father continues his series on Memories of Malaya with an account of the renowned Victoria Institution.

He writes:

So the years came and went without any major mishaps: no illness or injuries to the body. However when I was in Standard two I had to be away from school for six months to have my right eye taken out because there was a growth inside it. I felt a little disorientated when I came back but I soon caught up with the work.

This school where I was is called the Pasar Road School together with another school called the Batu Road School in another part of the town were the feeder schools of the grand secondary school called the Victoria Institution which had boys from form one to form five and later to form six, lower and upper. These three schools in the town of Kuala Lumpur were government schools which meant that they were built, maintained and had teachers all paid for by the colonial government administering Malaya and the boys had to pay only a token fee per month and one could be exempted if the school was satisfied that one’s family could not afford it and if a family had two boys in the school, one was automatically exempted. Eventually our family had 3 boys in the school but because father was a medical doctor we did not claim this privilege. Although Pasar Road School and Batu Road School were feeder schools it did not mean that all the boys were automatically fed into the V.I. Form one of the V.I. could take only 200 boys; the total number of boys in the class before Form one in both the feeder schools amounted to 400. So this meant that fifty percent had to be eliminated by means of a common entrance examination set for both schools. Those who did not make it to the V.I. had to find either jobs or join trade schools. The common entrance examination was a vigorous one but I was extremely happy to have been placed fourth in the combined results of 400 boys.

So I had realized one of the aspirations of every school boy to be a student of the Victoria Institution (V.I.). The V.I. is set in the town of Kuala Lumpur which is the capital city of the state of Selangor as well as of Malaya. The school is a solid building of two storeys standing on a slight hill. It has a playing field the size of six football fields and it has a swimming pool which is unique for a school. It also had science laboratories and other schools would send their students there when they had to do sixth form science.

The British Colonial Administration in the 1850s found the educational facilities inadequate for a regular supply of junior grade administrative and clerical officers who had hitherto been recruited from India and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). The founding of a school was mooted. With the lead provided by a British Resident donations were collected from magnates of the three races to build the school. Most of them are still remembered by the names of the school houses.

The school was ready to take in students in July 1884. It was then in another location and being near a river it was continually flooded during the monsoon seasons. Eventually it was moved to the present location where it stands till today.

Photo: thanks to kelvolution from flickr.com (CCL)

memmlya

One of my favourite radio podcasts is Thinking Allowed on the BBC, hosted by sociologist Laurie Taylor. A recent programme discussed the sociological implications of the British Sandwich - whether cutting it in triangles shows middle class pretensions whereas cutting it into oblongs demonstrates working class earthiness. I had no idea there was so much that could be read into a couple of slices of bread.

I’ve never been keen on sandwiches. I tend to prefer the Asian way of eating - Asian meals do not involve much wheat or gluten or cold food so the sandwich is a strange concoction from that perspective. But in the UK for many years, the sandwich has been the staple of quick lunches so I tolerate it and have had my fair share of lunchtime sarnies. I’m glad to see, though, that more and more Asian style fast food lunching is becoming available - you can buy a nice hot meal with spicy chicken and rice for around £5 and take it away to eat back at the office, just like in Kuala Lumpur (though the price is probably 3 times more than Asian prices!).

The one kind of sandwich that I did love as a kid in Malaysia was a chicken sandwich with lots of butter and white pepper on soft white bread. Chicken sandwiches were a treat that we had when we went “out station” - meant to sustain us on the long drive to my grandparents’ in Taiping, but often devoured within the first hour or so of getting into the car! Their novelty lay in their being, well, Western but they also tasted great because the chicken was prepared with Chinese style ingredients and included the dark meat and the crunchy skin. (In the UK, shop bought chicken sandwiches are made from the bland skinless white meat so can be dry and tasteless, unfortunately.)

For pure evil indulgence, we tried a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich once - said to be Elvis Presley’s favourite. You butter the white bread on the outside and pile the inside high with the squishy ingredients, then deep fry the oozing slab. Yummy and gruesome all at the same time. I’m not sure what the sociological implications of this type of sandwich would be….

Photo: thanks to sheilaz413 from flickr.com (CCL)

My father emailed me a couple of weeks ago this recollection of his school days in Kuala Lumpur during the 1940s to continue his series of memoirs, Memories of Malaya.

He writes:

During the time I was in this school (about 1945 - 1949) there was one headmaster and about 30 teachers. There was a change of headmaster in about 1947; both were Ceylonese (now Sri Lankan). All the teachers were males and there were about 20 Chinese about 10 Indians and/or Ceylonese and the rest Malays. Only the headmaster was a university graduate, the rest were what we called “normal trained,” that is, after their fifth form they joined the teaching profession and were sent out to the schools to learn their craft as they worked. All the teachers taught their classes diligently and did not shirk except that they did not mark the work they had set. But this was not necessary because in arithmetic, a boy would exchange his exercise book with the boy sitting next to him and the teacher would give out the answer and the boy would mark it. The teacher would then ask if anyone had made a mistake and if there were he would work it out on the blackboard. In English, most of the exercises consisted of filling in the blanks with the appropriate word from amongst the words given. Again this was easy to correct by the same method.

Each form or standard had five classes designated with the first five letters of the alphabet with the “A” class, having the best forty boys in that form judged from the previous final year end examination results and going down academically to the “E” class. Those in this last class were usually older and more mature boys than those in “A” class because their education was delayed by the war and quite a lot of them had worked for a living during the war so they were not interested in going back to school but were forced to by their parents.

When I started I used to walk to school accompanied by my Mother about nine-tenths of the way. We parted before arriving at the school because she continued on her journey to work by bus and I would continue to walk the rest of the way. Later on when I was in standard one I was given a brand new Raleigh bicycle with white mud guards and a red triangular frame. During school hours I parked it in our aunt’s house which was near the school. Having an aunt so near had another advantage: if I were threatened by other boys to a fight after school, I would easily run to her house until my opponents became tired of waiting and left for home.

Most of the boys walked to school and some cycled but because the school took in boys that lived nearby where most of the households were from the lower clerical grades of the civil service no one was dropped by car. There were no school buses then. Cycling was a very common mode of transport not only for school children. The roads were fairly wide and there was little motor traffic and I bicycled even up to sixth form in 1955 for school activities in the afternoons. By then I had joined the senior school about 2 miles from home. The common brand of bicycles were Raleigh, BSA Rudge and like most manufactured things, imported from UK.

During the interval, I had mentioned that I was envious of all those who could buy their food from the tuckshop whilst I had to eat sandwiches brought from home. There were a couple of boys from rich families who had their nannies bring them a full-scale meal which they ate in the tuckshop with the nannies sitting by their side and clearing up after the meal. The aunt also invited me to her house during the interval to give me a meal. I did not accept because I did not want all the other boys to see me walking to her house from the school. I would not be able to live down the ensuing teasing.

The school did not require its boys to wear school uniforms. Most of us went in a white or a blue short-sleeved shirt and white, blue or khaki shorts with socks and white tennis or black leather shoes. Not being a sporting type I did not attend to any of the games that were held in the afternoon after school hours. The games were football, hockey and cricket. Only once I was forced by the P.E. teacher to try my hand at cricket. How to spin ball is still a mystery to me. During the school interval some of the bigger boys would kick around a football in the playing field and woe to the smaller boy who strayed into the field as the boys would slam a ball into his behind. I was a victim once and it was so painful that tears came to my eyes.

All the teachers were generalist that is to say they taught all subjects: arithmetic, history, geography, and there were no specialist. During my last year in this school amongst the other subjects taught was also history. The history book used consisted of the life stories of about 5 or 6 historical figures. I remember some of them being Buddha, Confucius, D’Alberquerque. Strangely there was no Jesus Christ or Mohamad. Because of the make up of the population the colonial government probably did not want to touch on any religious topics. The teacher was an Indian and he was very good at his work and to this day I remember some facts of these historical persons from his teaching.

Photo: thanks to CLF on flickr.com (CCL)

(Unfortunately, I don’t have any historic photos of old Malaya to illustrate this post. If you do and would like to share them on Fusion View, please do get in touch via the comments section or the Email Me link. )

I’ve never appreciated roast turkey with all the trimmings. I find it bland and lacking in celebratory festiveness. I am especially not fond of brussel sprouts! So the traditional Christmas meal is a bit of an ordeal for me. Which is not to say I don’t like turkey as such. We often eat turkey steak or turkey escalope or diced turkey throughout the year - but cooked with wine Italian-style or soy sauce or curry Asian-style.

The problem with the traditional roast turkey meal for me is that when I was a child in Malaysia, Christmas food was just so much more - more tasty, more spicy, more varied, more exciting. We would spend Christmas with my grandparents in Taiping and the preparations would start weeks in advance. As a child, I never was aware of all the effort and hard work that Grandma put into it - with the help of all the aunties, great-aunties, cousins and second cousins all over Taiping. But everyone in the large extended family would have got involved in the vast cooking marathon that would have been needed to lay on the feast that fed over a hundred people.

In the heat of the tropics, we would have a full-blown Christian Christmas, complete with tree, Santa and carols.

The kids’ job was to decorate the house. The older second cousins would be in charge - tall, good-looking Paul who seemed so grown up to us and broad-shouldered, grinning Jason. They would be the ones up the ladders stringing the paper chains, placing the balls on the higher reaches of the Christmas tree. We younger kids would drape tinsel on the lower branches of the tree, balance cards on shelves.

On the day of the big party itself, the living room would be cleared and chairs set out for the carol service. There would be a churchful of people in there, singing our hearts out. One of the fat great-uncles would always dress up as Santa in the red suit and jolly mask, arriving at the end of the service when the lights went out. He would have a sack full of presents and ho-ho-ho his way round the room, scaring the babies with the strange staring mask.

But when it came to the food, we celebrated Malaysian-style - with curries and spicy fried dishes, rice and satay: and enough to feed an army. Memories of delicious Asia will always be associated with festivities and celebration for me so a pallid turkey for Christmas, no matter how moist you might claim it is or how Christmas-y just does not do it for me at all.

What are your memories of childhood Christmases? Please add a comment and let me know!

Photo: thanks to Mr_Woo from flickr.com (CCL)

When I was a child, we spent most Christmas’s at my grandparents’ in Taiping.

We would drive up from KL along the single lane trunk road, passing all the little towns and villages on the way. It was always exciting as we left the city, weaving our way north through Templars Park with its clusters of forest and glimpses of rocky streams. We’d sing songs and play Eye Spy, munching at the chicken sandwiches that my mother had made. And then the boredom would set in. I would stare up at the endless line of the telephone wires overhead and it would seem interminable.

And then we would see the chalk hills near Ipoh loom up, strangely shaped mounds eroded by wind and rain. We were nearly there! In the back of the car, my brother and sister and I would perk up and look out of the windows, finding the shapes that we knew. There was a man sleeping on his side. There was Grandma’s head - a hill that for a moment, just at the right angle as the car whizzed by, looked like a woman’s head with a 1940s haircut.

And before long, we’d be at the crossroads at Simpang, turning towards Taiping. The ramshackle shophouses and roadside shacks would give way for awhile to more jungle and rubber trees and atap huts hidden in the foliage. And then we would be driving into the bustle of Taiping past the Indian temple and mosque, heading towards the central market and town clock.

Even as a child, I always struck by the contrast of small town Taiping to the big city of KL. The town was laid out in a neat grid and you could never get lost. There was hardly any traffic which was great when you were a kid and wanted to roam a bit further away from the adults. The streets were like toy streets, easily walkable and everybody seemed to know who we were, smiling and greeting us whenever we strolled down covered walkways.

I remember my mother wearing a backless top once, sauntering down the small town streets in her fashionable, big city way and my Grandma walking at a distance in horror at her daughter’s baring her back so brazenly - “What must they all thinking be thinking, May?” she kept saying. My mother just shrugged and laughed, “It’s just my back, so what? It’s not like it’s my front.”

Grandma was the daughter of a Presbyterian minister who had been sent as a missionary from China to look after the flock in Singapore. She was now a community leader in the Methodist church, a Rotarian and generally a respected figure in Taiping. She always dressed neatly and smartly, even when she was in the garden, tending to her beloved orchids. She moved elegantly, her back always straight and I never saw her slouch or loaf around. She never quite got her head round my mother’s a la mode, right out of Vogue, up to the minute fashion sense, what with the backless tops, strapless gowns, high heels, platform shoes and hot pants of the late 60s and early 70s.

At special occasions, like Christmas, Grandma would always wear a cheong sam, the traditional Chinese dress made famous recently by Maggie Cheung in In the Mood for Love. Most of the younger women in the family would be in cheong sams , too, hair done up in Western style - bee-hives or page boys, set in place with Ellenet hairspray. My mother would do the same but some years, she would be elegantly dressed in whatever was the latest fashion - one time, it was a billowing, white kaftan with a pattern embroidered in rich royal blue: what can I say, it was the 70s and we’d just come back from the Philippines where kaftans were all the rage.

For me, I loved the Christmas holidays and festivities but the one thing I absolutely hated and dreaded was the party dress. Being a tomboy, I was happiest in jeans and gym shoes. I slouched and sat with my legs apart instead of demurely crossed at the ankles. The party dress with its bows and ribbons and puffy sleeves, its tutu-like flare, it’s gauzy, prickly material - it was just the most hideous ordeal and torture! When it was time to get dressed for the big Christmas party, I would invariably throw a tantrum and sulk, filled with stress, anxiety and horror at having to put on such a monstrosity. For me, my whole sense of self was at stake - my dignity, my pride, the essence of who I was was utterly offended by the costume I was being forced to wear. I envied my brother and the boy cousins in their smart dark trousers and simple, ironed shirts. Why couldn’t I wear a smart pant-suit? Why did being a girl involve wearing something that looked like a pom-pom?

But, for most of my childhood, the adults would always win the battle and I would have to drag myself around the whole evening looking - in my eyes - like a total idiot. Poor Grandma would keep telling me I looked so pretty but I would just glower and slouch in an attempt not to be seen.

And then one Christmas, I won. I don’t know exactly what happened or how I won the battle but in all the family Christmas photos for that year, everyone is beautifully and festively dressed in gender specific garb - all the girls and women dolled up in feminine dresses and all the boys and men in masculine menswear - except me. There I am, a skinny, gawkly teenager, in a pair of corduroy jeans and my gym shoes - slouching.

My father has been inspired again to share another story from his childhood as part of his guestblogging series, Memories of Malaya. Being my father, there is the invariable section on food. So there are no suprises there - however, I am surprised to learn that he was taught gardening at school - hmm, he’s kept that a secret all these years: the next time he comes over to the UK to visit me, I shall have to set him digging and weeding in my garden….

He has just turned 70 this year so the time that he is writing about in this post would be around 1947:

English speaking

At the age of 8 or 9 years old I was sent to an English language school which is a school where the teaching was in the English language and the use of the expression “English school” in this note will refer to this category of schools unless otherwise specified. I do not know the discussions that might have taken place by my parents as to what type of school their child and later on children would be sent. I suspect that there was little or no discussion and it was a matter of course that I would go to an English school. Both my parents and paternal grandfather were educated solely in English. There were many families where the fathers were educated in English and their mother tongues though usually at an elementary level for both languages. Many Chinese were very passionate about the Chinese language. They consider it as a mark of patriotism to China and culture both of which they felt would be lost if the Chinese language was not taught to their children. Despite glaring evidence in every day life that those who were educated solely in the Chinese language enjoyed a lower standard living, many families still insisted on sending their children to these schools.

So much to learn

Anyway there I was in the Pasar Road English School sitting at a bench desk and on a bench sharing it with 2 other boys. There were 40 boys in a class. One of the earliest lessons, I remember, was the teacher teaching us by asking us to repeat the five vowels.

In one of the sessions I remember wondering to myself as to how long it would take me to be educated to university level to study medicine and how this could be accomplished when there was so much to learn. My Father was a medical doctor so that was naturally my reference point. The school day started at 7.45 in the morning and ended at 12.30 in the afternoon. The school day was divided into periods of 40 minutes each with a half hour break or interval as it was called. Sessions consisted of reading aloud from simple English text books and doing arithmetic, drawing, singing, gardening and P.E. Not all subjects were covered everyday. The subjects were distributed throughout different days of the week.

The “reading aloud” part of the lesson consisted of the teacher calling out a boy who would read a few sentence or a paragraph and then another boy and so on to read the prescribed section of the book. This is good training as the boy would learn to stand-up and speak out. After each boy had finished the teacher would give an explanation of the part that had been read out. For arithmetic we used books which had the problems set out and we copied them into exercise books and added our answers to the problems. If there was anything meant for the whole class it was written on the blackboard using a white chalk.

The classrooms were airy and the teachers were competent, hardworking and did not shirk their work on the whole. If you were caught doing mischief you would be made to stand on the chair or outside the classroom and when the headmaster went on his rounds and he saw you he may on rare occasions add his own punishment which may include a stroke or two of the cane on your outstretched palm.

Gardening

An interesting feature in the curriculum was the period for gardening which was allotted two periods consecutively and once a week. During this period we would dig rows of beds and would plant sweet potatoes, beans and some other easily grown vegetables. If it did not rain for a week or so we would have to water the beds with water from the tap. The tools for the work were supplied and kept by the school and they were used by other classes as well. Peer pressure would force every boy to do some work even if it was merely weeding the beds. It is a shame that nowadays when we have all sorts of classes to prepare children, the gardening period is done away with. It would teach young children the dignity of manual labour and that dirtying ones hands is not beneath scholars. This period appeared to be a holdover from the schools during the Japanese occupation when we had such periods and we did the same thing. The reason for this I suspect is because Japan being very much dependent on its agriculture wanted its population to respect and love the land and also to plant for the war.

Food

As this was a period just after the war and many were suffering from lack of protein the school supplied free milk once a week. We would each be given a full mug of milk which we could drink it using our own mug there and then or take it home.

During the interval many of the boys would go to the tuckshop to buy their snacks which consisted of sliced fruits or fried noodles. Coming from a doctor’s family I was not allowed to eat tuckshop food for hygiene reasons. I would have sandwiches spread with butter and sprinkled with sugar brought from home. Because of the heat of the day the butter would have soaked into the bread and it was quite delicious but still I would pass by the tuckshop and longed to join in the crush to get some snacks. I think young boys do not like to feel left out of things. Most of the time I just strolled around the school. Some boys would put up a net and play a few games of badminton or kick a football in the field. But I did not and do not like sports and also did not like going back to class feeling hot and sweaty.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

A request for help: I don’t have any photos from that period either of a school or school boys. Can anyone help and donate a copyright-free photo for me to illustrate this post?

Photo: of a school in modern Malaysia thanks to gxianfu from flickr.com (CCL)

memmlya

The article I was researching and writing earlier this year about blogging in Malaysia has now been published in Communication World, the journal of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC). It is featured in a special Asia-Pacific supplement under the title “Blogging Thrives in Malaysia.” The article examines the tension between political bloggers and the authorities as well as highlighting the success of non-political personal and business blogs in the country.

It has come together with the help of various journalists and bloggers who generously shared their views and experiences - thanks, guys! Much of the information they have given with me will also be useful for the book that I am working on about New Trends in International Public Relations.

Please feel free download the pdf of the article Blogging Thrives in Malaysia. By all means forward it to anyone who may be interested, with a link back to this post.

You can also download the article plus other articles I’ve written about social media from the box below.

I have to confess that I’m a secret Country & Western fan. Every time I listen to Loretta Lynne’s Coal Miners Daughter or Dolly Parton’s Coat of Many Colours, I succumb to the sentimental twangs of the guitars and the heart-warming heroism of the poor but plucky families in those autobiographical songs. Tears well up and before long, I’m sobbing into my sleeve.

It strikes me that many C&W songs are about “them good ol’ days when we was po’ but we was happy”. And it’s not just in the family saga songs. There are the songs where even though the narrator is now rich and successful, he/ she and their lover now don’t get on but way back when, back when they was strugglin’ to make ends meet - now those were the good times.

Also, many C&W songs evoke the rugged, lonely and mythical American landscape with their use of US placenames to give a sense of location. Think of Phoenix, San Francisco, Aspen, Denver, Jackson, Tennessee - these are all places I learnt about from listening to C&W songs as a kid in Malaysia.

It occurred to me that you don’t get many Asian songs about “how great it was when we was poor”. Nor are there many international hits that involve lines like “By the time I get to Johore Bahru, you’ll be waking” or “I left my heart in Penang”….

So, to redress the balance, I had a go at writing a Country & Eastern song, which I’ve called “The Ballad of the Lonesome Accountant.”

Imagine some steel string, twangy guitars and a gravelly, mournful Hank Williams sound.

I was raised up in Mud Valley*
Right beside the River Klang
We didn’t have much money
Nor much of any thang.

My mom, she fried hot noodles,
Spicy char kway teow,
Every day in Chow Kit Market,
With hardship on her brow.

My dad, he drove a fancy car
For a big time Mr Boss.
We never made much profit,
Only pockets full of loss.

Chorus:

I watch the cars fly out of town
From our porch by the Gombak freeway.
I dreamt of riches and big houses
And escaping far away.
I dream I’m a fancy accountant,
Driving, driving in my car.
I drive all through the highways
And I’m really getting far.

So I worked hard at my studies,
Gave my life up to my school.
Didn’t do no drugs nor liquor,
Nor girls nor played the fool.

And I got a job in business,
Got me some buy-to-lets.
Made a lot of profit
And paid of all our debts.

I bought my mom a great big house
And she sips martinis now,
While days of ladies lunching
Wipe the hardship from her brow.

I bought my dad a fancy car
And now he’s a big time Mr Boss.
He runs things all for profit
And never makes a loss.

I don’t have time to spend with them.
My wife and kids don’t know me.
They go shopping in the fancy malls
Living it up with my money.

Chorus:

I watch the cars fly out of town
From my Porsche on the freeway.
I see my riches and big houses
And my heart is far away.
I’m just a lonesome accountant
Driving, driving in my car.
I drive all through the highway
But am I getting far?

I wish for days so long ago
When my mom laughed out loud
At her stall in Chow Kit Market
And dad’s kindness made me proud.

I wish my wife would look at me
With eyes and heart aflame
And my kids could learn to love
More than just computer games.

Chorus:

I watch the cars fly out of town
From my Porsche on the freeway.
I see my riches and big houses
And I’m escaping far away.
I’m just a lonesome accountant
Driving, driving in my car.
I drive all through the highways
And I’m going very far.

I drive all through the highways
And I’m going very far.
Going, going, going very far.

All it needs now is for someone to set it to music and sing it for us! Any offers?

*Kuala Lumpur means “the muddy meeting place of two rivers”

~~~

Photo: of line dancing in Singapore, thanks to csc.gov.sg

PS. Come back on Monday for some videos of other Asian C&W fans doing their thang ….

I came across an article by Marina Mahathir, the daughter of former Malaysian Prime Minister Dr Mahathir, writing about a dinner she had with her family. She said, “In my family I have relatives who are Chinese, American, French, Irish, Javanese and I don’t know what else. But we don’t spend a lot of time thinking about race and nationality. I never thought of my aunt as Chinese until her party, at which time I felt proud.”

It struck me that many Malaysians I know have families made up of this kind of eclectic demographic, my own included. My sister-in-law is Dutch and my partner is South African. My cousin is half-South African and another cousin is married to an Australian. There are Kiwis, Brits, Americans, Indonesians all coming into the clan.

There’s still some resistance amongst the more traditional older folk, I think, to their children marrying “outside” what they are used to. I remember years ago an elderly relative asking me if my parents minded that my brother was marrying a Dutch girl, saying, “Their children will only be half yours, you know.” Well, genetically, whoever my brother married, their off-spring would only be half Ooi…! My parents laughed when I told them this exchange - for them, the only thing that matters is that whoever we are with, we are happy. And my sense is that most Malaysian families these days have attitudes more similar to my parents than my elderly relative.

What’s your family like? Are you a United Nations like mine? I’d love to hear your story - please add a comment!

Pic: thanks to en.wikipedia.org

Say Lee added a comment to my post about his blog last week, mentioning old fashioned games that he used to play as a child like spinning tops and collecting bottle caps. It started me thinking back to all the home-made games we used to play as kids in Malaysia. We had our share of Action Man and Barbie doll toys, Lego and toy cars etc so we were fortunate kids in that respect. However, we also had fun playing with home-made gadgets and toys, especially with other kids at school or cousins we visited in my mother’s hometown in Taiping.

Recently, my mum was clearing out our cupboards at home in KL and found a packet of “five stones” right at the back. “Five stones” is a picking up game rather like jacks but instead of a bouncy ball and plastic bits to pick up, you play with cloth-sewn packets of dried rice the size of marbles. You scatter them on the floor, pick one up and throw that into the air - while it’s in the air, you pick up each of the remaining four packets in different sequences, catching the flying one at the end of each move. These ones that my mum found were made out of cloth from old pyjamas and must be over 30 years old! They are rather manky and I’m a bit nervous about picking them up in case they crumble to dust in my hands. She had brought them over instead of chucking them straight in the bin because it was amazing that they had survived all these years and it was fun for us all to look back at those days together.

I would play “five stones” with my friends in break time at school in KL, sitting in a circle on the cement floor. We also used to play a skipping game with a “rope” made out of rubber bands woven together - I was never very good at that, not being terribly well co-ordinated, but I remember enjoying stringing the rubber bands together and marvelling at how a cluster of these little things could become a long rope.

When we were a bit older, there was that paper game where you folded a piece of paper into an opening and closing flower and wrote a “prediction” in different quadrants. Holding it in your two hands, you’d ask someone to pick one of the four colours you had coloured in on the top and then spell the colour out as you opened and closed the “flower”. They would then un-leaf a petal where the last word landed and find their future “predicted” underneath. I have no idea what the paper thingy game is called but I loved creating different flowers with different predictions and colours.

I guess these are all girly games. I wonder if they are still played in my old school back in KL (Bukit Bintang Girls Shool 2). Or perhaps other home-made games have been invented since then. Can anyone tell me?

UPDATE: Oh wow, I was just searching the internet to find a picture of “five stones” and the Singapore Museum shop is selling a set (with pouch) as “traditional toys” for S$8.00! The online store description says: “Five stones (or four, if you prefer) would be played by a group of children sitting in a circle in the hot afternoons and taking turns to throw the stones in the air, catching them with one hand, in a variety of patterns.”

I wonder if they’d like to receive my historic, genuine antique “five stones” to display in the museum?