ahh… those were the days indeed

Those were the days my friend
We thought they’d never end
We’d sing and dance forever and a day
We’d live the life we choose
We’d fight and never lose
For we were young and sure to have our way.
La la la la…

(excerpt from the song ‘those were the days’ sung by mary hopkins. i love this song. for full lyrics, click here.)

after my post on the lantern festival, freddy toh had made some comments on ‘those were the days’, which prompted me to blog on those days that were.

well, i’m sure most bloggers could not identify with my ‘those days’ when i assume that most bloggers are in their 20s. only a handful are around my age i guess.

someone (and a person who is in his 20s!) once mentioned in a forum that when one reminiscence on those good old days, it shows that age is catching up with her/him. well, since i can’t run fast now (not in my 20s), for sure age is catching up with me so what the heck….

my childhood was spent in tanjung tokong, at a little road known as ‘jalan siput remis’, the road that is opposite the former RAAF base. well, when i was first there, the road had no name yet! of course way back then, the road was not as developed as the present road. the road then was a short narrow road, which did not cut through mount erskine road. vehicles cannot go through mount erskine via jalan siput remis, like what they can do now. at that time, there were only hills and jungle path at the part between jalan siput remis and mount erskine.

as a child, i remember playing games with my father like ‘congkat’ (indian checkers), checkers, and ‘seven stones’ (click on ‘jog over for more’ where i attempt to describe how the game ‘seven stones’ is played).

my father made the congkat himself. it was not difficult for him seeing that my father used to do some carpentry work for people. we were very proud of the specially made congkat that only we had. (pity it was lost when we shifted house 4 years ago). for seeds, we use seed from the ‘asam ko’ plant, which were easily available as one of our neighbours had the tree.

it was quite a sight to see my father the only adult, sitting on the floor with 4 or 5 children playing ‘seven stones’. my father usually won the game because he had such large hands to catch many of the stones! (the stones that you caught count to the points).

ok to read further on those good old days of mine, you may go to my yahoo groups yoursaymysay for the article ‘reminsicing the good ole’ days’ and also my post in sangkancil, ‘reminscing childhood’.

for explanation of the games ‘seven stones’, click on ‘jog over for more’.

SEVEN STONES – a game using stones (or variation of it) where you first throw all the 7 stones on the floor, then picking up one stone, you have to throw that picked stone up in the air, while you catch/scoop one (or more) of the stones that are on the floor, and quickly open your hands with the caught stones to let the stones in the air come falling down on your hands.

to made the game harder, the rule will be like one has to scoop 2 stones together, or the favourite play, to scoop a set of 1, a set of 2 and a set of 3 (6 stones all together, see, plus the one in the air = 7).

after scooping up all the 6 stones, with all the 7 stones in your palm, you throw all of them up in the air, and quickly turned over your hand to catch them on the back of your palm. and say if you manage to catch 4 stones, these 4 stones will count as your points IF you catch all 4 of them again when you turn over your hands again to catch them again on your palm. sounds complicated? well, i’ll try to explain in point form.

* with the 7 stones in your hands, throw them on the floor.
* pick up one stone which act as the ‘up in the air’ (UIA) stone.
* look carefully at the layout of the 6 stones on the floor. try to see which ones you can scoop up without touching the others.
* throw the UIA stone up in the air with your right hand (or left hand if you are left handed), pick up one (or more) stones on the floor, open your palm, and let the UIA stone fall into your palm together with the picked stone/s.
* repeat above step until all stones on the floor are cleared.
* with all the 7 stones in your palm ‘overturned’ them to catch them on the back of your palm.
* with whatever number of stones you caught on the back of your palm, ‘overturned’ them again to catch them back in your palm. be careful… the same number of stones here must be caught back to count towards your score.