Mum let me rest for a day

I was living in a fishing village when I was small. My dad was a fishmonger who would cycle to the housing estates to sell his fish and prawns. At that time, I was given only five cents per day for my breakfast which was a plate of fried mee. I would wait for the canteen man to finish frying his noodle before I dared to buy a plate from him. It had to part with my five cents when I got my food.

To help out the family, my mum would prepare jelly for me to sell in the village. It went on until I had to sit for my LCE (Lower Certificate of Education). On the eve of the exam, I begged my mum to allow me not to sell the jelly so that I had some time to prepare for the exam. She reluctantly agreed. Imagine how precious the time was when I used it to increase my chances of passing the exam. Luckily I passed and was promoted to Form 4.

Come to think of it. I really envy modern day kids who have all the time to themselves, yet they spend it playing computer games or fooling around when they should be studying.

Where you can download movies

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To download movies, you need a good downloader. I think 'Thunder' is quite efficient and fast. This downloader can be downloaded from the Internet.

Happy downloading your movies.

Childhood memories of activities before Xin Nian

Today is the 15th day of the eleventh moon according to the lunar calendar. It means the Chinese will be ushering in Xin Nian or Chinese New Year in one and a half months' time. Right now, I can see people start selling angpaus (red packet containing money to be given to children who have not got married by parents and elders).

Spring cleaning is one of the activities before Xin Nian. It signifies the discarding of old and unwanted things to make way for new ones to come. I still remember how I helped my parents clear all the cobwebs below the attap roof of our old house. (When I was small, I lived in an attap house the roof of which was made of nipah leaves and spiders like to build their cobwebs beneath it.) We used bamboo leaves tied to the end of a long bamboo pole to do the job. Sometimes it was a tear-shedding experience when cobwebs fell onto my eyes. Blinking the eyes induced more tears to flow out from the eyes.

Then it was time for making cakes. I would be given the task of folding kuih kapit (a crispy thin slice of cake made of flour, eggs and coconut milk). It is very 'heaty' (which can make our temperatures go up and suffer fever-like condition and we need to drink cooling tea to keep the body temperatures down) and I dare not consume too many pieces of this Xin Nian delicacy. Another cake we made was the kuih bengkak (a starchy cake made of starch and eggs). The dough would be rolled to form a thin layer and I would be given the job of cutting with a metal mould in my hands. These cut-out pieces would then be baked in a earthen pot filled with sand on which a piece of paper was placed covered with a piece of metal on which glowing charcoals were placed. The heat from the top would reach the pieces of dough to bake them.

Now that I have shifted to the house I bought myself, I did not have to use bamboo leaves to clear away cobwebs which are not there anyway. We just dust or vacuum the ceiling. As for making Xin Nian cakes, we resort to buying them from the market where people are too willing to make them for sale because it is quite troublesome doing so.

Making my own toys

Whenever I pass by the stalls selling toys, I like to look at the modern toys. They often come with motors that can move the arms and legs of boys or girls who sing or say something repeatedly thanks to the chips which have been pre-recorded with songs or spoken words. As for birds, they will move their heads just like real ones and chirp incessantly. Technology plays a part in modernizing toys such as these. I did not enjoy such toys when I was young.

When I was a boy, I did not buy toys. My toys were home-made because I made my own tops and kites. As for the wood for the tops, I cut one of the branches of the guava trees. I shaped the tops with the help of a penknife. To smoothen the surface, a broken glass was used. I made kites using bamboo strips and kite paper which could be bought from a grocery. Then I would draw pictures on my kite. The string was coated with pounded glass with the help of melted hide gum. In this way, I could compete with my friends because the string was sharp enough to sever the string of my opponent's kite.

I liked to play the harmonica

When I was still a boy, I liked to play the harmonica. It was quite easy to play any song I fancied with it. All I needed to do was to slide by lips to the left and to the right to produce the music. By trial and error I was able to play the songs I was familiar with. This musical instrument needs blowing and sucking air as our lips move from one tiny compartment to the next.

If you give me one harmonica now, I suppose I can still produce the songs that I know.

My five-cent breakfast

When I was studying in a primary school, I enjoyed tasting hot fried noodle sold by one middle-aged man who sold it at the canteen. I would be waiting by his side, ready to savour the first plate of fried noodle that he handed to me as the first customer. After handing him five cents (can't imagine what you can buy with five cents nowadays and worse still the beggar also refuses to accept such a meagre amount of money), I went to the long table and pulled out a stool to be seated. This plate of fried noodle was my daily breakfast then.

Nowadays, children are given a few ringgit to school so that they can buy enough food to fill their tummies to last for the half day that they are in school.

How I learned to ride a bicyle.

I still remember the big bicycle my father used to carry the fish from place to place to sell. That very bicycle became the first bicycle I used to learn how to ride a bicyle. As it was very heavy, it took me great effort to push it around.

At that time I was about 9 years old. It was too high for me to sit on its seat. Hence I learned to cycle by placing my right leg on the right pedal through the space of the triangular iron frame and my left leg resting on the left one. I did not know how I managed to balance it but the bicycle was moving slanting to the ground, being 45 degrees from the ground, I suppose.

How I envy children nowadays who can ride bicycles specially made for their height and convenience.

English helped me learn Malay

It is interesting to study a language. I liked to study Malay when I was in primary school. At that time, my cikgu (teacher) was a Malay man. In order to learn the meaning of a certain word, I always said, "Cikgu, what is the meaning of (the word I want to ask him)?" He would tell me the meaning in English. Then I would go home and look up my English-Chinese dictionary for the meaning in Chinese. In this way, I accumulated quite a number of words in my vocabulary. There was no such thing as writing an essay then. So it was mainly learning how to pronounce the words and knowing their meanings. My interest in Malay stays with me until now. I will definitely look up the meaning of any new Malay word whose meaning I am not sure of in my Kamus Dewan (the official dictionary by Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka).

Betting using sugar canes

In my earlier I mentioned that I went with my father to side of the temple to sell things to people who gambled there. These people even used sugar canes to bet.

Two of the people would bet on whose sugar cane has the longest strand in the middle after being snapped. The loser will pay for the winner's sugar cane. My father or I would cut half way down in the middle of the sugar cane. Then each of them would snap his own sugar cane. After that they would compare the strand that stood out in the middle of the sugar canes to determine who won.

The belangkas game

When I was still in the primary school, I used to follow my father when he pushed his tricycle to sell things in the village. On his tricycle would be put sugar-canes, candies, jelly and fried bean curds. We would usually go to a Chinese temple because a gambling group would gather by the side of the temple. The gamblers would play ‘belangkas’ (king crab), a die with cylindrical stick in its middle and made to spin. On the four sides of the die one could see pictures of a prawn, a fish, a flower and a king crab. There would be a piece of paper with four columns placed in front of the ‘chong’ (the person who pays the gamblers who win). The four pictures drawn were the same pictures on the die. Gamblers would place their money on the column they liked. The ‘chong’ would spin the belangkas die and when it stopped, the picture on the topmost would determine the winner. Suppose the picture is prawn and you place one dollar on the column with the prawn picture on it, you will be paid three dollars. Sometimes my father allowed me to play a small amount such as ten cents.

Gamblers were allowed to place their money in between two pictures such as prawn and fish, fish and flower, and flower and king crab. They will get only get half the amount of money if the belangkas stops with any one of the two pictures where money is placed topmost. Suppose you place two dollars in between prawn and fish and the belangkas stops at fish topmost, you are paid one dollar by the ‘chong’.

I wonder whether people nowadays still gamble this way.

About my father

My father passed away in 1966 at the age of 55 when I was still in Form 3. Studies have shown that children have no memory of what has transpired before the age of 5. Hence what I could recollect was what I could observe after the age of five.

My dad had dark skin, tall and stern-looking. He was a fish-monger who sold fish from house to house. He put the fish, newspaper and weighing scale in a big rattan basket which he tied to the rear carrier of his big bicycle. Then he cycled to several places to sell his fish.

The big basket was the place where dad put my brother and me when he took us to an Indian barber for a hair-cut. We really enjoyed the ride.

My dad knew quite a lot of Chinese words because he was taught by a teacher personally as was the practice long ago. From him too, he learnt of a way of dissolving fish bones stuck to the throat. Neighbours used to come to my house for treatment by my father when fish bones got stuck in their throats. My father would take out a cup, pour some water in it and point his little finger to the sun after which he would start drawing with the same finger in the water. The patient would then drink the 'treated water'. Miraculously their fish bones would disappear after a while.