and now, other games for shooters!

I never gave up spinning tops. Even after having my tops confisticated by dad, I went with my chums to other rendezvous in Malay Street or Victoria Street. But the toil to get there by foot in has put a toll on us. There has to be another more acceptable game closer to home, and I soon found it.... at age eleven.

Marbles!!.... yep, marbles.

Marble shooting is sometimes considered a harmless game... for sissies if you will. But once you get the wind of it, man you can surely get addicted.

We get to line up 10 to 20 marbles, 5 players with each putting out and equal share for a match. Then we go "one, two, som!" to decide who shoots first. Once settled, we take position and our turns 15 feet away and ...shoot! Each has a turn, but too bad if you're the last few shooters and those before you has already taken your marbles, and you're left with nothing to shoot...hehehe!

Each of us have what we called the "ling-gu" (a rolling buffalo). This is the King, the best roller with the best roundness, and it is the most most reliable shooter in your arsenal.

You never play marbles until you lose your "ling-gu" - that will be a total disgrace in the sport. We keep "ling-gus" separately and carefully, the other marbles are just the "infantry" for match shoot-outs.

You should see how we fine sandpaper a carefully  "chosen one" (the "lingu" marble) to give it the concentricity, to give best feel and to perform the best twirl in a shoot-out.

Of course, the game normally ends with some arguments, or worst cases - a week-long infection of grumpiness, or even instant fights! ....yea, fights (yet again)! and who says this is a sissy's game? This marble shooting stuff is a prelude to big fights! This is more so, if you have sore or bad losers in the game. Never mind the born losers. They don't complain.

The perception of kids then is to own as many marbles as possible by shooting wins. The more you have, the more "steady" ("cool", in today's lingo) you are. Sometimes "show-offs" will walk "clink-clinking" around the neighbourhood with bulging pocketful of marbles. That activity makes them look awesome! 

But we needed another activity that is not so cumbersome, ....so yet again we quickly found another sport that is very close to marble shooting. Sling-shots!...yea, sling-shots

...and those "infantry" marbles came in real handy! Our marbles became our slings' "bullets".

Sling-shooting is quite a game, and suddenly we're not looked upon as sissies any more. We have become more "macho", more "terror", more "mischievous", and of course now we look more like "phuay liu-wahs" - walking around like predators searching for their targets!

What target?... at first they were pigeons., and it was miserable watching 'em stunned or dead on the floor,  and fellow pigeons mourn their passing. Pigeons were easily found in Pitt Street and their owners always shooed us away. So, targets are not so many.


But crows.... crows don't have masters and they are scavengers. We were doing a public and the Penang City Council a big favour by shooting them down with our home-made sling-shots.

"There!.......there're six of them!"

Thik-Looku was so excited.... "THERE!!!" 

We took aims and upon the last count to three...and slinged it!!!!

"wHAM!" ..............x 6!

....well, one out of six ain't bad. This game is really something.

Meaningful results until of course, we break a few windows, and then run for our lives!!!...lest we want to be slugged!

....and what else to spin?

Tops!  ...of course.

That's one of the top games for kids in our neighbourhood.

But alas, some guys just don't grow up and they still keep their tops spinning at adulthood....and they alway "hurt" our tops!....

The tops we spun were not like those flat topped Kelantanese "gasing"....

 

Ours are hardword, rounded at the top half and conal at the bottom half with a nail....yes an iron nail extended from the conal base tip.

The purpose of the nail is to whip your opponents' tops "botak", ...crack 'em into halves if you will; or at least if you can, as much damage as possible to your opponents' tops in a "Top Fight" - it's a tough task for every kid wants to have his top's wood quality harder than the next guy!

We would wind a 2.5 feet rope starting from the base of the top at the initial protrusion of the nail tightly and from shoulder position release the top in various styles to get a good lasting spin....

....on the floor, or pull it back after half release to spin it on your palm...... .....ADA GAYA.

......or when it's your turn to "whip" your opponent's idle or spinning top on the floor in a TOP fight; you can with good skills acquired after several of your own broken tops experiences; you can..... make deep dents of your opponents' tops or even break them in halves.

You're already a "champion" when you can do that. In my short "top-spinning career", I only managed to do that once, and oh wow!...what a feeling!

Lil' sister Siewpoh also wanted to play tops, and Dad bought her, her very own fashionista top for the girls - a flat top like this one..

...and it was broken in no time, ....and her heart also broke at the same time.

"Sob, sob, sob, wah! wah! wah!"..... it was NON-S....Top!!!

The very next day, our tops disappeared - Well, by now you should know who's capable of that kind of that magic trick. Cheekiat and I are only quite capable of the Houdini trick - getting out of "Sure-Die" situations.

Yup, it was dad. Nobody else.

He has made a new one-sided rule in favour of the girls.. "No more tops.... no tops, no heart-stops" - what a spoil sport.

I had to find some "other interesting games", and I did found one, and I'll tell ya...

....and what is a weekend like?

The weeks just flew by in 1961.

Five days in school and happy weekends each week. This is the life. What made it even more enjoyable is that dad loves the movies. Dad loves english movies, so we get to watch some very fine classics of those days.

"Lang-chiar!", dad would holler and raise his hand to wave in the trishaw man each Saturday evening. Fully dressed to kill, mirror-finished leather "batu" shoes to boot, dad would hop in first, taking 80% of the seat. Younger sister will sit on this 240-pounder's lap and I had to be squeezed, like what you would do to a lemon, next to him. Cheekiat would sit on the foot resting platform.

"Kok Thye, how much?" (Kok Thye is Cathay cinema in Penang Road)

"30 cents, eh-boh?"....(30 cents, can or not?)..........ok, it was fine with dad.

Sometimes, some trishaw riders would refuse to accept as he will "die of heart attack" trying to manouvre up the steep slope from Kimberly Street to Penang Road with a gigantic tiger (Lau Hor) and his cubs in tow. Thirty cents is acceptable. This guy's honest and dad normally tip an extra 5 to 10 cents for honesty, although it's not a local custom.

People pack themselves to cinemas like sardines in a can on weekends. Some cinemas like Kok Thye are already air-conditioned, and movie goers prepare themselves with sweaters, pullovers, jackets and what-have yous, like they are going for a ski trip on the Swedish Alps...

Many cinemas were still not air-conditioned, like The Sun (now RockWorld), Majestic, Wembley (not that Wembley, ahem...) and others like Lido and Globe of the New World Park (...well, now it should be called the Old World Park, ....you know what I mean) and a standing-room-only cinema of the Great World Park (...well, now it should be called the Great Car Park of Komtar).

Apparently, just the cinemas were air-conditioned in those day of the early 60's. There were no supermarkets let alone shopping malls....only the hot and stuffy bazaars. No air-cond eateries. Even the pioneering air-cond hotels like Hotel Merlin (now Bayview) were still not constructed yet. Well everything was sooooo...HOT!

To buy a ticket to watch a movie in air-cond cinemas like Capitol, Rex, The Odeon or Kok Thye was something. Priviledged and coooool....so to speak. Those were the places to be.

I remember that among my first few movies with dad was Breakfast In Tiffany's starring Audrey Hepburn. The theme song Charade is so soothing and hauntingly melodious. Gets into your skin.... then there's Gone With The Wind, story about Scarlett O'Hara, absolutely wonderful storyline.

Dad liked musicals so as the weeks and and a couple of years that followed, we watched........ Flower Drum Song, 

West Side Story (still a hit now in Broadway),

The King and I, and many others....., even Elvis's Blue Hawaii, GI Blues and Jail-house Rock on re-runs in Lido. 

Man, those were the days!

Dad's favourite was Tarzan the Apeman's movies. He can name you all the actors who did Tarzan.

But I like James Bond... ...and I've lost track of how many and who did Secret Agent 007. Sean Connery is the only one who can act and live up to that billing as James Bond. I still think so. This was my first James Bond movie...

...hmm, and I liked Ursula Andress! She's so hot, as hot as a "nyonya"'s hot charcoal ironing stove was then....Ms. Money Penny wasn't hot, you know right?

After getting our tickets, we head for the candy bar - for the Smarties, Hacks, and pop-corns.

This kinda movie outings went on every week without fail, come rain or shine, until I was 12 years old! Dad must have had spent a fortune on us at the movies.

Yep, you can count how many movies I watched with Dad, but you can't add the number of movies I watched at weekend cheap matinees, and during the school holidays with my chums like Huan-chooo, Thik-looku, Too-boh and of course my brother Cheekiat.

To talk about movies, I think it's gonna be much more than a page like this. I can go on and on about movies, like forever. So I figure I should do an "intermission" at this point, and eat my "roti bak-knuah" (chinese pork burgers)                                                                                                               

See ya tomorrow!

....and what if it rains again?

Extreme apprehension.....

For 9-year olds, that's the feeling whenever it rained cats and dogs.

....and the feeling's worse if the sky gets completely dark, and the rain is accompanied by lightning flashes, and rumbling thunder; or a sharp, crackling and deafening sound of  ....KRRrrrrriiiiiiiiiAAAAaarrrrnnnG!!!!!..,

...Wah!!..missed. It missed!...almost hit us!

........and what do you do in times like this?

Definitely no kite-flying for me and Cheekiat, we ain't no Benjamin Franklin. But staying indoors with just the radio isn't fun, so we have always been quite prepared for such "events". We still have a number of pet fighting fishes in clean jam bottles lined up on the bathroom's window sill.

Yup, it's time to have fun with fighting fishes.....and yes, there's my pet fighting fish named Bobby! That's the one type that looked like him - a kinda chicken of a fighting fish with tiger stripes. In our fish-fighting fraternity, such chickened-out fish like Bobby don't deserve any worms for his meals.

I had always been peeved by those remarks from other chums like "Thiloo-koo" (botak, the bald-headed tortoise). Now it's time, show-time for Bobby to prove his mettle!

Cheekiat has some really good fighers, something like this one. They all look very ferocious and very colourful - always ready for a good clean fight in a good ol' clean jam bottle.

"Fighting fish again AAHHHH!", mum complained....

"Yesterday you flew kites, today you do fighting fish, what's next?", she was about to nag.

"Why don't you go do your homework, study or help clean the house?"......and applying a little trick from Roger the Dodger, we replied in consonance, "Finished already!!!!"     

Mum stopped to stare at us, she was a little annoyed. We looked at each other, giggled and decided that our next answer would be, "Yesterday!", should she ask when. But she didn't. She heaved a deep sigh and left to start a charcoal fire for her ironing chores.

          The show started......

Our fishes fought, ...and quite soon to my chagrin, Bobby lost. ....miserably.

The tiger stripes became much more pronounced and I soon became sick of Bobby and his incompetence in fighting. So I poured him from the bottle, and into the drain at "ji-luk" (the second hall) he went, -flushed away by the rain water that has begun to flood the air-well.

It's still raining, so the show must go on... More fights in the offing. Even the fighters from the Cheekiat's "stable" were lined up to "whup" each other. I have no more fighting fish and he still has 3 more. One ended up looking like this....

....and there is another fighter, this one........ 


....totally ravished after his fight, looking real glum, sad and sorry like this........

Soon, it's been a good 3 hours, the fights are over and the rain has stopped. It's 5:00pm. We cleared the mess, went out to the 5-foot way and looked into Carnavon Lane, then up to the sky. I lamented about useless Bobby, but Cheekiat quickly changed the subject.

He said, "Before it gets dark again, we still have a little more time to fly some kites!.......want to join?"

"WHAT?...again?..............go fly a kite AGAIN?"

Man, it was fun, real fun having a brother like Cheekiat.

....and let's go fly some kites!

Back in 1963, my neighbourhood schoolmate Huan-chooo told me that the idiom, "go fly a kite" is to "go take a hike!",

....and that means to "go away, get lost!...don't be a such a nuisance". He was quite right, although not quite living up to his nick-name. Huan-chooo means potato, and you know why he was nick-named as such. The malay equivalent "ubi kentang" meant the same thing.


So, sometimes I'd ask elder brother Cheekiat who's not so strong in English, to "...go fly a kite!" when I'm really pissed with him.

....and he did.

He actually did so on those hot and windy days. Fly kites.

I watched in horror (with palms over my eyes, blurring out my vision) as Cheekiat lost kite after kite from his arsenal... But he really enjoyed his "kites-fights".

His younger brother, however, really pitied his losses, his "wau puli" the smallest and cheapest kite at 5 cents/2pcs, his "wau katak", - the medium size kite shaped like a frog, (hence "katak") costs 10 cents a piece, and his large "tua-wau" at a minimum of 15 cents a piece,....must have cost him a small fortune.


Just imagine that 10 cents can buy you a bowl of Hokkien Mee in those days. How much would he have lost at today's prices in Penang?

....and as you now already know, "tua" means big in fujian, "Wau" mean kite in malay. Fujian lingo don't have the W in "Wau" (Malay lingo) pronounced, so those kites are called "aupuli", "aukatak", and "tua-au"!...and every kid in the neighbourhood thinks that they are original fujian words! Me included.

Early last year in 2009 when the global economy worsened, people tend to understand the idiom "go fly a kite" better. For instance take a look at this guy, a business man....

....flying his kite.

Our favourite kite flying spots then were in the "myriad" of backlanes, and in the compounds of the Penang Youth Center, Mesjid Jamek in Acheen Street and in Khoo Kongsi.. I never really lost many kites in "air-fights" like my brother; but as a poor kite-flyer, my kites  normally end up.....

Then brother Cheekiat will tell me, "You go fly kites lah!...it's better to lose those kites in air-fights!" He is begining to learn English fast; so fast that he is applying it perfectly to the right situation.

...and what else are up for rent?

Dennis can tell you this.....

Those days in the 50's and 60's, you can rent almost anything, not just bicycles.

You can rent for comfort - a room, a sleeping area, books, records, cable radio (that's Redifusion), an old fridge; a trishaw or a hand-cart with outrageous 2 x 6 feet diameter wheels, a hawker stall selling Hu (Fish) Uan (Ball) Th'ng (Soup) together with the ingredients, or an ice-cream cart on 3 wheels to eke out a living. The list goes on, though motor-bike & car rentals are hard to come by.

...and what is life without comics?....absolutely dull, drab and mundane! Are they up for rent? Yes, of course.

I was lucky to enjoy all the comics a kid would need in his growing up years.

Like this one, Dandy. Outside, there's Korky the Cat (yes, Korky!), who's real corky! Look at him up close,

Ain't Korky, cocky?...

The next page would be about Roger the Dodger. He's best at avoiding household chores, and therefore he always get into disastrous situations with his dad. He has his own "Dodge Book" which he uses to get out of tight spots. I like him. Such a great kid with so many "escape" moves.

Recently, I read that Roger's comic strip is still running, and yes, he still is 12 years old! But times have changed, so instead of his Dodge Book, he's got a Dodge-Pod now. And today, Dad sometimes asks Roger for help to dodge himself out of tight spots! The world is surely fast changing!

....and Roger now has a Dodge Clinic where readers & fans write in with their problem and Roger would find a way for the readers to dodge it (which would usually go wrong!). Roger then gives prizes to readers for best dodge moves!

Then on the third page, there's Desperate Dan - a legend of sorts. Man, he is so huge and strong!

There are also busts & statues of this comic book desperado in Europe today!..would you believe it!!!

Following pages would be about Beryl the Peril, yeah, the name says it all.

Some of the other characters are also fun, but I need to rewind, retro my mind. I may have forgotten some, but not that 2-Big front teethed Jonah - the sailor man who through his blunders on board, sink every ship he's on but can never be drowned!... He's always hopping on to another ship after sinking one, sometimes 5 or 6 at the same time! He's not quite like Popeye the sailor man and his lovey-dovey tales with twiggy Olive, or spinachy love-hate relationship with Brutus.

Then there's Dennis the Menace, forever having bad hair days, and mischievous in his trade mark black and red checkered jumper. You see this guy at the top! He's got movies of him, but the screen's Dennis sucks! Nothing like the original Dennis and his menacing pranks.

Man, I was lucky. My Ji-kor (2nd auntie) stays in Canon Street just a stone's throw from "Tua-kor" Lane, and she's got quite a big family. Lots of grand-kids (my distant cousins) there who liked comics. They never missed an issue of Beano & Dandy and it's excellent that they sometimes indulge in Beezers (another comic book) too.

That is only too convenient for me, for I can read them free of charge. Rent-free comics, like a rent-free motorbike or a rent-free car is almost a rarity in those days.

So thanks, Ji-kor. You helped a great deal to mould a kind of Roger here....I hate household chores!