Games that I played as a child

Children now play Playstation games, computer games, gameboy, Lego and others. But games that I played when I was young were:

1. "Tiaw Pui Kee"

Using those short chalks we picked up from school we drew the figure below on any available cement floor especially at the kaki lima (corridors) of shops and hopped over the figures

The game starts with throwing a stone or bottle cap to square number 1. If the stone or bottle cap thrown ended up outside the square or touching the lines, the player would miss a turn.




we would then hopped from square to square in sequence, skipping the square with stone or bottle cap. That is to say, in the first set, we need to skip square marked 1.
And we hopped like this:




When hopping from square to square, no part of our body can touch the line. If we fell we must not touch the lines with any of my body like our hand . If we did , then our turn would be forfeited and the next player would start playing.

Then we hopped back like this :

The player who first finished the sequence on all numbered squares won that round.

After finishing the round, the player should go back to the starting position, turned his back , then threw the stone or bottle cap backwards on the playing court. The square where the marker fell become his “House”. The player could freely put any one of his feet on the “House” but no one else was allowed to touch the square; we had to skip the square except the owner of that "house". If the bottle cap or stone landed outside a square, the throw could be repeated.

As time went on there would be less and less square to step on as players rake ownership of their "houses", the game becomes more and more difficult after each round. The game ends when it becomes impossible for anybody to jump. For example, when all squares numbered 2 through 8 are taken up as “Houses”, the players must jump from square number 1 to the semicircle like below which is real difficult:

If nobody could do the jump, the game ended.



2. Rubber bands game



Rubber games is a simple game where we put a whole stack of rubber bands and then we stand behind a line and try to throw at those rubber bands. This is very much like throwing at those prizes in funfair nowadays . If the thrown rubber band touched that stack , you get to possess that whole stack or else your partner will "eat" up your rubber band. Sometimes I returned home happily with a whole bag of rubber bands!!!


3. Another game I played is Rope skipping . This is done by 2 persons, each holding the end of a long skipping rope made by joining many rubber bands together . They swung the "skipping rope" while a whole bunch of us skipped and sang this rhyme

Father mother I am sick,
go to the doctor quick quick quick,
hurriedly hurriedly turn around ,( then we turned around while skipping)
hurriedly hurriedly turn around , ( then we turned around in the opposite direction)
hurriedly hurriedly turn out and go.(then we get out from the skipping rope)
( WOW!! what a fun way to learn Ingrish)

3. Playing five stones game:

Monday: Threw all five stones on the floor . Whilst throwing a stone into the air, we picked up one stone ( 1 for Monday) and catch the thrown stone in the air before it fell to the ground. Repeat the process until all the stones were picked up in a single hand

Tuesday: Repeat above but now picking up two stones ( 2 for Tuesday) .

Wednesday: Repeat above but picking up three stones ( 3 for Wednesday) then picked up the remainding stone

Thursday: Threw one stone and pick up four ( 4 for Thursday) on the ground

Friday: Threw five stones ( 5 for Friday) and hit our palm on the floor , then quickly picked up allthe five stones before they fell to the ground

Saturday and Sunday: P/s I just can't remember how to play now. Hope some readers of my age can help me to recall that

Another version is seven stones :

Threw all seven stones on the floor. Then threw one up , picking up one. Then threw one up and pick up two . Then threw one up picking up three . While doing all these acts the stones are all in one hand which increases the level of difficulty in skills if your palm is small. If you were successful in picking up all the stones in that order , you get the chance to "weigh" the stones by throwing all the seven stones up into the air then turned your palm to catch the falling stones after you turned your palm . The number of caught stones is your points you scored for that game . The player who reaches 100 points first is the winner.

Come to think of it, our games of yesteryears were so interesting and so skilled based too.

Do you also play these games when you were young too?