15 November 2007

This Used To Be My Playground

We used to play here. It was near the block where my gandma stayed. All landscape that you see in the picture are gone now. This was our "kampung". On any festive occassion, all the relatives would gather at my grandparents' place. The adults would play socialise over mahjong, coffee or talk about whatever topics adults talked about. The children would gather downstairs and play. Once in a while, an uncle would showoff his camera and snapped pictures of us. I suppose this was taken during the Chinese New Year period or we wouldn't have dressed so nicely.


Notice the drain on the left? My cousin and I would arm ourselves with slippers or sticks when night falls. We would scout the drain for cockroaches and *smack*... NEA would have been proud of us :p

Also, note the phone booth and the phone inside. That phone was the second generation. I can still recall the first generation is a green phone with dialling disc... yes disc and not pad. The type where you need to dial the numbers one at a time... to let the disc roll back before you can dialthe next.

If I do recall clearly, we were the only children that roam this place frequently. There were a couple of households with less than a handful of children staying in that block but none of them managed to gather as many children (or grandchildren) as my grandparents. Games we used to play include Catching, Tua Beh Long (Big Road), Zero Point, Hop Scotch and a lot more. The eldest chap in the picture is my brother...the eldest grandson. He was the one who came out with most of the games. A very innovative person who improvised games and tools with used items.

We had so much fun and now we've all grown up and most of us are parents ourselves.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

err,... are u the one w/ the brightest smile on the face?

little gecko said...

Koaz.., yeah, dat smiley face one sure looks like dat great ape!! April is sooo observant!

Oh great ape, how come you no join NEA wen ya came out to work? Sure get promoted to chief pest buster one... kekekeke....

Anonymous said...

I guess you both chose the most cheeky looking one!!! :lol:

Ape said...

Yes... I smile a lot in the past. Was given a nick... Darkie (as in Darkie toothpaste) it's called Darlie now. This pic doesn't show my beaming teeth though.

Well, I'm a roach buster... busted quite a lot. Now NEA more concerned about mozzies of which I have no relevant experience :p

The Frog Prince said...

Oh i tot its the one up in the trees! Ahhhh i am wrong... so wrong :P

Piccy looks so retro!

Ape said...

Nice hor... the picture.
BTW, the coffeeshop open liao and the tau huay is stll there!

The Frog Prince said...

OH gosh! Time to visit it again! Anyway hor.. froggy nexture ict on 20th May to 6th June. Make your evening free hor, mr or lang bor tung.