One day, Ah Girl was cleaning out her cupboard when she came across her old toys - a skipping rope made out of rubber bands, a decorated ice-cream stick and a decorated eraser, as well as five tiny cushions filled with rice. As she looked at these treasures in her hands, she felt as if she was being whirled back in time to her primary school days...
"1, 2, 3, 4" chanted the girls as two of them swung the rope made out of rubber bands while a third girl skipped inside. A little way away another girl was jumping in and out of a rubber band rope in complicated patterns, while her two friends held it for her. Further on from them a third set of girls were playing high jump, skilfully using the elasticity of the rope to their advantage. Little Ah Girl sat alone under a tree. Nobody ever invited her to join and she never asked herself. Nevertheless, she knew every game by heart and practiced on her own at home.
"4, 3, 2, 1," she counted down under her breath. Brrring! The bell rang for the beginning of school. There was a mad rush as the children raced each other back to their classrooms. As they waited for the teacher to come, they got out their erasers and ice-cream sticks. It was a simple game; easy to play. The children played it with either erasers or ice-cream sticks. The aim of the game was to see who could 'eat' the other's stick or eraser, meaning the winner was the one whose eraser or stick landed over his opponent's.
Little Ah Girl was not so good with the eraser; she had clumsy fingers and couldn't flip the eraser skilfully so that it would land on her opponent's. With the stick, however, she was a champion in her own right. In the more unhygienic ice-cream stick game, only skillful spitting was required as touching the stick was not allowed. "P-uh, p-uh, p-uh". Little Ah Girl was very good at manoeuvring her stick by just angling her "p-uh"-ing direction. In three "p-uh"s, she had usually won the game.
Lessons started. Whenever the children were bored, they would play weiqi* with each other. Instead of a board and stones, they used only different-coloured pens and a sheet of paper with very small squares on it, torn out from a math exercise book. Little Ah Girl didn't like this game; she preferred to play noughts and crosses against herself. She was truly a sight to behold when she did this, however, because she would grin with delight when she won, and a split second later scowl because it inevitably meant that she had also lost. Of course, this made her very conspicuous, but as she was good at her lessons, her teacher usually let her be.
At recess time, while the children ran out to play, Little Ah Girl stayed back in class. She took out her lunchbox and her five tiny cushions filled with rice - what they called five stones or batu sembilan - and sat in quiet bliss throwing and catching them in various pre-set patterns. She had already played one round with her right hand, and was just beginning with her left...
... when her mother's voice, calling her from downstairs, broke in on her reverie. "Ah Girl ah? You finish cleaning or not? Lunch is ready!"
"Ya, ya, coming, coming!" she called back. She carefully put her treasures away into an old mooncake tin and hurriedly stuffed it back in the cupboard, then rushed downstairs for lunch.
*an ancient chinese game, more famously known as the Japanese game of go.
