My Adventure of Reliving an Adolescent Pastime

On my drive to work this morning, and while channel surfing like I always do in order to ease the boredom of getting stuck on the Sungai Besi bottleneck, I happened to chance upon FLY FM’s call-in competition. It seemed that the competition involved contestants to battle it out using the Rock-Paper-Bird technique.

The winner will be given the chance to get their filthy hands on a sweet new Nokia phone or something to that effect. Cellular incentives aside, it was a wonder how the said station could take a common adolescent pastime and turn it into a radio competition.

Anyways, this particular bloke on the show was a wee bit slow (in reflexes or in the head, or both) and kept shouting out his choice of element, ages after his opponent’s

For those of you who have been on a different planet all this while, the mechanism of the said game is simple; simple and common enough to the extent of not having me explain the whole bloody thing to you.

Standard practice provides 3 elements/weapons for each player (two players’ only la, more than two, the Lat Ta Li Lat technique shall be utilized);

#1. Rock (or Stone): a clenched fist.

#2. Paper (or Cloth or Water): all fingers extended, palm facing downwards, upwards, or sideways (thumb pointing to the sky).

#3. Bird: a half closed fist, oval in shape ( or Scissors: forefinger and middle finger extended and separated into a "V" shape (not too be confused with the sideways, upwards reversal and a constant jutting motion with the shout of ‘Up Yours, Chelski/Manc/Gooner!’)

Owing to the wonder of modern day technology, a click of the mouse reveal that people in other countries too play this particular game, although with different variations of the ‘elements’. Some have slight variations, others… I’m too afraid to ask.

In Sweden the game is called sten, sax, påse (rock, scissors, bag). The gestures are the same - the flat hand is considered a bag, you can put the rock in.

Burma has the soldier, sergeant, tiger version. Tiger eats sergeant; Sergeant outranks the soldier, while the latter shoots the tiger. This technique was once demonstrated by a Burmese friend with hilarious consequences.

Japan has the village head, tiger, mother of village head. How in the hell do you sign, ‘Village Head’s Mother’?

Even in an ep of the That 70’s Show, Hyde and Fez duked it out using : Foot, Cockroach, Nuclear Bomb. Foot beats cockroach by smashing it, nuclear bomb beats foot by blowing it up, cockroach beats nuclear bomb by surviving the blast. Go figure.

Now wouldn’t be nice now to be able to use in our working adult lives.

“Ok Encik, Kita lawan Oh Som, kalau saya menang, loan saya approve.”

“Ait, takde hal”

"Pakai mesingan mana aci, En. Hurnain"

Ah, bliss.