Field Trip Activity

We were headed to the Art Gallery Petronas in KLCC on last Wednesday and I was thrilled because that was my second class trip I had gone to since the last one I had was when I was 11 years old and odd enough, the first trip was to KLCC as well, only my school went to the Petrosains.

Anyway, for the second blog post, we are required to answer two out of four questions given out by our lecturers regarding the trip. I would be choosing the questions A and D.

 

Question A: The title of the exhibition is #tanahairku. Why do you think it is titled as such? Based on all the items available for viewing, do you think this is an accurate or appropriate title for the exhibition? Why or why not?

Answer: The people at the art gallery have chose the perfect title for the exhibitions that were shown at the gallery. It shows all there is being a Malaysian. I am not politically inclined but these recent years, things have been hard in Malaysia. Especially after living the school where we normally sings the Negaraku everyday during the assembly (in my old school, we have to sing it everyday) and now I can only hear the national song being played on national televisions before they end their transmission. What I am trying to say here is, it sort of sparks the Malaysian in me to see all the art exhibitions there and the title is somewhat very sentimental and to answer the question, yes, it is very accurate and appropriate.

 

Question D: Many sections of the exhibition use objects from the past to evoke a sense of nostalgia in the audience. Take a photo of any object in the #tanahairku exhibition that held some nostalgic significance for you. Tell us why this object is significant to you.

Answer: There is quite a number of traditional games shown at the art gallery. The ones that I’ve played was congkak (which I lost), dam (lose the game too) and teng-teng. I grew up in a neighbourhood where there are not many children around my age. Even if there were, we ended up playing at the playground and played tag most of the time but there is one time in my childhood where I would go back to my father’s police quarters where my mother used to held tuition classes for the kids there, that was when I get the chance to play lots of traditional games and one of our favourite game was the teng-teng. I would say this is my most nostalgic object because I did not get to play it elsewhere other than at the police quarters and at school (around the age 7-9). After that age, we kids started playing a lot more ‘grown up’ games like the batu seremban or galah panjang. Teng-teng to us is like a game where only little kids play. It was fun but when you grow a little bit older, it gets boring because the game is simple. You just have to hop with one leg and pick up the pebble that landed on any of the spot, and hop your way back to the starting line. Nostalgic because I only get to play for a short brief of time. I did not care how old I am right now when I saw it was being exhibited at the gallery. I played it with Pruso and we taught Aiman how to play it since he claimed he has never played it. It brings back all the good memories I had when we drew the teng-teng on the floor with chalks we stole from the school.

TIME CAPSULE

Technologies have indeed help the human race in moving forward in all sorts of ways that includes searching for information, navigating to a place and also provides us with all sorts of entertainment like music, movies and games.

However, there are certain things that works better without the need of a device that is best work with technologies and such things are like books and games. Undoubtedly, there are many ebooks and games apps that are available on any smartphones, tablets and computers. It is definitely convenient to have all the games and books you want in one device but there is just something that I personally feel that is better without having to read it or play it thru my device of choice.

As for this time capsule project, I would like to contribute one of my favourite childhood game, batu seremban. This is a not-to-missed game to play when I was in primary school (and even up to high school too). It is simple yet challenging. You either need to have 5 soft pebbles or stones or even sewn cloth filled with saga seed, to play. Although it looks simple, for the untrained hands, you will find it difficult to balance all 7 stones on your hand and then to play it according to its level. Although there are 5 stones, there are 7 different levels and each level is harder than the first.

Although the name derives from a Malay word, I can assure that all the races in Malaysia would have played this back when they were in their schooling years. However, this game might only be popular among the girls (since I attend an all-girls school) but there is no problem for boys to play it.

I do not know if this game is still being played by the Gen Z but Batu Seremban is definitely a traditional game of Malaysia and it should be evergreen and passed on to the next generation.

Thus, the item that I will be putting in the time capsule is the Batu Seremban (along with notes on how to play or the people of the year 2120 will just wonder why are there 5 stones in the time capsule). My hope is that the kids (and probably the adults) of the 22nd century will enjoy the game.