ice-cream man & tikam tikam

today i was assigned to relieve tini's mother tongue class. she had some work for her class of 35 to do - a comprehension exercise. as i handed out the worksheets, i tried reading the passage. with my limited malay, i managed to figure out that the passage was something about potong ice-cream. it brought back memories of my childhood days.

this kind and good-natured ice cream man would come around on his bicycle. the 'ring', 'ring' sound of his hand-bell in the afternoon announced his presence. he sold cut ice-cream held together by wafers or slices of bread. you could also have scoops in cones. i do not think there were many flavours. what drew us to his ice-cream bike was not so much the ware but the chance to win at a game of tikam tikam.

he had ten sticks with colour tips held in a small cylindrical holder. i think in the holder were five red tipped sticks and five blue tipped sticks. it was a very fair game. to win, you had to draw two different colour sticks each time, till you end up with five sets. alternatively, you could start with drawing a pair of the same colour. then, your subsequent pairs must be of the same colours. for example, if you started with two blue sticks, then your next draw must be either two blues or two reds.

i seemed to be lucky most of the times or maybe i was able to 'tell' the colour by feeling the stick because i won quite often. when you won, you would get your ice-cream and he would give you back the ten cents you paid earlier. he was a very fair man, always smiling, even when he did not get money/paid for the ice-cream.