How can I forget to post this To all Sarawakians in West Malaysia especially at the Klang Valley radius, you are cordially invited to join the Gawai Get Together Open House 2008 organised by Persatuan Warisan Sarawak KL.

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Whenever you landed at KLIA or LCCT, what do you think is a common sight of packages unloaded from flights that arrived from Kuching?

*** Note: Images captured from Nokia N6280 hence the low quality.

Pasu & Seramik Sarawak (Sarawak Potteries & Ceramics)

Terubok Masin (Salted Terubok Fish)

Bingkai Kain Pua Kumbu (Railing for Pua Kumbu)

Tikar (Kasah/Kirasu) Sarawak (Sarawak Rattan Mat)

Nicely folded

or … roll packed.

Tech Tags: kraftangan+sarawak sarawak+handicraft sarawak+souvenir tikar+sarawak sarawak+rattan+mat kasah tikar+rotan terubok+masin salted+terubok pua+kumbu bingkai+pua+kumbu pasu+sarawak sarawak+pottery sarawak+ceramic

I’ve been busy with office work during the day and in the evening, with my other newly setup website. Apologies for the quiet activities in headsteadi.com.

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Remember my posting on sago worms? If you don’t harvest the worms in time, it will evolve into a beetle, called mehu in Bidayuh. When I was a little boy, I always looked forward to catch one of these beetles. I would tie one of its legs with a thin string and tie the other end of the string to my fingers. Back then, it was fun watching the beetle flew around while you control it from that piece of string. It’s more fun when you have a few of these beetles tied to your fingers.

There were no remote control car, PlayStation, computer games, internet or as such during my time so these were the sort of entertainment.

Let’s try to remember what we used to play or do as kampung (village) boys:

1. I remembered every boys in the kampung had a slingshot to hunt birds and squirrels. During fruit season, we would use the slingshot to shoot durian or mango fruits to the ground.
2. Play war games using bamboo gun with wet newspaper or blackpepper seeds as the bullets
3. Play war games using wooden gun with lighted matches as the bullets
4. Play rounders and triangular slippers in house or school compound
5. Throw colourful rubber bands into a target in order to become the biggest collector of those bands
6. Rubber band skipping instead of rope skipping
7. Marble game was played by hitting opponents’ marbles. At the end of the day, when you managed to capture all your opponents colourful marbles, you’re considered a “rich man”.
8. Hide and seek
9. Hopscotch
10. Diving while shooting fresh water fish in the river
11. Fishing with our babuk (grandfather)
12. Ne-en iju (trapping fish) with our amang (father) during flood or tide season. When you’re lucky, terrapin or snake would end up as the harvest.
13. Metek kito (Literally translated as glueing or sapping birds. Sap from a tree called meran produces a very strong adhesive. The sap is spinned on a piece of stick the same way we spin cotton candy. These sticks are then pierced to banana or papaya trees and when small birds fly to the fruit it gets stucked to the glue.)
14. Ne-en pijara to trap squirrels.

Just to name a few, and the list goes on. It’s sad children nowadays wouldn’t know many of these anymore Miss the old kampung days.

Tech Tags: kampung+boy toys games activities sago+beetle

Contributed by baluirayang ak.a. Babuk Andrea

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Gawai Dayak 2007 is celebrated this 1st June. It was officially gazetted on 25th September 1964 as a public holiday and was first celebrated on 1st June 1965. It is a symbol of unity and entity for the Dayak community and is celebrated as a yearly Dayak Festival. Since then, it becomes an essential part of Dayak traditional and cultural life, and is a day of thanksgiving to mark successful harvest.

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