Things We Did...All Those Years Ago

I have just read an entry in my brother's blog. It was about the floating lanterns recently banned in Malaysia as it was alleged to cause hazard for air traffic. What really rekindle my memory were his last paragraphs where he told the story of us burning crumpled newspapers so that the trapped hot air caused the paper to float upwards and back down with a fiery glow (potential fire hazard, right?) and that our mother never knew about it (that is until our sister read the entry and reported back to her!). Well, that was not just one act of misdemeanours when I was a kid...there's a number of them, really.....

Pompeii Writ Small

When I was a kid, my late father planted a jackfruit tree. The tree later became the home for a couple of colonies of kerengga (a large, biting ant). The ant soldiers were a constant threat to me whenever I tried to sweep the dried leaves on the ground. So what did I do? Spray them with insecticide? Bah! That's conventional so I tried something exotic - melted plastic from discarded pails and basins. I burned off one of a large shard of plastic so that the melted plastic fell to the ground, incinerating any unlucky ants caught underneath it. Certain plastics even melted like raindrops - making my extermination efforts much easier! Then I got even more, uh, sadistic.....Instead of attacking the ants on the ground, I attacked their nest (or is it hive?). The kerengga made their nest by folding the jackfruit leaves so that the nest is protected from the elements, leaving only one entrance for them to get in and out. So, I fill up the entrance with chipped wax (or plastic, but I usually use wax), light up a match or a candle and place the flame underneath  the nest.... Then I open up the nest and got a thrill looking at the dead ants, entombed in wax (or plastic)...... just like the victims of Vesuvius in Pompeii....

Flamethrower

On every pressurized can was the warning to not to dispose off of the can in fire. Yet that still didn't stop me from burning discarded insecticide cans! Originally 'discovered' by accident while burning the trash (which was my usual chore at home), I tried to create the same effect whenever a can was discarded. However I took a rudimentary (ineffective really) safety precaution. Instead of placing the entire can in the fire, I just place the spraying nozzle in (so that the fire will melt the nozzle - then igniting the residual propellant and oil-based insecticide, without increasing the pressure inside the can, or so I hoped). I then retire to a safe (perhaps not) distance, wait for a few seconds and out came the flame from the can, complete with the 'whoosh' sound a la military flamethrowers!

Mortar

Nowadays, even many of the Chinese find the firecrackers annoyingly loud and a nuisance. The last Chinese New Year was relatively quiet compared to 20 years ago. Then, it became a virtual battleground with sounds of 'machineguns' and most annoyingly 'aerial bombs'. So did we make a police report? No! We decided to get even. So during Hari Raya we bought mercun roket (the larger ones which gave 'pom!' sound rather that the smaller 'pop!' one). These fireworks were intended to fly straight up but we decided to angle them so that they will fly on a low trajectory, exploding on top of the particularly noisy neighbour's house (during CNY) as a form of 'revenge'. Apart from launching the fireworks at a slanted angle, I also made a 'launcher' for them using a 2x4 board on which were attached a 3/4" plastic pipe and shorter pieces of wood. I originally intended to use this contraption as a 'bazooka' but decided not to and instead using it as a 'mortar'. Apart from fulfilling its mission as a Vergeltungswaffe, I also got a kick from hearing the 'whoosh' sound as the fireworks made its way through the pipe.....

There are number of other naughty acts we did as children but I simply cannot recall them at the moment.....