Friday, January 21, 2011

Traditional Past Time Games With Upin & Ipin and Friends

My next card for today was sent by dear Lyan from the recent postcrossing meeting in Kuala Lumpur, held on 19.12.2010.
Have I told you that I LOVE getting meeting cards? Yeah, I have, I know...but I just wanted to say it again...they really feel special :)

And the card is just lovely....the image feels soo realistic and so vibrant!
These cards were published during the stamps week (at the time of the meeting), and they were inspired from local popular children TV show Upin & Ipin and friends, and each card has a matching stamp, representing the characters playing a traditional game (there are 6 different sets of cards and stamps altogether).
Ive never heard of Upin and Ipin, but here is a chance to learn something new.
And I got the card where they are playing Congkak, which is a mancala game played in the island of Borneo, Singapore, and Peninsular Malaysia. As the congkak board is shaped like a boat it is believed that it is based on the legend of a fisherman unable to go to the sea during rainy season who lost his income during this time. To prevent boredom he created this game which is similar to his boat. However, on the island of Java, the board often has a dragon head at each end and the sides of the board (which is made of wood) are carved to look like reptile scales.
The Congkak board has fourteen holes in two sets of seven, plus an additional store for each player. Each player controls the seven holes on their side of the board, and their score is the number of seeds in their left-hand store. The pieces are 98 undifferentiated seeds and the objective of the game is to capture more seeds than one's opponent.

Aaah, I LOVE board games....but it's been so long since I played one....seems like all the fun board games have gotten their computer counterpart, so everyone plays these games on the computers not on real boards and real friends....which is really a pity.

and here is the matching stamp....a self-adhesive one.  Just lovely, isnt it???

Thanks a lot again to Lyan for thinking of me during this meeting and sending such a lovely card!! 

1 comment:

imajica said...

yay my card :D
I used to play congkak and other board games alot when i was really young.. the good old days when we lived in countryside back then. it was fun! all those traditional games pictured in the stamps set seem to have disappeared with the existing of computers at home

Post a Comment