This article and several others were posted in another blog hosted by Blogcharm.com which is now closed down, so don't be surprised if you feel that it is familiar.
When I was a kid there were no video games,cybercafes and TV.I did not know how the town kids passed their spare times and never bothered to find out.Even without these entertainment outlets,we kampung kids had no problem to pass our spare times.In fact we felt that we did not have enough spare times! We had traditional games and pasttimes like tops-spinning,birds-catching,fishing,swimming,and of course, kite-flying.
We kids did not know how to make giant kites as the adults, we made simple kites instead.The kites we made were usually diamond shaped and split-bottom shaped ones.Though simple and small these kites can fly to great height and easy to manage,especially suitable for us kids.
The prequisition for kite flying is a sunny and windy day.Then find an open field clear from any high tension cables.There were many such places in our kampung.My favourite spot was the open space behind the school field.It was the favourite for many other kids too.You may fly the kite with the help of someone who will hold it high up and he has to wait for you to give the signal to let go.The coordination between the two fliers have to be good,otherwise the kite will wriggle down to the ground if it is released too soon due to lack of momentum.On the other hand,if the kite is released too late either the kite will be broken or the string will snap due to the tension created by you running at a high speed.Not that simple right?
Or,you may fly the kite solo.This is how you do it: lay the kite on the floor face up,then holding the reel of string and allow it run loose behind you while you walk to the othe end of the field.Here you would learn to find the optimum distance between you and the kite after trying for a while.When you are satisfied with the chosen distance,then run as fast as you can while holding the string high above your head.If you walk too far,the string will be too long and the slack would prevent the kite from getting up from the floor.If you walk too close,the kite would no doubt be able to take off easily,but it will not be able to sustain it height because the wind at low altitude is not strong enough to hold it alight.You need to allow longer string for to kite to reach greater height where it will embrace stronger air current and stay up there.
When the kite got up in the sky eventually, you still have to manoeuvre it carefully because it may somersault or nose-dive suddenly due to unexpected change of wind directions or air currents.It may also wriggle down when the wind weakens and you have to pull hard at it and wind up the string quickly to gain speed.However,when the kite has gone up higher and has taken up about a reel of string and starts to feed the second reel you may relax now.It will not get caught in any rooftop or coconut tree again no matter how it somersaults or nose-dives.But you still need to watch out in case it starts a series of somersaults or multi loops.
It was at this stage that I always let my mind drift looking at the kite high above and wondering what could it see in the surrounding villages and how far away was its view.It must be a lot different from our narrow views and short sightedness down here on the ground below.
It was not peace and quiet all the time,interference would always come from villages nearby.Kids from nearby kampungs would send up their kites to get entangle with ours on purpose.Then both parties would compete to pull back and to wind up the string,the quicker side will keep both kites.Sometimes these kids from other kampung modified their string by putting a layer of paste mixed with ground glass from broken light bulbs.Our ordinary string would snap when it came into contact with these modified strings,and we would lose our kites also.I don't think this is good sports,it will only create ill feelings among the races.
One more thing to watch out for is the sudden change of weather which is typical in our country.We had to race with nature to bring back the kite,sometimes we won,sometimes we lost.When we lost the kite would have a new cloth,but sometimes it happened so fast that the wet paper of the kite broke loose and the kite would drop like a stone and could not be retrieved again because it fell to a spot too far away.
It is all part and parcel of kite flying,it is the same with life,full of ups and downs.
