Count ‘em all — with Pokemon
SINGAPORE — Jumping onto the Pokemon Go bandwagon, an abacus teacher started using Pokemon to teach seniors how to use the ancient calculating tool to count.
Ms Phyilly Wong, 50, made a metre-long abacus with 20 rows of Pokemon figurines two weeks ago. She bought the 100 plastic Pokemon figurines online for S$20.
Noting that some of the senior citizens in her abacus class had referred to the popular Pokemon Go game as “scary” or “dangerous”, the mentor with eldercare initiative Friends of the Third Age created the abacus to introduce her students to the characters.
“You can also play Pokemon,” said Ms Wong to her class of 17 senior citizens at Geylang Serai Community Centre on Monday (Oct 3).
One positive outcome was that her students have told her they now have a common topic to chat with the younger folks at home.
“I told my grandchildren that I also play Pokemon, and they think I am funny and ask me how I do it. Then I told them it’s on the abacus,” said Mr Wong Teo Kwang, 78, a participant in the class.
Ms Wong also teaches children abacus. To cater to their interest, she also made two shorter abacuses with Pikachus and Pokeballs figurines, which she will be using to teach her class of five- to six-year-olds how to count to 10,000.
She is, however, not a fan of the game — she can barely name two characters. Picking up on popular trends as something she can use in her abacus class is something she has been doing for the past 24 years.
By replacing the plain abacus beads with different items, she has made 1,000 unique abacuses to date. Two of them even made it into the Guinness Book of Records for being the longest abacuses in the world in 1998 and 2004.
The Soroban Education Centre teacher couldn’t explain her obsession in making these unusual abacuses, except that it gives her “great joy” and satisfaction to make them. She usually buys the figurines and drills holes into them, before putting them into an wooden frame to make the abacus.
“Whatever you can name, I would like to have it,” said Ms Wong.
A visit to her home will reveal an array of her creations, including abacuses themed around faeces, cockroaches, and the colourful personalities of General Election 2011.
Once, she even took a month to work on an 88m abacus that is longer than the Airbus A380, because the plane model was the talk of town in 2010.
“Abacuses have not gone out of trend. It stimulates your mind — you use your ears to listen, eyes to focus, hands to feel,” said Ms Wong. “Calculators, on the other hand, makes your mind lazy.”
