ZING'S GREEK ALPHABET RECITATION

Zing Ching held his finger to his mouth and bit them hard. Yaws laid irregularly on his forearm some inches away from his face which brightened suddenly.

‘Xi, is the fourteenth letter of the Greek alphabet,’ he said with a smile.

‘Well done, Zing,’ Master Quan said, making sure to avoid contact with Zing’s hand, ‘now we will move to the fifteenth letter which is?'

Vaguely, Zing stroked his hair and dug into the bald patch as if the answer lay in there. Underneath him, the grasses tapped a silent rhythm to accompany the wind’s soundtrack for poor Zing’s intellectual adventure.

Tick-tock, the hand of the clock went. Silently, Zing ruminated in his mind but the fifteenth letter did not surface. Red eyed, he looked at Master Quan who shot him a ferocious look. Quietly, he repeatedly muttered the first fourteenth alphabets but could not get the link to the fifteenth. Patting his cane, Master Quan stretched and Zing knew it was just a matter of seconds before the cane landed on him.

‘Omicron.’ Nervous Zing managed to say. Mighty luck on his side otherwise his body would have had the tale to tell. Little seemed mighty as the remaining nine alphabets floated invincibly in Zing’s memory.

‘Kindly go on, Zing.’

Just above, the clouds came together forming the alphabets but Master Quan did not see it because he was fiddling with his cane at the time. Intuitively, the leaves waved, attracting Zing’s curious attention. Hurriedly, he called out the letters as they were formed.

‘Good student,’ Master Quan retorted. ‘Fine job you did remembering the twenty – four letters of the Greek alphabets.’

Eager to get away, Zing did his bow quickly. Dear Master Quan wasn’t through with him yet.

‘Can we have the twenty-four alphabets again, but this time using them in words?’

But Zing had only crammed the alphabets and was looking at the sky as his only hope out. A blank sky and a blank mind, what a combination!