Fresh chickens

James Seah kindly sent me a video that showed market stall holders in Singapore selling fresh chickens. 'Fresh' nowadays means buying it pre-packaged from a supermarket. Then, it meant buying the chicken alive and taking it home with you and letting it run around the garden until you needed it! I remember coming back from Singapore on the bus with my mum on many occasions and there would be live chickens running around our feet, together with lots of other produce including huge fish wrapped in newspaper. It was certainly different from getting on a bus today! Our chicken always came already cooked and we certainly never brought home any live ones. Even then, I felt sorry for the chickens and all the other animals like the lobsters that would be swimming around in tanks in restaurants before being chosen by a hungry customer and then cooked. I wonder if they still do that?

The bus journeys always were eventful and apart from the wildlife on board, there were the continuous breakdowns which meant that the many passengers outside the bus, some just seemed to cling to the side, would jump off and give it a push until it went again. Then they would all jump on again. No wonder the bus broke down with all that extra weight! As I said in an earlier blog, nobody ever queued for the bus and everyone just piled on. I can't remember how everyone paid, I don't remember there being a conductor on the bus.

I remember all the smells and noise of the livestock too. As a small boy, I loved seeing all the chicken running around. It seems strange now but, in a way, I sort of miss it! I know that if we'd brought a chicken home when we lived at Jalan Wijaya, it would have probably ended up being given a name and left to run around the garden until it died of old age!

The removal of Change Alley

Like me, many of you will have fond memories of our parents bartering in Change Alley in the 1960s. I remember a stall holder would approach you and shake your hand and say, 'Where are you from?'. You could say anywhere in the world and he would say, 'Ah! I have an uncle there!' Once they got hold of your hand, they wouldn't let go of it until they'd successfully manoeuvred you into their shop! Anything that you wanted to buy would be there including clothes and electrical goods. You could also get local cash from the Indian money changers trading at Change Alley. There was also food, carvings, rattan work, toys, gifts and jewellery. I think a suit cost about 30 shillings and could be made up in several hours. Many servicemen went there for their uniforms. The Change Alley that we all remember disappeared in 1989. There's a news story in The Chronicle of Singapore which reads: 17th April 1989 Change Alley will be no more on 30th April. Shopkeepers and hawkers have been told to clear their stocks. They were supposed to have moved out earlier in April but have been given an extension following an appeal. According to the Urban Redevelopment Authority, demolition works will start in early May. Some hawkers have taken up the Environment Ministry's offer of vacant sundry and cooked-food stalls in existing markets and food centres. An entry for 2nd February 1994 reads: A Change-d Alley The new Change Alley was officially opened as an up-market shopping podium as part of a $600-million Hitachi Tower/Caltex House Development. Once a bustling lane of little shops crammed with money changers and Asian exotica that attracted sailors, tourists and bargain hungry Singaporeans, it now houses up-scaled brands like Anne Klien II and was designed for the professionals who worked in the area. When I went back to Singapore in December 1990, I went to Change Alley and yet the reports say that it closed in 1989 and didn't open again until 1994. That's strange, maybe I travelled back in time. And, when I told the man in one of the shops where I was from, he said, ''Ah! I have an uncle there!'. Uncanny!

Happy Chinese New Year

I think today is Chinese New Year so, 'Gong Xi Fa Cai', which translates to 'Wishing you prosperity in the New Year'. There seems to be various diffent spellings including, 'Kong Hei Fatt Choy' and I think I've seen others but they all seem to be pronounced the same. I think that this is the year of the tiger. The photo shows my dad and mum attending the Chinese New Year celebrations in February 1966 at KD Malaya. I seem to remember us all going up to the base in Singapore and there being fantastic firework displays but I think that this must have been on a different night to the Chinese Dinner and Dance that my parents went to. Perhaps it was on the same day as it always got dark at 7pm so maybe we left earlier before our parents' party began. As you can see, I still have the original invite which says that the party was on the 19th February, 1966 at 8pm. The evening included, 'Dancing to the Vigilantes', a Raffle, Spot Prizes, a Lion Dance and a Late Bar. There was also a Chinese meal which included Shark's Fin Soup, Satay Duck, Fried Rice and Ice Lai Chee.

I don't know what the last one is! I remember that when we first arrived at Jalan Wijaya, we were woken up by loud noises that we thought were gunfire. With the recent trouble with the Indonesians, my parents thought that we were under attack and that the noises were gunfire. It turned out that it was Mr Lee, across the way, letting off fire crackers for Chinese New Year. The fire crackers were very loud in those days and in subsequent years, they were banned. I probably slept through it all as, although I've been told the story many times, I don't remember any of it. I slept through the nearby rubber factory burning down too!

 

Bartering

I'm not sure if the market stall holder in this photo is telling the buyer what he can do with his offer or if he is asking for $2! Back in the 1960s, bartering was a way of life. You would start at about half what the seller was asking and between you, you would haggle to a price somewhere in between. This way both parties were happy. If you were unhappy with the price, you would walk off but you could always guarantee that the seller would call you back. Whatever the price was, you always felt that you got a good deal. The market stalls were great places for bartering as was Change Alley but it seemed that everywhere we went, they were happy to reduce their prices. When I went back to Singapore in 1990, I tried to barter again. I found that I was just laughed at, things had changed! People enjoyed trying to get a bargain and the locals expected it anyway so put their prices up to start off with. I remember when we first got there, my parents were looking for a table and chairs. They saw some they liked and asked how much they were. Sometimes, you would get ridiculously high prices because the locals knew that you had just arrived by how white you were! The reply was ‘Two Dollar Fifty, Missy!’ My mum was surprised and turned to my dad and said ‘Two Dollars Fifty!’, thinking it was very cheap. The man in the shop thought that she thought they were expensive and instantly reduced the price to two dollars! They couldn’t have made much profit in the shops because they always gave all of us a drink and if you didn’t have a car, they would take you and the furniture back home for free! I'm sure that many people got a bargain and there must be souvenirs from Singapore all over Britain because of this. Unfortunately, after 40 or so years, much of it seems to have ended up in charity shops!

Whatever happened to the monkeys in the Botanic Gardens?

This photo shows my mum, dad and me feeding the monkeys in the Botanic Gardens in Singapore in about 1965. I was scared stiff of them! I've probably written about this before but when I went back to Singapore in 1990, I wondered what had happened to all the monkeys that we loved feeding back then. In 1990, there wasn't a single one left. This morning, I received a lovely book from a good friend, James Seah in Singapore, called, 'Chronicle of Singapore 1959 - 2009'. James has his own excellent Singapore Blog which many of you will know called Blog to Express. The book is wonderful to read and it's very interesting to read not just the news stories of when we were there but also to read what has happened since. I think, within it's pages, lies the answer to the disappearance of all those wonderful monkeys. An entry for 1971 reads: MONKEY SHOOTINGS DRAW CELEBRITY PROTEST 23rd January,1971 Hollywood actress Barbara Werle and three friends staged a picket-line protest outside the Botanic Gardens against the culling of wild monkeys in the park. Police broke up the protest after half an hour. Werle and her friends carried placards which read: 'Please don't shoot the monkeys - feed them!'and 'Save the Apes - take one to dinner. Stop the killing'. She said she was moved to protest after reading a report about the two-day cull in The New Nation, an afternoon paper. In response, the Primary Production Department said the monkeys were a 'vicious and wily' nuisance that threatened public welfare and had to be destroyed. It added that the Botanic Gardens would offer a prize to anyone who could suggest a more practical and humane way to get rid of the pests. So, there you have it. It looks like all those monkeys that we enjoyed feeding nuts and bananas to, all that time ago, were eventually shot. I find this quite sad but I suppose it's what I'd thought had probably happened to them. There seems to have been no place for monkeys in the new, very clean, Singapore. I was reading about someone who had lived in Singapore in the 1960s and had returned in the late 1980s and found much of it unrecognisable. He said that he didn't want to return again because he felt that it would have changed too much since his last visit and he would rather remember it how it was. Perhaps many people feel like that. Singapore today is certainly a very different city to the one that I remember in the 1960s. The book is an excellent read and it solves many other mysteries about disappeared parts of Singapore that I've often wondered about. I shall be including a lot more from its fascinating pages later on in this blog, so keep reading. Thanks again, James, for an excellent book, it's very much appreciated.

Singapore Airlines advert 1960s

Here's a film sent to me by Hari Ramachandran which shows an advert for Singapore Airlines in the 1960s.
It features the music, 'Singapore Girl' and I believe that air hostesses with Singapore Airlines were called 'Singapore Girls.'
It's interesting because there's lots of shots of Singapore as it once was showing clips of Collyer Quay, Orchard Road, the boat Quay and Paya Lebar Airport.

There's also shots of trishaws and the black and yellow Mercedes taxis that we all remember. It's great to see Singapore as it once was including all the old buildings, the many sampans on the river, the many market stalls and also all the old cars.
I hope to include many more films like this later on in this blog which I hope will jog many people's memories of Singapore how it used to be.

Jalan Wijaya today

I've searched google many times before, hoping to find a modern photo of Jalan Wijaya, but with no luck. Recently, I put 'Jalan Wijaya' in the search box and discovered that there was someone on Facebook who now lives at 104 Jalan Wijaya! I was amazed to have found somebody who lived so close to us at 103 so I wrote to him and we soon became friends. It seemed incredible that I could contact someone living in our old street and it seemed a great opportunity to get some recent photos. Tan Chee Klong (CK) was happy to oblige and here's what Jalan Wijaya looks like today. The first photo shows our old house. This picture certainly brings back a lot of happy memories. Back in the 1960s, there were huge monsoon drains in front of the house with huge toads who would croak during the night. Many kids and even the odd car would end up down there. The photo also reminds me of cycling past, coming off my bike, and banging my head on the front gate. There are so many things that come into my mind looking at this picture - the many barbecues, our birthday parties, building dens, firework displays, watching the monsoon water rising closer and closer to the front door, our Amah Azizah (I wonder if she still lives close by?) and many, many more things. I remember when we first moved in and my parents hired a tv set. All the local Chinese children came and sat on the gate to watch it! The windows on the side were by our bedrooms and back in the 1960s they were covered in ornate railings. We used to leave the windows open at night because of the heat, I loved listening to the crickets, but there were reports of people with bamboo canes and fishing hooks trying to get stuff out through the open windows while people slept!

The second photo shows the view from our house looking towards Jalan Dato Sulaiman which is where all the shops were where we got our groceries etc. The first shop on the right housed an insurers who always had a monkey attached to their chain-linked door. The road was half the size back then and on the right was all grass. Women would cut your grass for $2 and used huge scythes that they swung over their heads. This was the area where I found a branch which I stuck in the back garden and it grew into a lovely tree. On the left, is Mr Lee's house, he must be long gone now. Of course, the skyscrapers and tall buildings are all new but I can still instantly recognise the area and it brings back so many happy memories. The third photo shows Jalan Dato Sulaiman where all the shops were that we regularly visited. The ones that I can remember back then were an insurers, a toy shop, the cold store (where we bought a packet of Sugar Smacks full of ants), a photographers and a hairdressers. CK tells me that the hairdressers and insurers is still there. I bet the hairdressers don't still do those crazy bouffants that they used to give women in the 1960s! The right hand side of the road used to just be covered in grass. There were often discarded old films lying there, thrown out by the photography shop. There were no high rise buildings back then and a lot more trees and greenery. Following this road back up, you eventually came to endless jungle. Of course, it's all be cleared now. Further down the road, was a rubber factory that turned out endless flip-flops. We must have got through a lot of them as kids! Thanks, CK, so many happy memories!