Reminiscing - 2...Ice Balls & Braised Duck

Black and white television brings with it the simplicity of life much like the portable radios of the time and where only the men go out to bring back the beacon and the women folks handled the workload of a home affairs minister. Spoken dialects on TV, radio and especially on advertisements were actually quite amusing and interesting.

Amazingly, there weren't many skirmishes and fights over TV rights (who has the right to select the preferred channels) considering that a typical family unit living together in the same house would probably consist of the patriarch, two married children and their families with children in toll, a couple of brothers and sisters living in a two bedroom home with a single toilet if you were lucky. A single toilet where you would do your business, shower and wash your clothes. Go figure how things work out.

Precisely because of the small confines of home, the adults would frequently encourage or allow the children to go out of the house to play. That was when our playground was endless - from the fields nearby to a neighbouring kampung. Catching fish in longkangs (drains), climbing trees, getting all the sights and sounds amid the fauna and flora with the cacophony of noises from quacking ducks as they marched past or chickens roaming about and the confusing smells and aroma of nearby drains and a coffee shop's fresh brew titillating your senses. Plucking fresh fruits from granny's place or collecting freshly-laid chicken eggs at a relative's place, catching and playing with fighting spiders or fighting fish and then aptly naming them as your first king, second king, etc. were some of the weekend or school holidays adventures. I am not surprised that some children today may think that chickens grew from a plastic bag at a supermarket.

Before the ice kachang of today, we had the old time favourite ice ball which was basically ice kachang but with the shaved ice wrapped around red beans in the middle and syrup dripped all over the shaved ice. We have the road side stalls selling Yong Tau Foo and various foods including fishball noodles where the hawker would go about the neighbourhood knocking on some bamboo instruments and collecting orders and all these food hawkers were without licence from MOE let alone ratings. We must have our fair share of dirty food and survived to tell the tale. Meanwhile, I felt compelled to share with you that Marina Bay Sands and Sentosa are not our very first casinos contrary to popular belief - the duck seller who peddled their braised ducks house to house were among the first toying around with dice to gamble for a duck. I wondered how he fed his family if he had lost lock, stock and barrel.