Olden Days Time

Families live simply

We and 3 other families live with my grandma

It was the 'family'  house - none of the above families own their own house even though each family also have 4-5 children .

How we forget and think that home ownership is so important.

We and another family start to move out when the government start to build affordable flats for the people.

Finally the Landlord took back the leased land and compensate my uncle for their 'family' house.

As a kid , we walk miles to school passing a village where the locals don't even have their own tap water and could be seen filling buckets up from the free public taps provided in the village square.

We have to cross a canal that only have a log across it . On rainy days it was quite frightening and we walk through a more prosperous district to get home .This other way was another 1/3 longer in length hence not often use by us.


For primary school recess , we will given 20 cents daily for food and drinks.

I guess some dishes only cost 5 or 10 cents but at no time did we ever feel deprived.

Likewise for secondary school I was given 50 cents a day and for pre-university a monthly allowance that I managed myself - maybe $50 .


We wash our own school shoes every weekend . They were white shoes as required wear and we paint it with some polish after washing to get the white look.

Our entertainment was never the computer - not even invented then.

We play five stones, hopscotch, paper dolls etc

My uncle bought a black & white TV when we were in primary school - the neighbour kids will come & watch a show with us every afternoon  for an hour or so.

Nobody got a color tv for a very long time to come.


Nobody ate out too frequently , only the occassional wayang food or coffeeshop noodles when somebody won the lottery .

Sometime we use our angpow money to eat satay sold by a travelling satay man on Chinese New Year's time.

Soft drinks was also only drank during Chinese New Year
 - guess less people get diabetes then.😊


We also only get a set of new clothes at Chinese New Year's time


In reflection - people really can live simply and be comfortable
, never at any time feeling deprived.


We will just happy with our day to day school activities - our main responsibility as kids was just to make sure we pass our examinations.

No kid was stressed about studies -we just study as hard as we wanted

Nobody was pushing us .

Moral of the story - life is simple if we want it to be

Another memory came back to me today , a friend was commenting on how much she had to spend on drinks for her grandchildren on a recent outing ...
I remembered we use to secretly follow our grandfather to the local kopi-tiam when he went for his arvo coffee.
He had no choice but to buy drinks for all us grandchildren - maybe 10 of us at least.
He will buy a cup for every 2 grandchildren to share - one of us will drink from the saucer, the other from the cup - economise & good solution to keep us happy 😊😊

On our birthdays , my mother will treat the birthday child
to a bowl of mee-sua with liver , mince & 2 eggs
( our birthday cake 🙂)

Chicken was an expensive meat to buy then as there was no mass production of chicken farms and they were mainly free-range.
We all kept a few chickens and on special occasions one will be killed for a feast.