Good ol' days and Y2K

Nostalgia, in any era, lives on. Even if you have to bring your own home-made genetically engineered no cholesterol chicken eggs for your char kway teow android to fry.

Recently, up on our chat forum Lor Sor (Discussion), there was a little lively and spirited discussion about the food of the not so long ago good-ol'-days. It was apparently triggered by a previous diary piece I did on the Ice Cream Man.

As we bid adieu to this millennium, I can't help but wonder aloud how many of us will easily surrender our soul from this century and possess that of the next. What form will food come in 20 years' time? Do we still need to eat or will barbecue flavoured Pentium chips take care of that. I suppose it's a new grey frontier we will venture into. Then again, I SUPPOSE NOT! Heck, it's just another hyped up new year celebration and I believe the good ol' days will still remain in one form or another.

In that cyber chat, we had people in their 20s to 50s reminiscing on past simple pleasures. And in that short discussion, the writers (and I) were brought back to a not-so distant and charming past that we can never re-live. To begin with, it's kinda strange now to beg mummy for ice cream money and-- running after the ting-ting (malt candy) man in shorts can get you arrested these days - for exposing your paunch!.

Well, I am a sucker for nostalgia and reminiscing, so Y2K or not, I am going to take you back down that alleyway of carefree eating, tok-tok (wooden chopsticks and bamboo cup) noodles, BYO eggs for the char kway teow (fried rice noodles) man and sng-kiew (shaved ice ball with syrup and cured prunes).

The Tok-Tok Noodle Man
If you are a pre- Lee Kuan Yew relic, then you probably were playing mahjong or listening to Li Dai Sor (story telling on Redifussion) reruns on a lazy afternoon when suddenly, albeit expectedly-- "tok-tok, tok-tok-tok-tok…". (I was then lulled to sleep by my mother's weekly mahjong jaunts which made a repetitive din that was hypnotic, broken only by the sound of "tok-tok-tok"). The tok-tok man came. I would double hop down the pre-war steps of the hairdressers' row of shop houses at Geylang and intercept that noise made from wooden chopsticks knocking on a bamboo cup. I'd give my order and he'd return half an hour later with a bowl of kway teow soup. The sweet stock (no msg those days), the kway teow, the hee piow (fish dumpling), fish ball and pork slices sang such a unified flavour that it is still humming at the back of my tongue today. They were the original Mee Pok Man! Ta- Mee (dry chilli noodles ) were perfected by them. Sadly the advent of health conscious people killed passion from the cooks and removed lard from the cooking nowadays.

The Roast Duck Gambler
Some of you may remember this interesting chap. One such stall operated along Joo Chiat Lane till the late 60s. His game was simply wicked. Challenge him and he'd play a game of shuffling balls in teacups. If you win, you'd get half a roasted duck for free. Lose and you must buy a whole duck from him. Sometimes you may win but more often you would lose.

The Ting Ting Candy Man
"Ting ting…ting ting", and it was time for a little sweet. He'd walk from estate to estate with a tray of hardened and chewy malted candy slung around his neck. On his shoulders hung a fold out wooden stand. Using a little chisel and small iron mallet (which he knocked against to create attention), a 20 cents order will send him hacking out a packet of sweets fun enough for three friends.

The Sng Pau/ Kiew
The sng-kiew is essentially a ball of shaved ice stuffed with your favourite cured fruits and syrup. The hawker would expertly sculpt half a sphere of soft ice and ask you in your face "what thing you want?" And on a tray next to him laid an array of kiam-sng-tee fruits (salty-sour-sweet). Just gave him an indication of two of your desires and he would bury them with the other sphere and top it with his syrup of the day. Mine was always prunes and atap-chee (palm fruit) with rose syrup. The best slurp for only 15 cents.

The Travelling Satay Man
The one I remember was a thin and weathered old Malay man that walked up and down Lorong 3 in Geylang, where I grew up as a kid. He would balance on two ends of a pole, a wooden container of skewered satay meat, cucumbers and onions on one, and a little stove of hot charcoal on the other, across his shoulder. On the tray where his raw satay was displayed would stand a little candle or kerosene flame. That was to ward off insects and provide illumination. You simply needed to pick out the satay you wanted and he'd grill it over the stove on the other end of the pole. When done, you simply ate it hot off the stove, on a metal plate (no styrofoam then), and dunked it into his smooth peanut sauce. All this done, squatting down.

The Mee Goreng Man
I'd know when he was around by the loud and blaring Indian music piping through your window. Buried beneath the din is the clanging of fryer and wok which was his signature style of frying. 60 cents would buy you a well-fried plate of yellow wheat noodles flavoured with mutton and greens and coloured with tomato sauce. When he was done, he'd cycle his whole stall off on an industrial tricycle.

While this list of nostalgia can go on, what really signaled their extinction was the birth of hawker centres. While this meant order and cleanliness, it also meant overheads and a fixed work schedule. Many left the trade and as many got in on the act. Today, with the modernisation of Singapore with such zest and fervour, some of the older hawker centres may be giving way to newer eatery concepts. Who knows, your char kway teow man may be android-tised and run on solar power. You can still bring your own home made genetically engineered zero-cholesterol eggs for him to fry. So, as we embrace the Y2K, it may spell the end of an old nostalgia and sound the order of a new nostalgia. Long live the good ol'days- update regularly and virus free!