Friday 29 Mar 2024
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This article first appeared in Capital, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on October 8, 2018 - October 14, 2018

Malaysians are just so affluent these days. Sitting in an upmarket coffee place in Mid Valley, watching the damsels strolling past in their designer outfits and dyed hair, one can’t help but wonder when all this happened.

Sometimes, you’ll hear a full-fledged Texas drawl — and it turns out to be some bloke from Bangsar. Then you catch a clipped, stiff upper lip accent (even the Queen of England would kalah), and it’s some chap from Taman Tun.

You find fellows wearing brands like Helmut Lang, something you wouldn’t have heard of growing up in Kenyalang Park, Kuching.

To put things in perspective, my sisters, as well-heeled as they are now, used to go to a hairdresser called Bikin Rambut Perempuan that was just across from this place that sold fantastic Candut Kacang (the Sarawak version of cendol, and much nicer too, with lots of some red, sweet liquid, which means it was more like ABC... but what the heck).

There are childhood memories of me and my dad going to the barber, a Chinese chap with long sideburns in a red and white T-shirt (the sleeves were red, the rest white) with Singer, the sewing machine brand, printed boldly in front.

He had a sort of lamp on a stand which he would shine into my dad’s ears as he cleaned them using a six, or maybe seven-inch long lidi that had a cotton pad at the end. Dad would cough.

And whatever style Dad asked for, he always looked the same at the end of it, what was called a papaya cut. Yours truly invariably had that same cut.

Wonder where the chaps at Truefit & Hill go to cut their hair, or which mamak they go to?

Even saying Candut Kacang sounds funny. The only thing worse, I guess, would be Baracham Bee Hun, which the old hawker, who didn’t study at Oxford, sold at his stall, and which actually meant Belachan Bee Hun.

Growing up in a small town, you sometimes didn’t have a clue what the shopkeers were talking about.

Once, when out buying durians, the seller shouted, “Ini special espetee punya…”

You sniffed it, shook it and after a lot of drama, bought it. Somehow, the man always had a smirk, as though you had just bought one of his worst durians.

And in Sarawak, the Malayalee community (about 10 families?) there all made wine, not to sell but just to drink. Okay, that didn’t come out right. Not so much to drink, but, how does one say it ... the Malayalees simply — or as some pronounced it, zimbly — made wine.

Sometimes, it was pineapple wine, if you can even call that wine. If you asked them the vintage, they might say something like last Thursday. Pineapple wine, imagine that!

Many of you may not remember such times. It was when cars, let alone houses, didn’t have air conditioning. Instead, they had little fans to cool down the passengers.

Remember how tough it was winding down the windows? You had to crank this thing, which was usually stiff as hell, and hard to turn. If it rained, by the time you wound up your window, you would already be wet.

The hottest show on television was CHiPs, for California Highway Patrol, starring a dashing young Eric Estrada with some white guy. No one knows the white guy’s name, but no one cares.

How times have changed, and how the country has changed too.

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