Ah Peng

Picture of an old armchair against a newly acquired 1950s display cabinet in our Ayer Baloi house

This entry is actually inspired by my discovery of a 1970s advert below..."Puan Nora, ... anda kalah!"

It was a good weekend in Ayer Baloi, as always, last week. Kids had fun, parents had their much needed break...But most importantly had a quality time devoid of modern world entrapments which would normally distract us! Can life always be that simple?

This time I re-visited kedai Ah Peng, a grocery shop which situates two doors away. Met Ah Peng, his wife and daughter. His daughter, ironically has a Malay name! She was named after allahyarhamah Normadiah, the actress. Being in a largely Malay community, I suppose, joining the fan-club of Malay silver screen was inevitable!

Ah Peng has not changed the least bit as if he is trapped in a time warp; still donning his khaki bermuda and P-Ramlee singlet! He is still, physically, a strong man but his memory needs to be jogged at times. The Labour Weekend when we had khenduri , Ah Peng actually delivered a gas cylinder to our house single handedly! Only during this visit that I had time to actually say hello to him. Of course he couldn't recognize me a it had been umpteen years since we last met! My kids have been frequenting his shops, though, in each of our sojourn like ten thousand times a day! My introduction to him was "Ni Boboy (yes this is what I was called by my grandparents)lah Ah Peng" which was met with an overjoyed reply "Oh anak Chekgu Mat!".

We chatted on for a bit and reminisced of the good old days. He eagerly described me how I was as a toddler and relating to my kids of how I used to, like my kids now, frequent his shop for tid-bits and main tikam-tikam with my cousins Kak Lin and Sab (fondly called Chab boy).

I used to look forward to going back to my granddad's house in Ayer Baloi as he was one of the first few owners of a National colour tv! We only had a black and white tv with a roller door and we only lived about 15 km away, then.

I remember, electricity would only come on at about 7pm and national tv would also start around the same time. My granddad's house would be filled to the brim in the evenings as relatives and neighbours would flock to watch tv programmes in colour. It was like having a night fete daily! The best thing was that, we could receive SBC's (Singapore TV) transmission due to the close vicinity and their programmes were definitely ahead of our time. How time has changed....!

Enjoy this video!