03 November 2005

Vanishing Scenes of Singapore - Part 4

In the 1960s, on the street where I lived, i.e. Cheng Yan Place, I remembered very vividly that every afternoon at more or less a fixed time, an Indian man would traverse the street on-foot from the Queen Street side towards Victoria Street (please see map in post before the last one). Always with him were his 2 cows, one brown and the other white. He was a street dairy (also daily) seller.

If you wanted to buy some milk, he would stoop down and milk it straight from the cow for you. He would then bottle the milk into a glass bottle right in front of your eyes. Now how could you get milk fresher than that, brown cow?

The hygiene practices of this Indian man were questionable. Why, I didn't think he ever bothered to clean up the bovine poo that the 2 cows left on the street every now and then. Even if he did, I didn't think that he bothered to wash his hands after that. That's why I never bought any milk from him, haha.

1 comment:

Chris Sim said...

Got such thing meh? I don't recall leh. Must be the generation gap again lah. I younger mah. Not hygiene? Then drink directly from the cow lah. That would be a sight to behold, Victor! Hahaha...

Seriously, though hygiene was quite lacking in the days of yore, haven't you noticed that those days, the general population seemed to be healthier compared to our time? Look at the incidence of asthma that is afflicting more and more kids these days. And the current Dengue scourge? It's been said that one of the causes of the dengue outbreak was because our environment was too clean! Our immunity is weak because we have not been exposed to all the germs and bateria! What irony!