When I was small (Yes, I once was…a long, long time ago! LOL!!!), there was this man that we called Ah John. He would push his canvas-covered trishaw along the road, squeezing his rubber horn.
In those days, it was nothing like today…with the I-want culture where children would demand for this and that! On days when my mother decided to buy some fruit rojak, we would be really excited and tag along…hoping and praying and keeping our fingers crossed that she would buy this for me and my brother…
This is what we call kantong, which is actually just shaved ice with syrup added to it…and only 10 cents each at the time. Of course, ours looked nothing like that. Ah John would squeeze it into a ball and add some sweet orange-coloured syrup…and pass it to us. There we would go, each with our own kantong…sucking the delicious syrup out of the ice as it melted…and we had to pass it from one hand to the other all the time as it was really very COLD!
These days, they push it into a glass with a spoon stuck in it…so when they pull it out, it has that popsicle shape…and they add syrup of all colours to it…
The sucking is still the same…
…though Clare did it a bit more elegantly than us – in our younger days.
She and Alvin were supposed to meet me upon my arrival in Kuching at Kim Joo Coffee Shop for a kolo mee lunch…but the two were held up and by the time they arrived, all of us had left. So they had their noodles on their own before going to the hotel to see me. It was a really very hot afternoon…so when they suggested going for kantong, I was delighted as it would be something like a walk down memory lane – or yesterday once more, so to speak.
I didn’t have kantong though… LOL!!!
DISCLAIMER:
Any connotation of any manner in this post is purely unintentional…so wipe that cheeky grin off your face, TOC!!! LOL!!!
...STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS! 