Ice Ball!

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Remembering by the time we were 8 and 10 years of age in 1971, we brothers would take a short walk from our Bedok kampong house to the nearby mama corner, a small wooden shack-type structure to get our ice ball fixes! The vendor (he also sold tikam tikam games) would use one hand to collect the ice shavings while his other hand would manually turn the ice shaving machine. Then using both hands he would pack the ice into a neat and nice ‘ball’. We would pay him 10 cents, as he passes the ice ball from his hands onto ours (no plastic gloves etc no problems!) and a slurping we would go. Then coming back home (but passing by the ol’ kapok tree on our right) we would listen to the radio to the hits (with quirky lyrics) like Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep! (all photos not ours)

Photo credit (cropped) - National Archives of Singapore








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