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Monday, July 28, 2008

Brylcreem

· Brylcreem; teenagers (and adults) plastered Brylcreem on their hair, shiny hair with not one strand out of place!!! There was a pre-occupation with combing one's hair. Just about everybody had a comb in the pocket!!
· tight trousers, there was a time when teenagers wore very tight narrow pants (and walked with difficulty! explains the high-pitched singing !); it wasn't cool to wear loose pants then.
· "milk bars"; for a short period (early days of rock'n'roll) milk bars sprung up all around; it was cool to be seen in a milk bar with one's mates; yup, milkshakes was the "in thing" to drink, and "floats" was also "in" !!!
· "fighting fish"; those living closer to or in rural areas will remember catching "fighting fish" which were kept in glass containers; the "fighting fish" developed striking bright colours when kept in a dark environment and appeared to be more fierce than those kept in a bright place. Mates would pit their fighting fish against others
· "talent time" - the local/national live-on-stage radio precursor to today's TV American Idol
· "tick tock" - a game
· "shuttle cock" (or some other name which I can't remember), a game where a feather is stuck in the centre of a bottle cap and the idea is to keep the "device" in the air for as long as possible with one's foot.
· rounders - a sport similar to baseball
· pointed shoes; ouch! caused many an ingrown toenail!
· collecting photos of movie stars; in the early fifties, publicity for new movies were in the form of illustrated pamphlets accompanied by autographed copies of photos of movie stars. These photos were collectibles and often exchanged.
· the Elvis Presley hairstyle
- martial arts movies......... Wong Fei Hoong etc
- comics
- raiding neighbours' mango, rambutan, langsat, etc during the fruit season
- writing in to radio stations to play our "requests" i.e. popular songs (pre-TV days when radio was king)