Yes! Giant, Shop-N-Save and G’Value are offering a free tray of fresh eggs today and tomorrow for the first 100* customers each day spending S$30 and above in a single receipt.

A line in red reads, “Hurry, [...]]]>

The advertisement in The Straits Times today reads:
“Today & Tomorrow only, 7 & 8 Feb – Free Fresh Eggs 30′s”

Yes! Giant, Shop-N-Save and G’Value are offering a free tray of fresh eggs today and tomorrow for the first 100* customers each day spending S$30 and above in a single receipt.

A line in red reads, “Hurry, When It’s Gone! It’s Gone.”

Giving away free eggs is a good way of rewarding the customer for his patronage. The tray of eggs featured in the advertisement jolted my memory. I found myself staring blankly at it, for in an instant, my mind had been transported back to the Singapore of the early 70′s. 

I remember I was in secondary school then, and living in a three-room flat in Toa Payoh. Back then, with every new Chinese New Year, each household, whether in an HDB flat or a private residence, would receive free eggs. Some received a tray, others were given more trays of eggs. It was the pig farmers’ way of thanking the households for contributing swill to the pigs the farmers were rearing. 

You see, each day, my mother would pour the leftover food into a small bin which she would then leave outside the flat, in the common corridor, for the pig farmers to collect. It was the same thing happening with every household in our block, and in other blocks in the neighbourhood.

At the end of each year, usually just before Chinese New Year, the farmers would pile tray upon tray of eggs in the lift landings and then go from flat to flat to distribute the trays of eggs to the flat occupants. Some received two trays. My family was given one. The number of trays of eggs given depended on the amount of swill contributed during the previous year. We received less because ours was a small family and had not much swill for the farmer to collect each day.

There are no farmers going around HDB flats nowadays to distribute free fresh eggs to HDB dwellers. This is because the pig farming industry was phased out of Singapore in the 70′s. The only thing left are my memories of the whole affair. In fact, I had plain forgotten about the whole thing, till, that is, I saw the advertisement in today’s newspaper.

I am sharing this with you so you have an idea of what people did at home way back in the 70′s. In case you are wondering how it is possible for pig farmers then to have such big farms to consume the amount of swill dished out by so many HDB estates such as Yishun, Bedok, Tampines and Ang Mo Kio, let me tell you this – such estates were not even built then. There were only two HDB towns then -Queenstown first, and Toa Payoh later. If memory serves me right, the next HDB town built was Bedok in the late 70′s, followed by Ang Mo Kio.

But, it’s all history now. Memories of the old ways come back when the mind is jolted. It is times like this that I yearn for the old days, of a time when I was much younger. Can we turn back the clock? Obviously no. But, we can have a good time reminiscing the past. And this advertisement did something that money cannot buy – it brought me back to the past, albeit in my mind.

I look at the advertisement again and read aloud the line in red:
“Hurry, When It’s Gone! It’s Gone.”

It’s true. When that time has gone, it has gone, never to come back, except in our reflections.

So what is the message I have in mind for this new Year of the Rooster?

It is this:
Live each new day to the fullest, for it will never return. What you do today decides whether it is good memories or bad nightmares you store in your mind’s bank for you to conjure up in your twilight years.

Have a good day!

*500 for Giant

Yes, tomorrow’s New Year’s Eve! Before we are even finished with the twelve days of Christmas and the new English year, we are bombarded with reminders out there [...]]]>

It’s that time of the year when we reflect on what we have done for the whole year and then contemplate our resolutions for the coming new year.

Yes, tomorrow’s New Year’s Eve! Before we are even finished with the twelve days of Christmas and the new English year, we are bombarded with reminders out there in the neighbourhood shops and shopping centres that Chinese New Year is also just round the corner, for the Year of the Goat new year greeting cards and decorations have come out in full force in these places.

As a Late Baby Boomer*, I have been privileged to witness and to experience what Chinese New Year has been like through the years – from the 60s to the 70s, then the 80s and 90s and in the debuting years of the new millennium. I particularly relish the fact that I was able to play with firecrackers in the 60s right through to 1972 when the ban came into effect.

Now that’s a privilege youngsters nowadays are not privy to. But, as I begin to feel sorry for these youngsters, I suddenly remember that in my time as a youngster, I didn’t quite have the trappings that modern-day lifestyle has provided for youngsters of today – things like, jeans, T-shirts, PCs, handphones, McDonald’s, Play Station, etc. The list goes on and on.

Yes! Indeed, I should envy these youngsters, for they are born in the right time – of peace, prosperity and progress here in Singapore – and need not see or experience the sufferings of those born in an earlier timespace – people who had to live life in a different world – of world wars, and civil unrest.

Do the youngsters think they are pretty lucky, then? I doubt so. Many of them do not have time for such thoughts. They are caught up in the struggle for ownership of handphones and other whatnots. They are busy comparing what others have that they do not have and yearn for more buying power, much to the chagrin of their parents.
 
So what’s the future for Singapore when our young are more interested in their own gains than pondering about our island’s future? Is the competition for material benefits just a passing fad in that tumultuous teenage period or is it a symptom of a disease that will plague our youngsters of today in Singapore when they come of age?

Only time will tell, but we simply do not have that privilege of waiting, for statistics are against us. In the 1970s, when I was a teenager, for every one (1)** old person over 60 years old in Singapore, there were more than eight (8) economically active people – thanks to the post-war baby boom from 1947 to 1964.
 
And in 2030, when I will be in my 70s, for every one (1)** old person over 60 years old, there will only be 2 economically active persons supporting that person. Now that’s a heavy burden for the youngsters of today to shoulder when they join the employment market.
We certainly can’t stop time. But, we can change the perceptions of our young – before it’s too late. Already, the Government is making it compulsory for those at school to do project work. Now, that spells good news for the Baby Boomers. With exposure to the community, these young minds stand a chance of being broadened. Think of it not as a brainwashing of their minds, but rather, as a nurturing of the correct attitudes so that they will more than spare a thought for others, especially the elderly.

That’s certainly a step in the right direction. But, we, as parents, need to let go of our instinctive urge (yes, we do want them to have what we didn’t have before) to spoil our kids. We should not give in to their every whim and fancy but stand firm. This way, we will not do harm to the Government’s efforts at imbuing our young with the correct mindset to take care of us when we grow old – for we will grow old.

So my new year resolution is pretty straightforward. I hope to see our young thinking of others first before they think of themselves. It’s another 30 years or so before the 2030s; I believe our young can come around.

Have a wonderful end of the year!

————————————–
*Pre-War/War-time cohort: 1935 – 1946
*Early baby boom cohort: 1947 – 1954
*Late baby boom cohort: 1955 – 1964
*Statistics quoted from The Baby Boomers in Singapore (June 2000)
**Statistics quoted from The Elderly in Singapore (June 1988)