Friday, February 25, 2011

Memories of Albert Street by night by Russ Wickson

Bugis Street was always a firm favourite with servicemen for any number of reasons, but crossing Victoria Street one came into Albert Street. These photographs are of night time Albert Street taken sometime in 1967. They are from my personal photograph album.


I am not sure what the reproduction will be like but amongst the neon signs in Photograph 4 you can just pick out the sign Fatty's, this is where I used to get my S$ dollars worth of 'fried rice' or 'noodles'. (in those days we got S$7.20c to the English Pound Sterling ... I was paid a S$140 a fortnight as a single airman stationed at RAF Tengah and later RAF Changi ) If it wasn't rice or noodles then it would be a S$1.00 of Satay from one of the satay street vendors as shown in Photograph 1.

We/I recall we always got six sticks of chicken satay for our dollar and a little bowl of peanut sauce, but we were quite naughty really because we always insisted on a second bowl of sauce or even a third. I would hope we threw in a few extra cents but I can no longer remember. We/I sat on steps or kerbstones to eat the satay and I used to be fascinated by the very large and beautifully ruddy coloured cockroaches that ran about your feet and up and down the uncovered monsoon drains. Some of the cockroaches must have been two inches long ... or perhaps I had had too many pints of Tiger beer to focus properly.

13 comments:

peter said...

Photo 4 with Fatty signboard - the background is the tall bdlg at the corner of Selegie Road and MacKenzie Road.

peter said...

Photo 2 is the oldie version of our Ngoh Hiang stall.

Anonymous said...

The NEA guys these days will flip if our Ngoh Hiang stalls continue to operate this way.

Lam Chun See said...

Those same NEA guys would faint if they were to visit our kampong in Lorong Kinchir. We could 'catch' mosquito larvae any time of the day to feed our fighting fish from the longkangs around our house.

Lam Chun See said...

What a coincidence. Just last night a few of us foyers had dinner with John Harper at the Fatty Weng's restaurant at Guillemard Crescent. Not sure if its the same one. I trust that my fellow bloggers would blog about it and share the photos they took.

Ang Sar Lee said...

On the topic of mosquito larvae, those were common in those days, so were mosquito bites but I don't recall knowing anyone falling sick from malaria or dengue.

Thimbuktu said...

Thanks to Russ Wickson's photo of the satay vendor appears familiar with the first taste of satay at Beach Road .

The little bowl of peanut sauce or gravy was recycled in the big pot for sharing.

An interesting satay tasting experience Russ had with the memories of Singapore to share.

Brian and Tess said...

Good to hear that John Harper has visited again - will we hear from him on this visit?

Dogcom said...

My memories of Satay is we take advantage of the free flow of unions and cucumber hehe.

Anonymous said...

http://timesofmylife.wordpress.com/2011/02/28/marina-bay-in-1800s/

some interesting old facts on marina bay

Canadian Drugs said...

I don't recall knowing anyone falling sick from malaria or dengue. These all are great to know about it.

Motorcycle Mirrors said...

I don't recall knowing anyone falling sick from malaria or dengue.

NSK said...

Hi all,

There is also a resturant by the name of "Fatty's" located at Burlington Square, which is opposite Sim Lim Square.

The shop has quite a fair bit of old newspaper articles on the resturant. They mentioned that this resturant used to be at Albert Street. =)