This painting brings back so many memories for me.
I wanted to capture the old shophouses which are still so common in Malaysia. These are terraced buildings where people would run their small businesses from the shopfront below, and have their living quarters above. Very convenient, yes?
All the shops would be adjoining one another, and you could easily walk from one end to another in a long corridor without ever getting wet or sunburnt. Many of these buildings are still rather run-down in the city centre of my home town, and it isn’t all that hard to imagine that life back then would have been hard, and multiple generations of family members would be cramped into the living quarters upstairs. When I was growing up, if you were passing by in front of these shophouses, you would often see people lounging or bustling behind the half open shutters of the living areas. These shops would sell a variety of things, from jewellery, sundry grocery items, fabric and knick-knacks, and some would offer services such as barbering, small coffeeshops and bookshops.
That bus numbered 170 in the right bottom corner is a major feature of my younger student life. You know why? It was the only public bus that would run from SIngapore to Johor Baru (JB), Malaysia, and a major means of transport for the thousands of commuters who needed to travel to and from Singapore across the Malaysian border everyday. Nowadays, there are several different numbered buses that would make the same border crossing, but in the 80s and 90s, bus number 170 was the only one. Can you imagine lotsa lotsa people crammed into that one bus like sardines, smelling from a hot and humid day’s work or study, with no air-conditioning? If it was raining, the windows would be shut, and it would be tremendously yucky inside.
Anyway, a one way trip between JB and Singapore would average around an hour and a half in those days. So that would mean total travelling time of about 3 hours a day for an average commuter. It would be worse if the roads were congested with traffic, which was a frequent occurrence. Students quickly learnt to take cat naps on the bus, or to get some homework done. I’m sure some students from single sex schools enjoyed the social interaction on those buses too.
In those days too, there were particular sections of main road along the bus route which would flood on rainy days (frequent occurrence in the tropics), and those would be interesting too, as we would then be splashing around at the bus shelters, trying to avoid the back wash from passing vehicles, and trying to keep our school uniforms dry. Who invented these outfits?? Didn’t they know that white is not a good colour for female uniform skirts???
It taught us a lot of resilience but I sure am glad that my children don’t have to do this.
Georgetown, Penang
This was what the old public buses used to look like
Old bus tickets - the conductor would punch a hole in it as you boarded. Many of us would have lots of these folded in our wallets. You could avoid this if you had a monthly bus pass that you would flash at the driver.
