complimentary aerated drinks

with chinese new year just around the corner, i am reminded of a discontinued practice of our kampong days.

when we lived in the kampong, one of the things we looked forward to as lunar new year neared was the delivery of complimentary bottled aerated drinks to our home from one of the neighbourhood provision shops. there were three shops in the kampong but we chose to patronise one more than the other two.

depending on the extent of your patronage, you would get between 12 and 24 bottles of aerated drinks, usually f& n's orange crush, sarsaparilla or cherryade. the shopkeeper had a system of deciding the number of bottles each household would get based on the year's purchases. some years we got more bottles than other years.

much as we children would like to have a taste of the sweetened drinks, we had to wait till the big re-union dinner on chinese new year's eve before we could down the marvellous drinks.

when my siblings gathered at my place today (2nd day of the lunar new year), they reminded me that the 'tow yew' man also gave complimentary bottles of dark and light sauce for the chinese new year.

back in those low tech days, we - at least, the adults - could get things from the shop on credit. all that was needed to keep track of transactions was a hand-held '555' notebook, the thickness of four credit cards.