Hailstorm

I looked at a photo taken in the early 1970s and thought: what am I looking at?

Then I remembered that it was a hailstorm, a rare event in the tropics. There were pictures taken of the lawn, looking like some magic eye puzzle, a waste of film. In this photo you can just make them out on the concrete. I know now that what the eyes see and what the camera records are different things. The eye focuses on what the brain tells it to while the camera is indiscriminate. That is to say, I should have taken a closer shot of a hailstone, even if I didn't have a macro lens at the time.

Yay! Flood!

Malaysia being a tropical country, at times torrential rain would overwhelm the capacity of the drains and the result would be flooding of the roads. Our house was on a slope so it didn't get flooded, but from the window I had a good view of the waterlogged neighbourhood.

I used to enjoy the spectacle of the traffic jam on the main highway in the distance. Maybe it was a bit of schadenfreude, but I think the excitement came from the wind and, some people claim, the ions in the air during a thunderstorm. I like breezes and open air; my idea of ennui is a stultifying warm confined space. I really miss a good thunderstorm these days.

Timber!

The lot next door to our house was vacant land, well vacant in the sense that it was not built up but had trees and weeds. (And rubbish we thoughtlessly tossed there.) One day, I think a few days after heavy rain, one of the trees toppled onto our side of the fence. Nobody was hurt, and the only property damage was to the boundary fence and a bit to the zinc shelter over one of the car spaces. Naturally we were a bit inconvenienced for a while by the blockage.

This photo was taken from the inside of the undercover car space. I think the car is a Vauxhall. Those were the days of trade protection so British cars accounted for most of the sales. Japanese cars had not yet burst onto the world stage, American cars were expensive and a few daring people owned European cars like the Beetle. And the rich had Mercedes of course.

Anyway all this drama was heady to me as a kid that I used up almost a whole roll of 120 film.

Our first TV

Television came to Malaysia in 1963 but my family did not get one right away as they were expensive. I remember asking a neighbour if I could watch an episode of Batman. He allowed me but sent his son to his room to study. It was a bit awkward so I never asked again. So I pestered my dad to buy a TV. Eventually he got this Hitachi at a good price from a dealer acquaintance of his. It served us well for many years.

The screen shows the final credits of a show made in Pinewood Studios which might have been The Saint, or less likely, The Champions.

Before Instagram

Before Instagram, photos taken on 120 roll film were naturally square. There were 12 exposures in a roll. The film had no sprocket holes, the frame number printed on the backing paper could be seen in a small red window. No shutter interlock; one had to learn the discipline of winding on after every shot to avoid double exposure.

This is one of the earliest photos I took, of my primary school class with our teacher. You will notice that most of the pupils were girls. I went to a Chinese girls school which actually meant that it was predominantly girls, with about 20% boys. My older siblings wanted me to learn Chinese, at least in the primary stage (years 1-6).

I've got a tiger in my tank

One of the most successful marketing campaigns by Esso was the use of a tiger as a mascot and the line I've Got A Tiger In My Tank. This photo was taken at a school day where a budding comedian plays a boxer having a match with a roly-poly inflatable tiger.

Besides this toy, other merchandise included T-shirts. I have a picture of me wearing one. Also "tiger tails" which were attached to petrol tank caps to give the impression one had a captive tiger in the tank.

There were also bumper stickers to get free advertising. Some alteratists discarded the T and edited the E to an L to make the slogan I'VE GOT A GIRL IN MY TANK.

Not surprisingly, the match ended in a KO win by the tiger.

A pretty woman

This picture was taken at a Malaysian Agricultural Fair in the early or mid-1970s. She was a publicity rep for Esso as you can see from the sash.

In fact the fair exhibited more than just agricultural products. I remember that the Malaysian Consumer Association had its launch here. They had a display of counterfeit washing powders. FAB was a well-known brand then, and the counterfeit products sported names like F4B and FAR with similar graphic designs. These days counterfeits are more subtle.

The fair also exhibited industrial products. Here is a booth by an electronics factory showing a range of variable resistors and electrolytic capacitors. Many US and European electronics manufacturers set up factories and assembly plants in Malaysia due to the wage advantage. They all relocated to lower wage countries many years ago.

Home HiFi setup, mid 1960s

A picture of a "component" HiFi system which I enjoyed.

The record player is the auto-changer type. (I didn't realise before writing this post that it was invented in Hobart, Tasmania.) You put a stack of records on the spindle and upon reaching the end of one record, the eccentric motion of the stylus arm due to the shape of the groove near the centre would trigger the mechanism to drop the next record in the stack. It was most useful for 78 RPM records which only lasted 3-4 minutes. With the spread of Long Playing vinyl, the need for a stack was reduced. Ah, also the stylus was double headed, one for vinyl and the thicker one for 78s.

The ¼ inch tape recorder was a 7 inch Panasonic, which unfortunately couldn't play the older 10 inch reels recorded with an older Philips recorder and and even older British recorder. It however was transistorised (solid-state they called it) so didn't run warm. I recorded quite a bit of music to savour (er, also annoy my family) over and over again.

The radio-amplifier was the valve type, make possibly Philips or Grundig. At the top right corner of it you will see a small horizontal window. This opened onto an electron tube called a magic eye, for displaying the signal strength when tuning to a station. The fluorescent phenomenon was later used in calculator and clock displays, albeit with lower voltages.