Drive-by shopping

Today, watching a video of Kuala Lumpur from 1970, I was reminded of my father's drive-by shopping habits.

The second street featured in the video, Petaling Street, was called 茨廠街 (ci⁴ cong² gaai¹) meaning tapioca factory street, by the Chinese. It is an area of street hawkers, including fruit carts. Naturally being a clogged street, you could only drive slowly through it. But that suited my father fine. A typical exchange would go:

Hawker: Fei-lo (fatso), duku-langsat are very good today!

Father: How much?

H: $2.50 a catty (斤, jin)

F: Alright give me 2.

(Exchanges money for newspaper cone of fruits through window, and drives on.)

You can't get more convenient than that!

Dad in his office

The other street mentioned, Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman, is named after the first Agong of Malaysia, but before that and for a long time afterwards, people still referred to it as Batu Road (Rock Road, perhaps there used be a quarry there?). It is a street of clothing and household goods shops. Up till about a decade ago, I would buy clothes there whenever I visited KL.