Elephant's memory is what you possess! Gosh, you remember things like they happened last week.

I think most mobile hawkers are pretty much extinct these days, but I still remember those that passed by my house in Chateau Gardens. They include the night-time tang hoon/toong fun hawker (I think his mating call was produced by hitting two porcelain spoons together, both deftly held in one hand). He cut his tang hoon with a pair of scissors. Then there was the daytime gravelly-voiced beef ball man who became a family friend. His daughter used to compare notes about the latest Mandarin chart hit with me mum. Beef ball senior was an aficionado of Cantonese opera. He brought mum and me backstage one night to meet Canto-opera star Leong Seng Por.

Remember the 'old' way of shaving ice for chendol? You 'gripped' the ice with a piece of wood covered with nails on one side and slid it back & forth over a razor-sharp blade. My favourite hawker in the early 70s operated outside the Japanese Garden during Turf races. Yes, I too heard about the worms, so I ended up making my own chendol!