Old Shophouses

Talking about people falling into the drains. Yes, that actually happened. I fell in once or twice, our Indian neighbour fell in most of the times when drunk. When there's a big flood, the water rose on the street and you can't even see the drain. So strangers walked into drains. I meant the drains next to the five foot ways. About people walking into our house. Yes, that happened too. Once, Big brother went on a holiday to Cameron highland with a HK guy and thereafter, he came visiting to our house and he walked right up the staircase to our bedroom upstairs without even removing his shoes. He really thinks there are 72 tenants under one roof like in the old HK movies. Others who barged into other people houses are either idiots or they have mistaken the wrong house. All the possible reasons. The design of old shophouses is unique. Ours is a two storey building, the living hall is long and join to the dining and kitchen area. So you really need to walk the entire length to get to the other end. There are no openings in the middle. Some shophouses has a back door exit but ours doesn't. Some old shophouses also has a spiral staircase or they called it the lover's escapade behind. So you can rendezvous with your lovers at the back of house. Very nice. Some rich Chinese tycoons will have their own bungalows but they will put up their mistresses in the old shophouses. So when their wives came looking for them. There is a escape route by the back door. Clever idea. In our old house, there isn't a back door exit, as it doesn't leads to the backlane. It's actually the wall of our neighbour. So if there is a emergency, the main door entrance is the only exit. Otherwise, you prayed. You need to go upstairs to the verandah and then climb over to your neighbors house for an escape. It is this same verandah that has a risk of intruders coming into our home. There is a bedroom window facing out to the verandah with a wire mesh grille and a wooden door that has a bolt type latch lock which leads out to the verandah. So for safety, you always need to check that this door is locked at all times especially in the night. Other than that, there's another wooden door at the stairway landing that leads to the bedrooms but it is seldom closed for free passageway as it is a walkway to our bedrooms. So we have 2 bedrooms, one big room with windows views of the street. The smaller bedroom look out to the verandah area. The bigger room at front has my parents big bed where some of us will lazed around to rest and day dream. The rest like mother and my sisters slept on the floorboard. There are a few cabinets for clothes, one big wardrobe which is part of mother's wedding dowry, a round marble top table and some chairs. If I had not mistaken, this wardrobe still stands at AMK today. Real good solid hard wood that has stood the test of time. IKEA has no comparison. The smaller bedroom at the back has a double decker bunk bed with a steel frame and a ladder. During the later part of my childhood, I get to enjoy the upper deck. My 4th brother slept on the floorboard and he was the watchman of the night as he is alert to intruders. He was trained in martial arts as a secondary school boy. He even taught and conduct classes for my younger brother and myself. We made our own punching bags and training weapons. That's for strengthening of the body and spirit, not for fighting! Old Chinese masters always said that to their disciples! But who cares! I still fight in school. Fire is a constant risk as we did witnessed some small fires at our next door neighbor. Quite a frightening experience as you observed and when you looked at your senior members, they look lost and pale too. What to pack and run? What if the house burnt down? Where will I sleep and live then in the event of a fire? Somehow, there is a hidden fear factor in everybody minds. But we all chose to keep quiet. Shophouses are built and designed with a fire break wall at the roof edge over the adjoining units left and right.  It's intended to slow down any outbreak of fire. But looking at it, I really doubt it works in a big fire and strong winds situations. Others built in characteristics of shophouses are the rain gutters for the proper drainage of rain water. Lightning conductor rods at the roof top. High windows designs with ventilation holes built in for effective air circulations. As those days, there were no air conditioning units. The very unique pintu pagar swing door at main entrance. For peek-a-boo. Most of the windows will have wooden grills for safety reasons. When it rains, you close the window. There are flaps on the windows where you can adjust. Interestingly, there is also a "peep hole" cut out at the floor boarding of 2nd level. A chamfered edge rectangular hole of about 5"x2" gap with a cover where the occupants can peep at happenings at the main door entrance from the above 2nd storey. This is a real helpful feature, very well thought of in design as it saves you the trouble of running downstairs to check who's knocking at your front door. For own family members who has forgotten the house keys, you can just drop it off below. So very convenient. Some shophouses will also have other useful features like a bigger hole for the lowering of a basket for food or anything. So you can just lowered or raised a basket for retrieval of items. Others will have a foldable stairways that can drop off for access to downstairs. Ours doesn't have all these added extra features. Old shophouses also has pest problems like rats and insects. Rat catching is a major exercise for our family. We learnt the techniques of setting up a mousetraps and strategize on the positioning of these traps. We usually use a piece of dried shrimp as bait. First, you burnt it nicely over a fire to enhance the flavoring before you anchored it to the trap. Sometimes, we use a piece of pig skin but it seems that rats prefer shrimps as they are nicer to eat. We shared the same thoughts. And shrimps costs more, so better food! Who likes a pig skin that's fattening and bad for health! Rats think alike. So they never bites. Shrimps are still best baits. For bigger rats which are rare, we use the bigger box caged type of mouse traps. When we managed to catch a rat, we will pry open the spring catch and dumped the half dead rat into the toilet bowl and then flushed it off. But there are also incidents where die hard rats can still escape from the toilet flushing. As for me, I enjoyed catching rats. That's a favorite pastime and entertainment! The ecstasy you feel when you catch one. Some rats you can actually recognize them running around and teasing you. Some would said they all look alike but at least for me, I can tell the difference. That's my innate talent! Perhaps I should be in a pest control career. We have lots of lizards, houseflies, and cockroaches. I don't like cockroaches especially those that are airborne and they comes flying into the house. On rainy nights, that's a nightmare. They comes in full force and attack mode. Together with flys that buzz around your lights, they are like indicators of impending rain. Cockroaches may have come from the roof, floor, cabinets, hidden areas, everywhere..the cockroaches will fly around the house, and they run into your clothes when you sleep. Not one but many, many. So it scared the shit out of you. Good thing we don't have many cockroaches today. Otherwise, we will turned them into herbal drinks. My great grandmother used to eat and drink cockroaches for the proteins especially when she's sick. They are the surviving veterans of World War II, so they must have learned something that we don't.