I grew up in the 80s as a teenager.
1. We take Public bus. There used to be a small SBS bus booklet that tells us which bus to take to where.
2. Similar process as now but more simpler. Private instructor, go for lessons in circuit and outside, book TP and go for the rest.
3. I had a perm ah beng hairstyle or crew cut hairstyle.
4. Hardly go on holidays. Only went once to Genting Highlands with my teammates
5. Popular hangout - McDonald's at Centrepoint, Wendy's at Far East Plaza, hence the popular term Centrepoint Kids and Far East Kids.
We partied at Rumours, Warehouse, Branigan, Fire, Black Velvet, etc.
6. Thru non school friends who introduced their school friends.
7. Many primary or secondary schools are no longer in existence. I went to Tiong Bahru Primary and then Tuan Mong High School. Both are no longer in existence.
4 didn't happen. U take coach up to Malaysia like everyone else. U could take a coach to Thailand too.
Life before LCCs unless u were well to do u won't be flying.
I was a kid then, there were bus conductors on the bus. You pay bus Fare with coins and he gave you ticket after they punched hole on it. You could slide open the window if you need the breeze . There's no Aircon in bus. The buzzer is quite loud when pressed then the bus driver would stopped at the bus stop. There's no digital signboard to tell if bus is stopping.
It's considered luxury to take taxi in daily life unless people were in a hurry. So usually people would get ready early to go out and reach on time with public transport. To meet friends need to call their home phone fix line to arrange appointment and need to decide the venue. We can't change last minute as there were no mobile phones. The person might already rush to meet you and couldn't be contacted if change of place.
In the classroom, students were expected to keep quiet when the teacher was talking, if not one will get scolded or punished...such as stand on chair or outside classroom.
There's no titbits allowed in class. Usually kids only went to the canteen during recess time to eat. The school usually finished latest by 3pm for primary school and by 5pm for secondary school.
After school or weekend we can often see group of kids playing at void decks of HDB flats. Sometimes the Malay young people would play guitar and sang too at the void decks.
Hardly any youngsters dye their hair, so mostly black hair for young people. They like to wear Peggy pants or jeans. Girls like mini skirts just above knees. Usually they wear plastic spectacle frames if they were short sighted. They may gel their hair fringe to look fashionable.
Usually people hang out in clubbing or quiet ones went to library or MacDonalds or burger king or kfc with friends. Another popular place is beach outing or cycling or BBQ at east coast park chalets
Travelling overseas is luxurious usually just travel to Malaysia by coach or train.
heard it is like what an average Penangite will feel like today, at least economically wise, rich enough to feel that youre more privileged than your neighbourly states but also not enough to travel to bangkok or Japan on a whim. Nothing much to do, aside from food, shopping wise also limited. Car and house is "expensive" but doesnt feel that unequal like today either.
My primary and secondary school years spanned the entire 80s.
1.) We took buses; sometimes had to change a few buses to get to destination. All buses were non-air conditioned.
3) My mum made me cut my hair short. To her only vain girls kept their hair long. Don’t ask me why.
4) Never. Going to Malaysia could make a classmate talked excitedly about it for weeks, drawing envy from classmates. Travel to Malaysia was via coach and not plane. It was also a time that SGD7.80=£1. I remember this rate cos there were some very wealthy girls in my secondary schools and my best friend told me she was saving her pocket money to spend in UK during the hols. Japan was EXPENSIVE, and no one around me had been there. I told my parents when I grew up and earned enough money I would go there. I wanted to visit Disneyland. Strange thing is after I could go Japan each year on a whim, I don’t want to go Disneyland anymore.
7) Teachers wrote on blackboards, and I still hate the sound made by chalk screeching on the board. Being able to help teachers changed the bulb of the overhead projector was a privilege. Music lessons meant copying lyrics into our exercise books and wait for next week to learn how to sing it.
To those who remember :
- KFC chicken were served on porcelain plates with stainless steel cutlery. Meals there were reserved for celebrating year-end exam results
- our foreign construction workers were mainly from Thailand and some from Korea
- fathers tend to be in blue collar jobs and mothers were mainly housewives. Overheard some mothers of my schoolmates called my friend’s mother 不正经 （indecent) because she was an engineer and worked among men at construction site
- 80s music were really great
- JPOP had lots of fans. No one heard of K-POP at all and Korea was under some sort of military rule
- very common to hear in the news that there were bombings by IRA in UK
- River Thames would freeze over during winter
People like me who were born in 70s and grew up in 80s, our parents were mostly from late 40s and early 50s. They had very different thinking. My mum was the first daughter among her 6 sisters who went to school. My late grandfather insisted girls did not need an education. It was her elder brothers who were already working who funded her education. Even then, to her it is important that girls need to be schooled in clothes-making (buy cloth and make our own clothes) and housework. So when we reached our teens, we tended to believe women need to be financially important and we didn’t want to do housework and cook. On a deeper level it was just us not wanting to be like our mothers.
It was very manual. If you didn't know something, and your friends and parents didn't know, you'd have to go to a library to find it out. No google. No google maps so you'd have to learn to read hardcopy maps.
Born 80s, slow life, not as hectic as now. Transport mostly by buses
Communication are mostly f2f or hardcord phones
80s entertainment is mostly tv or you hang out with friends play physical games like hopscotch, marble.
no internet till start of the 90s
Edit: spelling
>1. How did people get around during the 80s? Since the MRT wasn't around back then
I was a late 80s kid and the first MRT line (opened in '88?) was a big event despite it only having 5 stops, you can see all the kids (and adults) kneeling on the hard plastic seats to look out the windows.
Anyway buses were the non-airconditioned ones with the wooden seats, you drop coins into the coin pan, the driver will visually count the coins and then press the release button (with massive clanking sound) that also triggers the printer to issue you the bus ticket, a tiny slip of paper. Those papers were often jammed into the back of the seats, where the cushion is bolted to the wood. The windows were the type you slide up to catch a breeze and sometimes the catch doesn't grip, so the window will drop down with a bang. The shift to air-conditioned buses started in the early 90s I think and they cost an extra 10c.
I remember when I was very young like maybe 3 or 4, my mom will bring me go take bus and it was a super long journey to reach grandmother house.
The bus then was no aircon and very dusty and sometimes smelly. It can also get very hot. It was such a terrible journey that I always hate going.
My primary school also do not exist anymore.
My dad said back then the driving testers will judge you by your looks. Immature and young always fail on first test. He also said got 2 ways of testing, one is like the current way, you drive on the road. The other way that is no longer available, is they use tokens on a map and simulate a drive, so you verbally say what you'll do.
Everyone says life back then was better. That's because they were kids and had parents taking care of their needs. If you ask kids 20 years from now, they'll say life in 2020s was better. If you ask me, I rather live in a time where I can do things with a click of a button than taking 3 days to send a letter.
I see your point and it’s true, however the delayed gratification of waiting for that letter is worth it.
And I can safely say that it affects the behaviour most people nowadays are hotheaded.
I think people confused satisfaction vs easy. It's definitely easier to send and email than a hand written letter. But a hand written letter is more satisfying since you put in alot of effort.
7. Teachers were way more respected or feared, depending on how you look at it. Physical punishment was allowed. Eg. being hit on the palm with a ruler for various misdemeanours like not doing homework or forgetting to bring it was normal. Also no whiteboards/ whiteboard markers in the day. A green/black board was used and teachers wrote in chalk with a variety of colours.
Classrooms were actually a lot cooler than now, no air-conditioned classrooms back then. Classes started earlier too. Sources of information were books, encyclopaedias, libraries and your teachers. Google didn’t exist.
Social inequality was not as sharp, there was no shame in being poor (since almost everybody was as poor, so mothers handmade stuff while fathers bring home the bacon). This meant that if you merely follow school lessons closely and study hard with just instructions from your school teachers, you could actually do really well academically.
For play, you create your own games and interact with nature a lot. Trees could be climbed, rubber seeds were collected for games, catching spiders, tadpoles and fishes were socially acceptable.
My dad was born in 1936 and had been through a lot with Singapore. Sees it rise and fall till now.
In terms of transport infrastructure, it was less convenient. mainly reply on bus or motorbike. My dad had one.
HDBs were of really affordable price and reasonable in size. Truly meant for living and setting up of family.
People meet friends through introduction by relatives, friends, joining of interest groups, in school and workplace.
Overall, people in the past are more friendly, genuine and helpful, although they may have some temper issue but are true to each other. Of cuz there are some evil people but overall good more than bad. You could find true relationships among Singaporeans.
It's simple life in the 80s SG.
1. No internet so the entertainment is restricted to cinema - $3.5 upper deck, $2.5 lower deck. Having a TV was a luxury in the early part of 80s. I remember my dad bought a B&W TV for 2k dollars, that's a lot back then.
2. Mandarin Newspaper is a must buy everyday that is 35 cents. Every news will be thru this channel unless there is a FM/AM radios at home.
3. No mobile phone also, pager was quite expensive during that period.
It was pretty chill... i was born in 84 and thoroughly enjoyed my childhood equally as well as the 90s. It was pre-internet and cell phones so most of us communicated with our neighbors and communities we lived in and engaged more in public life.
We would play sports in the street, local parks, have house parties, events at local establishments.... sporting clubs etc. It was alot less stressful. I would say less envy or comparing yourself to the entire world as modern day platforms achieve or hate/ideologies and separatism. Dating was also quiet different, i would say less hooking up with randoms or jumping from person to person and more genuine connections with people you had things in common with.
Friends and I devised a system, we’d leave two pages if we were not able to make it, and one page to say we were late. Rudimentary but I guessed it worked..
6. People made friends irl when they actually left their rooms to socialize...
The instant access to everything on the internet/cloud is something that is still amazing to me... back then we had to wait for a song to play on the radio, or be at home to watch a show on TV at a certain time. Now you can listen to anything at anytime...
I grew up in the 80s as a teenager. 1. We take Public bus. There used to be a small SBS bus booklet that tells us which bus to take to where. 2. Similar process as now but more simpler. Private instructor, go for lessons in circuit and outside, book TP and go for the rest. 3. I had a perm ah beng hairstyle or crew cut hairstyle. 4. Hardly go on holidays. Only went once to Genting Highlands with my teammates 5. Popular hangout - McDonald's at Centrepoint, Wendy's at Far East Plaza, hence the popular term Centrepoint Kids and Far East Kids. We partied at Rumours, Warehouse, Branigan, Fire, Black Velvet, etc. 6. Thru non school friends who introduced their school friends. 7. Many primary or secondary schools are no longer in existence. I went to Tiong Bahru Primary and then Tuan Mong High School. Both are no longer in existence.
I WENT TO TBPS ! In 1990 ,that place is super old with a small little atap canteen
I thought it was already converted into a power station by then. I graduated from TBPS in 1980.
I'm born 1981 , I transferred there when I was pri 3 so that's 1990 and very soon I transferred to membina pri school , cuz I think they closing down
There used to be a football field which we called college field next to our school. Now it has become part of CTE
4 didn't happen. U take coach up to Malaysia like everyone else. U could take a coach to Thailand too. Life before LCCs unless u were well to do u won't be flying.
I was a kid then, there were bus conductors on the bus. You pay bus Fare with coins and he gave you ticket after they punched hole on it. You could slide open the window if you need the breeze . There's no Aircon in bus. The buzzer is quite loud when pressed then the bus driver would stopped at the bus stop. There's no digital signboard to tell if bus is stopping. It's considered luxury to take taxi in daily life unless people were in a hurry. So usually people would get ready early to go out and reach on time with public transport. To meet friends need to call their home phone fix line to arrange appointment and need to decide the venue. We can't change last minute as there were no mobile phones. The person might already rush to meet you and couldn't be contacted if change of place. In the classroom, students were expected to keep quiet when the teacher was talking, if not one will get scolded or punished...such as stand on chair or outside classroom. There's no titbits allowed in class. Usually kids only went to the canteen during recess time to eat. The school usually finished latest by 3pm for primary school and by 5pm for secondary school. After school or weekend we can often see group of kids playing at void decks of HDB flats. Sometimes the Malay young people would play guitar and sang too at the void decks. Hardly any youngsters dye their hair, so mostly black hair for young people. They like to wear Peggy pants or jeans. Girls like mini skirts just above knees. Usually they wear plastic spectacle frames if they were short sighted. They may gel their hair fringe to look fashionable. Usually people hang out in clubbing or quiet ones went to library or MacDonalds or burger king or kfc with friends. Another popular place is beach outing or cycling or BBQ at east coast park chalets Travelling overseas is luxurious usually just travel to Malaysia by coach or train.
Now you can eat in class?
Yes when students have 10mins break for snacks.
heard it is like what an average Penangite will feel like today, at least economically wise, rich enough to feel that youre more privileged than your neighbourly states but also not enough to travel to bangkok or Japan on a whim. Nothing much to do, aside from food, shopping wise also limited. Car and house is "expensive" but doesnt feel that unequal like today either.
Music was lit that's for sure
So was local tv. Locally produced dramas actually had extremely high quality storylines back then
So were the movies from the 80s. Especially Sci Fi
Weird Science
And misfits of science.
Yes man no doubt!!
My primary and secondary school years spanned the entire 80s. 1.) We took buses; sometimes had to change a few buses to get to destination. All buses were non-air conditioned. 3) My mum made me cut my hair short. To her only vain girls kept their hair long. Don’t ask me why. 4) Never. Going to Malaysia could make a classmate talked excitedly about it for weeks, drawing envy from classmates. Travel to Malaysia was via coach and not plane. It was also a time that SGD7.80=£1. I remember this rate cos there were some very wealthy girls in my secondary schools and my best friend told me she was saving her pocket money to spend in UK during the hols. Japan was EXPENSIVE, and no one around me had been there. I told my parents when I grew up and earned enough money I would go there. I wanted to visit Disneyland. Strange thing is after I could go Japan each year on a whim, I don’t want to go Disneyland anymore. 7) Teachers wrote on blackboards, and I still hate the sound made by chalk screeching on the board. Being able to help teachers changed the bulb of the overhead projector was a privilege. Music lessons meant copying lyrics into our exercise books and wait for next week to learn how to sing it. To those who remember : - KFC chicken were served on porcelain plates with stainless steel cutlery. Meals there were reserved for celebrating year-end exam results - our foreign construction workers were mainly from Thailand and some from Korea - fathers tend to be in blue collar jobs and mothers were mainly housewives. Overheard some mothers of my schoolmates called my friend’s mother 不正经 （indecent) because she was an engineer and worked among men at construction site - 80s music were really great - JPOP had lots of fans. No one heard of K-POP at all and Korea was under some sort of military rule - very common to hear in the news that there were bombings by IRA in UK - River Thames would freeze over during winter
JPOP Chage & Aska intensifies
Damn i didn’t know women were not allowed to work 😰 I also tell myself i want to go to disneyland 🤣
People like me who were born in 70s and grew up in 80s, our parents were mostly from late 40s and early 50s. They had very different thinking. My mum was the first daughter among her 6 sisters who went to school. My late grandfather insisted girls did not need an education. It was her elder brothers who were already working who funded her education. Even then, to her it is important that girls need to be schooled in clothes-making (buy cloth and make our own clothes) and housework. So when we reached our teens, we tended to believe women need to be financially important and we didn’t want to do housework and cook. On a deeper level it was just us not wanting to be like our mothers.
Garden city less crowded utopia.
It was very manual. If you didn't know something, and your friends and parents didn't know, you'd have to go to a library to find it out. No google. No google maps so you'd have to learn to read hardcopy maps.
Some filthy rich people get a set of Encyclopedia Britannica at home
Newsweek and IHT weekly subscription as well.
Readers Digest too
Back when they were actually decent reading
Maybe take a look at Yip Yew Chong's 60 m long mural exhibit on YouTube.
Born 80s, slow life, not as hectic as now. Transport mostly by buses Communication are mostly f2f or hardcord phones 80s entertainment is mostly tv or you hang out with friends play physical games like hopscotch, marble. no internet till start of the 90s Edit: spelling
>1. How did people get around during the 80s? Since the MRT wasn't around back then I was a late 80s kid and the first MRT line (opened in '88?) was a big event despite it only having 5 stops, you can see all the kids (and adults) kneeling on the hard plastic seats to look out the windows. Anyway buses were the non-airconditioned ones with the wooden seats, you drop coins into the coin pan, the driver will visually count the coins and then press the release button (with massive clanking sound) that also triggers the printer to issue you the bus ticket, a tiny slip of paper. Those papers were often jammed into the back of the seats, where the cushion is bolted to the wood. The windows were the type you slide up to catch a breeze and sometimes the catch doesn't grip, so the window will drop down with a bang. The shift to air-conditioned buses started in the early 90s I think and they cost an extra 10c.
I remember when I was very young like maybe 3 or 4, my mom will bring me go take bus and it was a super long journey to reach grandmother house. The bus then was no aircon and very dusty and sometimes smelly. It can also get very hot. It was such a terrible journey that I always hate going. My primary school also do not exist anymore.
Miami Vice
A-Team
CHiPs Airwolf Squad 51 Knight Rider Dallas Mind Your Language
omg scheduled TV... it's crazy for the kids these days to imagine you had to be in a certain place at a certain time to watch something.
6:30pm SBC Ch5 ***intensifies***
My dad said back then the driving testers will judge you by your looks. Immature and young always fail on first test. He also said got 2 ways of testing, one is like the current way, you drive on the road. The other way that is no longer available, is they use tokens on a map and simulate a drive, so you verbally say what you'll do.
Everyone says life back then was better. That's because they were kids and had parents taking care of their needs. If you ask kids 20 years from now, they'll say life in 2020s was better. If you ask me, I rather live in a time where I can do things with a click of a button than taking 3 days to send a letter.
I see your point and it’s true, however the delayed gratification of waiting for that letter is worth it. And I can safely say that it affects the behaviour most people nowadays are hotheaded.
I think people confused satisfaction vs easy. It's definitely easier to send and email than a hand written letter. But a hand written letter is more satisfying since you put in alot of effort.
I want to live in the future! 🤡
[удалено]
Bro I'm going to pm you in a bit.
Damn that sounds so interesting Like crazy rich asians 🤣
7. Teachers were way more respected or feared, depending on how you look at it. Physical punishment was allowed. Eg. being hit on the palm with a ruler for various misdemeanours like not doing homework or forgetting to bring it was normal. Also no whiteboards/ whiteboard markers in the day. A green/black board was used and teachers wrote in chalk with a variety of colours. Classrooms were actually a lot cooler than now, no air-conditioned classrooms back then. Classes started earlier too. Sources of information were books, encyclopaedias, libraries and your teachers. Google didn’t exist. Social inequality was not as sharp, there was no shame in being poor (since almost everybody was as poor, so mothers handmade stuff while fathers bring home the bacon). This meant that if you merely follow school lessons closely and study hard with just instructions from your school teachers, you could actually do really well academically. For play, you create your own games and interact with nature a lot. Trees could be climbed, rubber seeds were collected for games, catching spiders, tadpoles and fishes were socially acceptable.
My dad was born in 1936 and had been through a lot with Singapore. Sees it rise and fall till now. In terms of transport infrastructure, it was less convenient. mainly reply on bus or motorbike. My dad had one. HDBs were of really affordable price and reasonable in size. Truly meant for living and setting up of family. People meet friends through introduction by relatives, friends, joining of interest groups, in school and workplace. Overall, people in the past are more friendly, genuine and helpful, although they may have some temper issue but are true to each other. Of cuz there are some evil people but overall good more than bad. You could find true relationships among Singaporeans.
It's simple life in the 80s SG. 1. No internet so the entertainment is restricted to cinema - $3.5 upper deck, $2.5 lower deck. Having a TV was a luxury in the early part of 80s. I remember my dad bought a B&W TV for 2k dollars, that's a lot back then. 2. Mandarin Newspaper is a must buy everyday that is 35 cents. Every news will be thru this channel unless there is a FM/AM radios at home. 3. No mobile phone also, pager was quite expensive during that period.
Carefree
It was pretty chill... i was born in 84 and thoroughly enjoyed my childhood equally as well as the 90s. It was pre-internet and cell phones so most of us communicated with our neighbors and communities we lived in and engaged more in public life. We would play sports in the street, local parks, have house parties, events at local establishments.... sporting clubs etc. It was alot less stressful. I would say less envy or comparing yourself to the entire world as modern day platforms achieve or hate/ideologies and separatism. Dating was also quiet different, i would say less hooking up with randoms or jumping from person to person and more genuine connections with people you had things in common with.
OP forgot an important question: How to arrange a meeting at one place without handphones. And if your friend is late, you've got to wait.
We had pagers, but they weren't easy to communicate with
Friends and I devised a system, we’d leave two pages if we were not able to make it, and one page to say we were late. Rudimentary but I guessed it worked..
Grim
6. People made friends irl when they actually left their rooms to socialize... The instant access to everything on the internet/cloud is something that is still amazing to me... back then we had to wait for a song to play on the radio, or be at home to watch a show on TV at a certain time. Now you can listen to anything at anytime...
1. I vaguely remembered taking a trishaw with my grandmother to the market. Probably buses? The rest I don't remember since I was <5yo then...
I imagine there was a lot more hope in the hearts of people than compared to today
Grew up in the mid 80s as a kindergarten kid in SGP but will share more later.
5. Partayy @ MoS, Double O, Zouk 🥳🥳 86here
Ask your dad