The Generations Of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow.

My father sent this to me today! I found it rather amusing… read on:

To All Those Who Were Born In The Late 50s and Early 60s:

First, we survived with mothers who had no maids. They cooked while taking care of us at the same time.

They took aspirin, candy floss, fizzy drinks, shaved ice with syrup and diabetes was rare. Salt added to Pepsi or Coke was remedy for fever.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets.

As children, we would ride with our parents on bicycles/ motorcycles for 2 or 3. Richer ones in cars with no seat belts or air bags.

Riding in the back of a private taxi was a special treat.

We drank water from the tap and NOT from a bottle.

We would spend hours on the fields under bright sunlight flying our kites, without worrying about UV rays which never seem to affect us.

We go into the jungle to catch spiders without worries of Aedes mosquitoes. With mere 5 pebbles (stones) would be a endless game. With a ball (tennis ball best) we boys would ran like crazy for hours.

We caught guppy in drains / canals and when it rained we swam there.

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually worry about being unhygenic.

We ate salty, very sweet & oily food, candies,bread and real butter and drank very sweet soft drinks, sweet coffee/ tea, ice kachang, but we weren’t overweight because……WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!!
We would leave home in the morning and play all day, till streetlights came on.

No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.

We would spend hours repairing our old bicycles and wooden scooters out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo’s, X-boxes, multiple channels on cable TV, DVD movies, no surround sound, no phones, no personal computers, no Internet.WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!
We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and we still continued the stunts.

We never had birthday parties till we were 21.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend’s house and just yelled for them!

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

Yet this generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever!

The past 40 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!

And YOU are one of them!

CONGRATULATIONS!

You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the government regulated our lives for our own good. and while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were.

PS -The big type is because all of us have Long-sightedness or hyperopia at our age !!!

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Of course I must come up with a version for the people of our generation to *OUR* unappreciative children who have it all in the world of tomorrow! Cis!

First, some points to mimic the tones of the older generation:

For The Children Of The People Who Were Born In The Late 80s and Early 90s:

Back then, we had maids who ran away. Yes, real humans. Unlike you, robots will never leave home because their adaptors are with you and they will run out of battery if they ever dare to leave home. We used to get our maids from Indonesia, Philippines and Cambodia. Now? All come from Japan!

Back then, the toys we had were merely plastic replicas of the real things Mummy and Daddy used. Now? Sometimes we need to borrow that toy handphone from you to make emergency calls.

We ate KFC, McDonalds, Pizza Hut, A&W to our hearts’ content….that’s why Mummy and Daddy now so fat. Sorry ar. You guys will never ever get to appreciate the joy of eating fast food. Lousy government la, go impose tax all.

If Mummy and Daddy had two children, sit Wira. If Mummy and Daddy had five children sit MPV. If Mummy and Daddy had children too early, sit Kelisa.

Riding in the aeroplane was a special treat. Last time where got people take aeroplane to school one? (Some kiasu parents of the future will take advantage of the fast and cheap air flights and send their kids to go to prestigious schools overseas.)

Which reminds me, last time Mummy and Daddy that time so poor thing, go study overseas must go long long one. Now with Air Asia expand until become Air World already, go for class in Australia and then come back for dinner.

We stared at the computer for 10 hours or more without worrying about eyeball cancer.

Year end holidays would mean a trip to some nice resort islands around the peninsular with your friends. Now global warming makan all the islands already. And don’t even think about going to the beach young lady. It’s tsunami season again. Mummy raise you up so big you want to throw it all away har har har?

Last time want to go swimming must go swim in club. Now every house also at least got one swimming pool. Haih. Kids nowadays. Somemore cannot ask you all to clean the pool as a chore, because the pool can autoclean one. 🙁

PLEASE LAH, share share share, you not scared kena hepatitis ar?? 1 Coke where can four people share one?? You think what? Your grandfather’s time ar?

We were deprived of fatty and sweet food because the cure for caries and obesity had not been invented yet.(the part about caries is true. They have not managed to isolate a single microorganism that is contributing to caries.)

We would leave home and come home the next morning and kena whack by our parents. But now we understand you better. Tonight how much you want for cover charge?

Wah! Last time forgot to bring handphone out of the house like lost one limb like that! Not like you kids nowadays, telecommunication tools are embedded inside you. So lucky.

We would spend hours trying to figure out how to code our websites and blogs. The prettier ones had coders for them, the not pretty ones must code themselves.(which turns out lousy too. bwahahha). Not like now, so many drag and drop web designing software. What? Nobody use website already? Oh sorry, sorry.

The boys loved modifying their cars until damn super geng.(I know, don’t cringe). Speeding on the highway, kena saman by human police who can accept rasuah. No such thing as In-build speed reducer(speed limit determined by Malaysian government) when you try to go any faster. Boys would just drive up to 200kmph. Bang car also either die or go hospital. Then still continue.

We had to own a Playstation, Nintendo, X-box, multiple channels on cable TV, mp3 player, phones, personal computers, Internet and a digital camera. Yes, separately. That time where got that-thing-what-you-young-people-call-that-has-everything? No such thing! Must spend damn alot of money last time to buy things that has specialized functions. Those were the days laaa..

Last time we didn’t start crying when our parents suggested that we have a birthday party at home with a canopy and stuff. The canopies were red and white and our parents would cater food for our friends.

We opened chat windows on MSN with our friends who lived 5 minutes away and left the MSN window open before driving over to their places to go out to yamcha at a mamak(how nice if they still have those around) and then come home and continue chatting with the same friends on the same chat window.

(and now for a little bit from my own head):

Back in our days, we would control the game consoles with our fingers. The people of our generation suffered from thumb aches due to frequent smsing(that’s sending messages with your fingers on a thing called keypad on those ancient things called mobile phones). At least we didn’t suffer from headache due to electrodes used for controlling your characters in your computer games.

Internet Withdrawal Syndrome existed back then.

Our generation witnessed the Death Of The TV (DOTV). Long live youtube and torrents!

We knew how to make our own money with blog ads.

Online shopping was a gamble.

There was a time when the computers had no colours. But most of us were too young to remember too. Got to ask your grandfather about that.

Handphones were without colours too.

Without so many benefits the kids have today, we still managed to survive through the years.

A time when technology was still progressing, life was not as easy as it was today.

Our generation produced some of the best multi-taskers, brilliant problem solvers and extremely outspoken individuals.

The past 50 years was super fun! And you were there to enjoy it all! Congratulations!! (Have you finished paying your PTPTN?? Malaysia Boleh!!)

Better don’t share this around, later the government catch you. (Don’t know, anything also can be a reason for sedition already. Journalism very jia lat already.) Share with your children maybe can lah, to let them see what it was like to grow up in a progressing world.:)

p/s: The one line-one line type of writing style is to ease your reading because the people of our generation has a short attention span.

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