Looking back
Happy April Fools’ Day! Happy alcohol-rules-take-effect day! Here’s a friendly reminder that from today, you’re not allowed to drink in public places from 10.30pm to 7am.
Your parents had it better, didn’t they? They could drink whenever, wherever they wanted. To celebrate our new laws, here are some other things your parents could do in the past that are illegal now:
1. Playing with firecrackers
“Before they made firecrackers illegal, we used to play with them every Chinese New Year. In Primary School, my friend and I didn’t like this neighbour, so every Chinese New Year we lit firecrackers and threw them into his house.”
Made illegal in 1972 after a string of firecracker-related deaths, it’s not the safest way to celebrate any festival. Have fun without injuring yourself unnecessarily by playing with sparklers or watching the fireworks on National Day.
2. Chewing gum
“We would eat the chewing gum on the bus and stick the chewing gum under the seats.”
Chewing gum is a fun diversion, but scraping globs of hardened gum off the pavements is a real pain. It’s small wonder that the government banned it in 1992. Gum chewers had no choice but to attempt to bring gum back from Malaysia undetected, but at least no one disrupts MRTs by sticking gum between train doors anymore.
“Chewing gum with therapeutic properties” has been re-legalised since 2004, but we all know bubblegum > chewing gum. 
3. Tikam tikam
“You know when we walked back from school, we used to pass by all the sundry shops with all the tikam tikam? There were no regulations against selling these back then. What we did was put random numbers on a board, just like an advent calendar.
Behind the number there may or may not be a reward, like sweets, toys – mostly not money, but small little gifts. Let’s say you charge 10 cents per game. Usually you’ve have one or two gifts of a higher value, but ultimately the person who sells it gets some profits and wins lah.”
Tikam tikam has been illegal since 1961, but remained popular all throughout the 1980s. The ban didn’t stop children from earning extra pocket money from homemade tikam tikam boards either. Today, it’s illegal to peddle your wares without a permit, but if you like playing games of chance, try TOTO and 4D instead.
4. Fishing in longkangs
“Last time, we didn’t really have to fish. Just go to the longkang, dip your hands in and grab. The drain water was very shallow – we used to catch catfish and eels.”
We haven’t heard of anyone running away from the police, fishing rod in hand, but to be on the safe side, only fish at designated fishing spots.
Spotted: next level fishing skills
5. Keeping exotic animals
“Once, the police came because they found big reptiles in my neighbour’s house – two big pythons. I’m not sure if they were kept as pets, but it’s impossible that no one noticed them for so long. I know that the temple nearby used to keep big snakes as pets…used to keep them in really dark and smelly cages.”
Snakes were less common household pets in comparison to star tortoises, illegally kept by admirers of its pretty shell. As a general rule, don’t keep endangered animals – dogs make fun and legal pets. For Singaporeans too busy to care for pets, how about a well-behaved, low-maintenance pet rock instead?
6. Corporal punishment
“Kenna thrown chalks, thrown dusters and put duster powder on the face, kenna hit by ruler here on the knuckles…hit by wooden rulers because the school couldn’t afford metal rulers.”
Caning with a light rattan cane is still an acceptable form of punishment, but teachers are not allowed to hit their students anymore. Consider yourself lucky.
7. Eating on public transport
“Everyone ate on the bus – bread, biscuits, drink kopi from plastic bags…”
Before MRTs started operating in 1987, public transport meant travelling on non-air conditioned, open-air buses like this one. There were no rules against eating and no Stomp either, so everyone ate whatever they wanted on the bus.
Today, every student knows that if you skip breakfast in the morning to catch your bus, you might not be able to eat until recess time. 
Source Unless you meet this awesome bus driver.
8. Buying cigarettes
“Back then, the adults played mahjong everyday and I was the ‘kopi boy’. I used to stand beside the table and wait for orders…they’ll give me some money and I would run downstairs to get kopi and cigarettes. And then I would run up with the kopi and cigarettes and they would let me keep the change. 1 cent, 5 cents; it doesn’t matter how much. So long as I got extra money I was happy.”
You can still have a kopi boy today, so long as he buys coffee but not cigarettes. It’s illegal for anyone under the age of 18 to purchase cigarettes.
Source The government has been against smoking since 1986
9. Jaywalking
Source Traffic in 1981
“Did I jaywalk? Of course! All the time!”
Oh, the days when everyone jaywalked without having to worry about the fine. On occasion, it’s quicker and more convenient to jaywalk, but you risk having to fork over $20. The fine is the least of your worries – traffic is so confusing that jaywalking is fairly dangerous.
Source Traffic now.
I think I’d rather use the proper crossings than risk my life.
10. Infringing copyright rules
“We used to go to Sembawang Music Centre – there were many others, but this was the most well known. Back then the shop used to have all the cassettes, we just passed them a list of songs and they would copy them into a cassette for us.
Or just like Spotify like that, they came up with “best dance songs”, “best of the 80s” cassettes. It was very popular at that time. Everybody was doing it. At that time we didn’t think it was illegal. It’s not like we stole the songs, we actually paid for them to make us these cassettes.”
Cassette copying was succeeded by buying pirated CDs in the 90s, Limewire in the 00s and now, torrenting in the 10s. The common consensus is that it’s okay if you don’t get caught, but we suggest streaming music legally instead.
Looking forward
“We didn’t have a lot of money back then, and we didn’t have toys. We did a lot of ‘illegal’ things because we had to earn money, you know? And sometimes we did them for fun.”
We’re thankful that some laws have been put into place, but the past always seems like a better time. Perhaps, twenty years down the road, we’ll be the ones telling our kids all about the illegal things we did.
Chewing gum, jaywalking, drinking in public after 10.30pm – what will Singapore ban next?
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