Obsolescence

A friend of mine whose father ran a photo studio in the 70s. It was thriving business for his shop then and they lived in big bungalow house in high class residential area, bought new car compared to his contemporaries who could barely afford owning only second hand used vehicles. With the advent of digitial cameras, the business of his photo shop dropped drastically and nowadays consumers simply do not buy films, develop photos in the shops anymore. They just point and shoot, store them in memory cards, upload the photos in digital frames or web albums etc. So this traditional photo shop of my friend's father became the thing of the past!

I remember those days in the village, where there were only a handful of legally licensed taxis; they belonged to the richer and more well-to-do villagers. It was expensive because one has to own a vehicle, usually a Mercedes Benz 190D and also the licence from the government was expensive, limited and controlled. Buses were commuting only once every hour to and fro Kampar town. At that time, there were needs for more transportation, therefore illegal taxis or what we called "Kereta Sapu" came into existence and they were doing a thriving business. My dad was amongst one of those earliest folks to start this "Kereta Sapu" after he quitted from his fish monger job near Tapah Road and Langkap areas. Before this, he was cycling and later part bought a BSA motorbike to sell fishes to those Malay kampung folks with credit given to them. It was common then for debts to be recorded in a small booklet with brand 555 or more popularly known as the triple 5 booklet. Debts were settled at the end of the month based on the accounts in these booklets, even sundry shops did the same with the village folks. I suppose it was not an easy task to collect back those debts, therefore later part my grandmother from my mum side bought a Vauxhall vehicle bearing the number plate AB 3122 for my dad. The income from this taxi business then was lucrative despite sometimes the Department of Transport or JPJ came into action, drivers had to stop driving for weeks or risked paying hefty fine for operating taxis illegally. This infamous "Kerata sapu" vehicle also served as a means of transport for the entire family, it was really something extraordinary for a village home in the early 60s to own a car. These "Kereta Sapu" vehicles were used to fetch children to schools to Kampar and also "Dulang" washers to the tin mines. With some special arrangement of the seating and the addition of stools, 8-10 adults were packed inside the vehicle. Back then, vehicles were not many on the roads, and therefore vehicles packed with passengers were common, less dangerous and accidents were practically unheard of!

Whenever a good business became obvious, all the others jumped into the bandwagon. Naturally the village after sometime was saturated with such illegal taxis, plying the roads, side lanes and all over the place. Now they were no more such "Kereta Sapu" because every family in the village owns at least one car!

Time, government policies and world economy changed the landscape of life-styles and habits. We must always take this into consideration whenver we venture into something old or new. No good things last forever. Remember how our tin-mining, rubber tapping, timber logging etc became a thing of the past for the country? They were once our pillars of economy that built the nation and propelled the country to what it is today. Very soon, our oil and gas would be the things of the past for Malaysia too. Our leaders have to lead us and move forward with new things and new ideas to generate new revenue for our country in order to achieve our vision 2020.