Our Neighbourhood Ice Cream Uncle

When I was still in primary school, there were two famous Ice Cream Uncles who sold ice creams and snacks from their motorcycles. We call them Uncle Matkool or Uncle Ice Cream.

These ice cream uncles would do their businesses around our neighbourhood. They would ride around our parks, streets, blasting their Matkool songs every evening. I think mostly people of my age in my neighbourhood would recognise them. We would know they were around even when we couldn’t see them. It was all because of the music they played.

Matkool, Matkool, kawanku.
Mari kita ikut Matkool!
Main-main selalu.
Syoknya, syoknya ada Matkool!

So there were two famous uncles who competed against each other every day for sales. They would usually park their motorcycles in front of our schools after school hours. These uncles would without fail, be surrounded by hungry school kids EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. Me? I was among these hungry kids too! 🤣

So, because there were two Ice Cream Uncles (usually), we differentiate them by calling them “Uncle Pendek” and “Uncle Tinggi”. The Uncle Pendek’s other nickname was “Uncle Jahat” because he would always scam and bully us into purchasing his snacks even when we didn’t want them.

I’ll give you a scenario that has happened numerous times in the past. I wanted to buy a Super Ring snack from Uncle Pendek. The snack usually cost me RM 0.50. I gave him RM 1.00, and expecting him to return the balance. Instead of giving back my RM 0.50, he would give me another snack(s) that cost exactly RM 0.50.

I used to get bullied like this, especially when I was younger, like standard 1 or 2. I saw he did the same trick to my older brothers, and my brothers literally scolded him and demanded the balance back from him. The uncle would return the balance when we insisted. If we didn’t? Say bye bye to the money and hello to the unwanted snacks. 😅

Uncle Tinggi on the other hand was the super nice uncle. He would do his business fairly and treated us well. Whenever these two uncles were in the same location, we would always buy the snacks from Uncle Tinggi, rather than from Uncle Pendek.

Yeah, that was how much we disliked the other uncle. However, we still bought the snacks from Uncle Pendek whenever Uncle Tinggi wasn’t around. No hatred can beat the snacks. Snacks would over-throne anything hahahaha.

There were two very fond memories of Uncle Tinggi that I would remember until the day I die. His gestures were very genuine. A primary school kid me was really touched by him.

On one fine afternoon, when I was in standard 3 back in 2005, my brothers and I walked to our KAFA school. It would normally take us around 5-10 minutes to get to the school on a good day. It was around 2:30 pm and it was very sunny that day. We only left the house like a minute ago, but we were already starting to sweat.

We bumped into Uncle Tinggi on our way to school. Uncle Tinggi took notice of us and he then honked at us. It was his way of saying “hello”. My oldest brother who was in standard 6 then asked him, jokingly, to give us a lift to the school. To our surprise, Uncle Tinggi actually stopped his bike and asked us to hop on!

My oldest brother sat on the back of the bike, while my other brother and I sat on top of the ice cream box. Uncle Tinggi had even opened up his umbrella attached at bis bike to give us some shade from the sun.

Our ride to the school was one of the most exciting ride ever that I had ever had. I remember seeing our schoolmates staring at us, in bizarre, as we hopped down from the bike in front of the school entrance. 🤪

The another special incident happened when we were on our way home from school around 6:00 pm. We were almost reaching home when we heard Uncle Tinggi honked at us from the back. He was riding his ice cream bike, overtaking us with a smile. From behind, my brother jokingly shouted at him to give us a snack for free. 

Belanjalah jajan satu!” my brother said. Uncle Tinggi who was already 2-3 meters in front of us, suddenly let go of a bag of snacks on the road without even looking at us. We ran to the snacks right away giggling. We shouted at him, thanking him for the snacks and he just left with his left hand, waving at us, still without looking back at us. 🥰

I couldn’t remember exactly when was the last time I saw these two uncles. I hope they both are doing good and happy. I wish we had a picture or two with them because they were part of the memories that I will cherish forever. Be it good or bad, I’ll definitely tell the tales to my nieces and nephews and children! I don’t know when that will happen but I hope, soon! 😬

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