This is along Orchard Road, heart of the shopping district. Behind the camera is Ngee Ann City. The black building on the right, the Grand Park Orchard, is too new to be a landmark. I think it was the Crown Prince Hotel, that used to be there, with a round Swensen's restaurant in the front.
There are two main ice cream brands in Singapore: Wall's (Unilever) and Magnolia (Fraser & Neave). I'm guessing that Magnolia has ice cream cart vendors too, but I haven't been paying attention. Nestle is here, but their web page says that they started selling ice cream here in 1994, too late for me to feel nostalgic about them. Maybe they'll have more of an impact on the young generation.
If the heart logo doesn't look familiar to you, that's because Unilever decided to mess with your childhood memories. They used to use a logo with red vertical stripes and a blue circle.
Note the large brown packet between the lady vendor in the striped blouse, and her motorcycle helmet. That's bread. A popular way to serve up ice cream is in a bread sandwich. I never was into that. I'm a cone guy, less drippy. You can bite the bottom tip off, then suck the ice cream down through the cone, to get the ice cream nicely distributed throughout the cone.
All sorts of interesting details in the photo. There's a spare umbrella, rolled up on the left. There's also a folding chair. You can see that she sells canned drinks and bottled water too. Black blob next to her head looks like a large transistor radio.
I'm not certain, but I remember the government banning street hawkers a few decades back, for hygiene reasons. They later allowed the ice cream vendors back, to add local color or something. But the guys who ladled home-made soya bean and grass jelly (chin chow) drinks out of plastic containers, never returned.
- Nikon D7000, 35mm f1.8.
- At 35mm, f2.8, 1/60 seconds, ISO 100.
- Aperture priority, center weighted metering, auto white balance.
- Picasa: Cropped.
