“The tickets here have more than 50 years of history.”

“The tickets here have more than 50 years of history. When I was in primary school, I loved to collect bus tickets. I would take the bus to and back from school, near Orchard Road, by myself and look at the tickets given to me. Many people then could not afford to pay to ride buses. I considered myself very fortunate to be able to take buses.

All the numbers in the bus tickets were different. Some of the tickets here do not have any holes punched into them. I specially went up the bus to buy them. For example, the bus ticket 0000 was the first ticket in the stack. Some of the numbers on these tickets are also the same as the numbers on my identity card such as 1, 9, 5, 7. Sometimes, they have the same numbers as my birthday. The designs on the back of the tickets were all quite different and there were about five to six colours. When you get on the bus, you would tell the conductor the amount you wish to purchase. The conductor would punch a hole in your ticket to indicate which stop you got on. You had to know which stop you wanted to get off. If you underpaid, you would be fined. Although I collect the tickets, I am not an expert on their history. I do not know who designed them, or when they stopped printing these tickets. I just thought that they were special.

I keep a lot of things but the tickets are the most convenient to carry around and so, I wanted to bring them here to share with others. For those who have lived in those days, these tickets are likely to bring back memories. Unlike antique items that are still available for sale, these tickets can no longer be bought. Other people have also found the tickets interesting but few have collected such a large amount of tickets that are personalized to their own numbers. My children do not know about the tickets. I do not know what they will do with them. “