Hooray for Sisters

I had a pleasant surprise when I dropped by my mother's place the other day. My sister, who was clearing stuff from her room (earlier she had cleared out her Lotus 1-2-3 Suite installation diskettes. There were over six of them. Man, were we patient then!), unearthed some vaccination cards that belonged to us siblings. They were called 'B.C.G Vaccination Cards'. It was a coincidence that someone at the iRemember FB page also mentioned BCG, although those were from a school health report.

I've never known what BCG stands for until I googled it today. It is Bacillus Calmette-Guérin, and is the standard medicine against TB.

In primary school, we only knew BCG to stand for 'Boys-Chase-Girls'.

The sweet thing about these 50-year old cards is how new they still looked. (In the pix, the shadows make them look older than they are.) I like the fact that they each had a Chinese rune for Longevity gloss-embossed on each card. It's such a wonderful thing to wish upon a newborn; and very auspicious.

An older sister's card was the same but had rounded edges. The funny thing is that we all seemed to have been vaccinated at different medical centres. There was Ulu Bedok Centre, Kandang Kerbau Medical Hospital (KKMH) and Kim Keat Road Clinic.

The card in the picture indicates that my sister was vaccinated 12 days after the day she was born (18th Feb 1962). Mine was quite soon, like the next day, it seems.

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Old window grills too have the Longevity symbol: