Ice delivery at The Tekka Centre

Ice has long been valued as a means of cooling. Until recently, the Hungarian Parliament building used ice harvested in the winter from Lake Balaton for air conditioning.

Icehouses were used to store ice formed in the winter, to make ice available all year long, and early refrigerators were known as iceboxes, because they had a block of ice in them. In many cities, it was not unusual to have a regular ice delivery service during the summer. The advent of artificial refrigeration technology has since made delivery of ice obsolete.

and here in Singapore there are commercial operations that manufacture ice..... here though with the average daily temperature throughout the year being about 32 deg cel. (89.6 deg f) one would think that blocks of ice would be delivered in refrigerated vehicles.

Not so.

Today my friend Euvah and myself wandered around the Tekka Centre in Little India and came across this truck (non refrigerated truck) delivering ice. It was lined with a large tarpaulin and the blocks of ice weighed probably 20 kg each as I am guessing that each block was 20 litres of water ...... anyway, one man in the back of the truck pushed each block towards the edge while this other man slid the block along the narrow plank and onto the mechanical pallet.

Once it was full he moved it along to the stalls that required it ..... Euvah and I were fascinated by this and took quite a few photos, much to the amusement of passers by and the shop keepers!






and then as a close up with the mist that is created as it evaporates:



anyway, we found it interesting!!!

Next posting will be of the Tekka Centre and all the foods in the wet market.