Thursday, 6 October 2016
What Is Snake Oil???
Those folks in Uncle8888's generation will know what is Snake Oil man or woman.
They would be selling snake oil at any Wayang.
First, they would perform some shows or light entertainment with some planted shadow audience as initial crowd to attract the larger crowd.
Once the crowd was large enough for real selling; the snake oil would proceed with hands-on demonstration and application.
They would persuade and persuade a few very "unwilling" audience from the crowd to step forward and after some observation made by the Snake Oil man/woman and questioning these "selected" audience from the crowd.
These "selected" audience would shyly admit that they were suffering from the same illness/diseases that Snake Oil could cure it.
Snake oil men/women were excellent speakers. Their words were convincing and soon at least one or two "selected" would buy and more other planted buyers would open their wallet to buy the limited order Snake Oil at special price and the rest (real buyers) would still get the promotional price.
Nowadays, we still have Wayang but absolutely no more Snake Oil man/woman at the Wayang!
Where are Snake Oil men/women now?
Where arh?
They have gone to investment Wayang? No?
Younger readers,
ReplyDeleteYou can still see snake oil peddler in Singapore, if you interested.
And I mean REAL snake oil! The oil from boiling snake's fat are turned into cream in little bottles like those for Tiger Balm.
Every CNY period, there's a Malaysian peddler doing his gig at Waterloo Street near Kwan Im Ma temple.
The oil is "supposed" to alleviate the effects of rheumatism.
This CNY I'll go recce. If he comes back I'll let you all know!
All the Snake Oils have migrated to Europe's mega-cities where there are millions of tourists to scam esp those from China. I've been watching the series Scam City on Nat Geo People channel. They show all these snake oils doing their magic in Paris, Florence, Istanbul, Rome, London, etc, etc.
ReplyDeleteInternational brand snake oil
DeleteAbout 20 yrs ago, saw 1 with real snake somewhere in Jurong ... let himself be bitten ... but didn't look like poisonous snake... Not sure snake oil from that poor snake's family or friends?!?!?
ReplyDeleteAnother 2 or 3 "shows" I watched involved the guy whacking himself with metal pipe until arm & leg swollen and slight bleeding... Apply miracle snake oil to make swelling & bleeding disappear... proceed to do kungfu moves & 1-arm pushups to show fully cured!!
Quite hard to "migrate" to financial snake oil???
Oh ya ... can!!! But not so drama...
Just show huge past losses ... maybe even bankrupt ... but now earned back everything & more ... multi-millionaire today!!! Hahahaha!!!