Yes. Finally. I'm ready to write the very one thing I really hate about Library@Orchard. One thing that I've been scratching my head over and still I can't understand why.
And that is .....
I HATE TO SEE YOU GO!!!!
From the day they announced that you may be going away, the feeling has never been the same. Yes, other library may be as awesome but it'll be so different. Seriously! Though the countdown can't be avoided, part of me still hope that a miracle can happen and all these are just dreams. How I wish.
And a final message to you ...
If you ask me why? Because you are like no other ...
Thank you for being part of my life even though it's only for 8 years, you'll be carried in my heart for life ... just like what E.E. Cummings said. Guess there are still many words unspoken and only you will know what it is. All the real stories and feelings are well kept in between the walls, floors, pillars and ceilings. Trying to save the image that soon will be lost to us forever. Even this row of glass panels seem to be in a melancholy mood and trying to get ready to say good bye.
Farewell. And again ... thank you for your existence.
So ... This is D.D. the Drunkard Citizen Reporter ... hmmm I'm sorry I'm not drunk. How can I be drunk when I only love to drink Teh-Oh-Peng (a.k.a Iced Tea - with no lemon or whatsoever flavouring. Just tea with sugar and ICE!!!!! Uncle, more ice, please! And yes, alcohol is no good for ya! Stay away!!!!).
As corny as it sounds, I'm going to list down 10 things I love about Library@Orchard before its final moment approaches. I'm sorry, it's actually 11 things. -.-" This sanctuary really means a lot to me. So, here I am trying to unite the fragments of my memory of what I love about this place.
The Tasteful Interior
The first moment I stepped into this library, I thought I've entered a bookstore. Not only the interior was tastefully done but the books are so well preserved that they look so new. And even years have passed, the interior has never gone out of style. That's what I call - great design and foresight. It doesn't age with time and sigh ... it's soon going to be demolished. All of them. :(
The Collection I understand when Library@Orchard was in its planning stage, there's a certain targeted age group of people was envisioned to come to this library often. And, that great vision fits well into my life. The collection that's chosen is honestly perfect. My favourite sections: Business, Investing, Self-Improvement, Arts, History, Health, Religions $ Spirituality, and how can I forget Comics. And oh ya ... the ever-changing section where they promote books that from certain category ... that's priceless. You just know how much braincells have been contributed in making all these possible.
The Cafe It used to be Dome Cafe and I used to order their pie + coffee without fail. But even though Dome is gone, Cafe Galilee is as good. There's coffee and there's water, what more can you ask? (Have I mentioned the toilet is really just few steps away ... awesome)
The Study Area Ah ... this bring back all the sweet memories. This corner accompanied me through the thick and thin of exams. Imagine, you can study as hard as you want. When you want to unwind, find yourself a great comic, laugh it all off (in silent) and get back to the studies. Or when you are falling asleep (though you are not supposed to sleep in the library (look below), quickly grab yourself a cuppa coffee to perk you up. It works. I love this corner! That time it doesn't even have any internet access yet! I think now they do have it, makes it even much better. Arh ... I am gonna miss this a lot. I also came to this spot to do some deep thinking (which eventually bring me to ... la la land ... zzzz) DD Zzzzzzzz .... Don't dare lar don't dare lar! There I'm awake already! :p
The Music Corner Yes .... music corner!!! In a library!!! With choices of music ... classical, asian, pop, jazz, etc. Awesome!!! I love this library soooooooooooooooo much! I really can't contain it :( SIGH!!!! Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy must it be torn down? :( Hicks!!!!!!! :( Can't the property owner see the value in education and give back to the society in the form of ... erm .. cheap rent? :| ... Praying ... Praying hard... :(
The Fountain of Wisdom
There's a water feature in between the magazine/newspaper corner and the cafe. I've captured the video so that you can also enjoy the sound of the running water. Soothing and great way to cover up noise created by the chatty people. Sorry for the not so proportionate size of the video, I've no idea why it's like that. (For those of you who are receiving this by email, you may check out the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kO2KhAgBj4)
The Hi-tech Machines I can't live without the 2 machines that I'm surrounded with. Moreover, these 2 terminals are the ones I always molested whenever I'm in the library. To my right, that's the borrowing machine (I'm not sure whether technically it's called that but ... erm ... that's how I called it haha). It's so cool and efficient. So, what do you need to do to borrow a book?
Scan your identification card by putting it into the provided slot
Put your book on top of the blue spot and wait for 1 second for the book to be scanned and confirmed borrowed
Take back your identification card
Take the receipt which indicates the books you borrowed and their due date
and voila ... you are done ... and happy with your books. The whole process take less than 30 seconds!!!!! Unless while doing so you are singing, chatting, acting, make-up-ing, dancing, massaging, yoga-ing, etc.
To my left, that's the search engine machine. Yes I love it!!!!! Search search search search! Before my fingers were so addicted to Google, I was addicted to this machine. There's nothing that I can't find using it. If the book is not in this library, it can always be transferred from somewhere else (with a small reasonable fee - cheaper than you travel down to the far-far-away library and save you lots of time). And now, you can do all those things from this link too. NLB Rocks!
The Book Drop You must be thinking, I'm nuts to even include the book drop is also one of my favourite thing! Hey hey hey ... you don't know how convenient it is!! How do you return a book? You just dropped it and you can avoid being fined for being late. And what best, it's so convenient. You can do all your shopping. Watch any movies in town and then you drop your book and head back home. Wahh ... it's such a enlightening experience (for my back too .. I mean the books are heavy, you know). Not to mention ... I have a roommate whose office is just right above the library!!! So ... not only my back are not complaining (may be hers did :p) ... I don't need to get fined ... (but sometimes she did made me get fined) and I can go there and look for more books or .. comics. :p Now you know why I love this book drop here? Hehe.
The Friendly Librarians Her name is Jillian. She was not there when I went to take all the photos. :( So instead, I took picture with her cut-out. Not so bad eh. Hahaha. She's one of the most awesome librarian I've ever seen. Not only she's funny and friendly ... but she's very very funny indeed. Haha. Hmm I'm sure she's going to read this so ... heck. You are very funny and veryyyyyy funny, please keep it up and keep being funnyyyyyyyyy!!!! :p
D.D.'s Favourite Route I have a favourite route. Which I take on everytime I go to the library for more than ... 15 minutes. I can not dismiss this point and hence here I am presenting you my favourite route. Let me show you ya (Actually I have a video for this but, the file's too big for Youtube to handle....
It can be A -> B -> C -> D -> E -> F -> G -> H -> I -> J with most frequent visits at point D -> F -> D -> F -> D
A. The Lift (This is where I will show up. Ngee An City level 5) B. The Book Drop (Turn to the left and there'll be the book drop) C. The Search Engine (Books dropped. Time to find new books) D. The Study Area (You have to find a table to sit on before you go to ...) E. The Cafe (...and get yourself coffee/tea to hog the seat ... i mean to relax :p) F. The Toilet (... erm ... what more can I say. My bladder is tiny :p) G. The Comic Section (Unwind!!) H. The Study Area again (Duh ... zzzzzz) I. The Borrowing Machine (sounds like loan shark but it's not :p u know what i mean) J. The Exit (Time to say good bye ...)
The Existence Ultimately, if I have to choose only one thing I LOVE about Library@Orchard, it's got to be its existence. As without its presence, point #1 - #10 will not mean a thing.
Is this the end? Nope. In my next post, I'll share with you the ONE (01) thing I HATE about Libary@Orchard. Yes! There's always 2 sides of everything. Find out what it is after the break, I mean ... my break ... So, stay tuned.
Just stepped into November and it's killing me how every day I'm silently counting down to the closure of my public love affair. Life indeed still goes on but it'll never ever be the same. Well, I should stop sighing over the closure but treasure every moment I've ever had with it.
And I'll start with the beginning of the end ... The "Brief" Briefing for citizen reporters on the 30th of October 2007.
Seriously, the briefing was really brief. It was less than 10 minutes. What were we being briefed on? You may check out this powerpoint slide. Our librarians are so willing to share whatever we need and even get the powerpoint available for public. Imagine that. (For those of you who read this in email and may not view the powerpoint slide properly, you may go to www.DonnaDaritan.com to see it)
After the briefing, that's when the real conversation kicks in. The non-briefing part was not brief at all! Everyone put off their guards and joined in the fun of our super cool librarians. We talked about almost everything even about the painting that was innocently hanging on the wall and even my nonsense rambling about "Peanut butter jelly time" was being showcased through the big screen. That was scary.
(And yes ... that was me pointing at the cake when everyone else was admiring the art on the wall. Erm .... Dum Dee Dum Dee Dum)
Anyway, as the title has suggested, the end is near. We can not only measure it by time but there were evidences to support it. See the photos below, those stickers circled in red ... that means some other libraries have already marked their possessions. Yeah, even the tray will be moving on and on ... and on ... and on.
Like almost all the great things or moments in this world, soon or later they will come to an end (in case you don't remember that someday we will "move on" too, hence we are great too, don't forget that.), so every moment is precious.
Here I am with the rest of citizen reporters and the dedicated librarians, trying our best to preserve the memories, the lessons, the experience and most importantly, the essence and stories Library@Orchard is trying to tell. Every dead thing is alive in their own ways, they tell not only great stories but they tell the truth (Ask every CSI and they will agree with me!!!). So, here we are preserving and sharing the stories through our blogs. Everyone has different stories to tell. :-)
If you go to the Flickr page, feel free to click on each of our faces to go to our blogs, if not, here they are from left to right.
I hope none of you are vomiting by reading the title yet. And nope, you are not reading it wrongly, I can't believe it myself too. :-) I am proudly "crowning" myself (and with the help of Library@Orchard) as a citizen reporter for my one and only beloved library - Library@Orchard.
What is it all about?
Image courtesy of www.wikipedia.org Library@Orchardis one of the greatest gift this country has given me since 21 October 1999. It's the best public library one can ever wished for. With great and best location and not to mention after all these years it still looks good, sounds good, smells good and ultimately FEELs GOOD. (Go figure):p and personally, with lots of lots of memories. LOTS!!!!! (I really mean it!!!!). It even has a page on wikipedia, it's the COOLEST library ever. (Well, of course I'm comparing those library in my schools in Indonesia where I could count the number of books with my toes plus my fingers plus some of my hairs). Since the recent hike in property market, Library@Orchardis closing down and ultimately moving on to not only one but 2 better territories (don't think this library is scared of any challenges yaaaaa .. we'll beat it and come out better!!! Watch out you, rental hikes!)
So, to commemorate this big event, Library@Orchard is calling the citizens to blog about this event in whatever way we want (with some very common-sensical guidelines, of course. You can't really write about things like this - Once upon a time, I went to Library@Orchard at level 5 of Takashimaya and then I went to toilet and then I went home. The end.). Once I saw this big opportunity to embrace one of the biggest love affair in my life, I took the chance and give myself a vote to be involved romantically and passionately by being one of the citizen reporter. (Yeahhh baby yeahhhhhh!!!)
So, here I am, trying to gather pieces of my memories and feelings, coupled with recent facts and findings of Library@Orchard. I'll be sharing regularly till the farewell of this piece of monumental altar of mine will take place on the 30th of November 2007. Through all these "mini reports", I hope all of you will enjoy a piece of me (ok this sounds quite wrong -.-", but you know what I mean), a piece of the library, a piece of Singapore and a piece of knowledge.
