Lemming's Insane Ranting

The visit to the new NLB HQ was in short, simply breathtaking...

Our visit started, of course, outside the building. Walking across from the Inter-continental hotel, we could see some royal chinks waving from one of the roof gardens. "Spit on them!", I shouted.

From across the road, we could already see the throngs of commoners through the ceiling to ceiling glass windows, milling about the whole place. We were dreading the encounter and was hesistant to enter the place, contemplating scrapping the whole visit. I could almost smell the fear, oh wait, that's just the stench of smelly foreigners.

The exuberating opulance that awed everyone even transended into the commodes. The colourful mosiac tiles filled every inch of the toilet. Echoes of the past were evident, I suspected they had brought over the old urinals over, but on closer inspection, they were new, just the same design - floor to shoulder length porcelein urinals. Of course, with the recent SARs debacle and calls for better hygeine, automatic flushing was a ubitious feature throughout, although even that couldn't keep the PRCs at bay.



The view from the top was indeed the best part of the spanking new place, not the view out of the touristy roof-top gardens, but the view out the windows of the top (14th) floor of the place. You could see the many old HDB flats along Bain street that still adorn the area, a touch of yesteryears, you could say. Although the apartments have been garishly painted, as if they had let a six-year old kid go nuclear with a giant paint-brush and a pastel consisting of 'extra-bright' primary colours. If you open your eyes wide enough to let in the glare, the view stretches all the way from Brash Brasah road to Contonment square.









Other than my imagination however, not one bit of the new library smelled, looked, felt anything like the Stamford Library. It was mordern, cold, detatching and impersonal. Unlike the cosy, damp, scared quietness, literally old-school (my school was just around the corner during those days), textbook (pardon the pun) example of a library that the old National Library was. The new complex was ostentatious, overbearing and just simpley un-library like.

What's more, I couldn't stand outside the library waiting for my dad to pick me up, taking in the alluring smells of wonton noodles or fried kway teow from the hawker centre or if you walked just a bit futher down, the scene changes to the pungent sewerage smell of the small drain nearby. [Cue mosquitoes]

Thus, it is my opinion that the gah-men is trying to pull the wool over my eyes. By building a 'new & improved' version of the old library, should we be pacified and lulled into believing that new is always better? That a part of Singapore's history hadn't been lost in vain. Ok, granted that I have a huge imagination, then again, smoke and mirrors was never my specaility. =P