Moving On: library@orchard in transit

Olivia’s one of our citizen bloggers but she doesn’t have a blog, so she’ll be guest blogging here!
Enough of boring ‘ol me, this is what Olivia sent us:

6 November 2007 Changes
 
I have been away from Singapore for three years. In that short span of time, I had returned to my home country on several occasions but each time only for a brief visit. On each visit, I noted changes in places that I went. But I didn’t pay much attention to them, until now.

The last few weeks had been overwhelming. I roamed ‘familiar’ shopping malls only to find that I needed to check a mall directory to find a shop, or worse, to ask someone where the toilet is (has moved to). I played tourist in a land that is my home. I braved outdoors each day to ‘familiar’ places, anxious that some might have disappeared into non-existence.

Perhaps one of the most visually shocking scene I saw was a tunnel of bright lights where the old National Library used to stand. The scene almost looked like that some aliens had landed their spaceship and had lifted the building up into their interiors. And then I heard the news that the library@orchard is moving.
 
As I stepped into the familiar library@orchard, I was reminded of my frequent visits there when I was younger. Back then, I liked it for its compactness. It wasn’t a maze of intimidating books. It held books that were of interest to me. The novels and travel books were very updated, and that meant I didn’t have to pay exorbitant bookstore prices for the latest reads. It was also the first time I felt relaxed at a library. Before library@orchard days, the library is a place where silence is golden and if you even squeak like a mouse, someone will ‘shish’ at you.
 
Today, I returned to the same relaxed atmosphere at library@orchard. I was pleased to find that things are as they were. Well, almost. The sections are more or less as I had remembered them. But the titles are definitely updated. This is a positive change. I spied copies of cookbooks that I have been dying to own. I eagerly flipped through some titles and understood why floggers raved over some of them. I was able to relax in my own gastronomic world.

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