The Joy of Owning A New Car (and Taking Swipes At A Friend)

My good pal and colleague Chris collected his new car today. Although Chris was not a first-time car owner, this was the first time that he bought a brand new car. And at a basement bargain price of less than 50K on the road, what a joy it must have been for him. I was on afternoon leave to share his joy and a lunch with him. What are friends for anyway?

But the problem was that Chris' favourite car colour was actually black. However he finally settled for champagne gold because it was his wife's favourite a more neutral and popular colour. A few weeks ago, I was at Lifestyle (yes the shop in my last post which had since closed down). I saw a model car which was the car model Chris bought and it was in his favourite colour. So I bought it and would be presenting it to him tomorrow as a gift:

So you see, I do bring business to the shopping centre, not just window shop and take photos. (Big mistake, Miss Moods shopkeeper!) Sigh, the extent I would go to, just to please a friend, not just to put up a blog. And the extent that a friend would go to, just to take a swipe at me. Some people can be ungrateful. Tsk, tsk, tsk.

What Is A Camera For Anyway?

Since I bought my digicam 2 months ago, I nearly ran into trouble as many times. In an earlier post, I related how a man violently protested when I took his photo without permission. Then yesterday, another similar incident happened in a shopping centre near where Chris stays. Now you know how I risked life and limb to get my photos on my blog.

I noticed that a lot of shops there had either moved away or were closed down recently. One reason could be due poor business. (Read on - I soon found out that there was another more likely reason.) Customers seemed to prefer visiting shopping centres in another nearby town.

Some examples of outlets in the shopping centre which had closed down:

Immediately after I took the bottom right photo, a shopkeeper came out from the adjacent shop and confronted me. Obviously she was damn free did not happen to have customers in her shop at that time. This was the dialogue that followed:

Shopkeeper: Do you have permission to take photos here?

Me (quoting the good-to-use line from Kenny Sia): Is there any sign that says I can't?

Shopkeeper (sensing that my English is quite powderful): It's implicit.

Me: And do you have permission to intervene?

Shopkeeper: You stay here! I am calling the security guard.

With that she turned around and walked briskly back into her shop. Now, I was not afraid of the security guard but ever since I left National Service, I never followed orders barked out to me that way. So I also turned around and walked briskly away.

While making my getaway, I saw this sign posted outside a lift in the shopping centre:

Oh, so what I did was considered 'suspicious behaviour'? What was the shopkeeper thinking? Did I look like a txxxxrist who was taking photos with intention to bxxb the place? Even if I were, I wouldn't have chosen a shopping centre so devoid of human traffic, would I? Couldn't I be a potential customer who was only trying out a digital camera on sale there? What's the use of a camera if I can't even take photos of something as inanimate as a closed shop? And if I had always asked the rightful owner for permission to take photos, do you think you will get to see all the interesting photos on my blog? Fat chance okay. What is a camera for anyway? To take family snapshots or make stars of of ourselves in blue movies for our own private consumption? How boring!

Now, the real reason why this shopping centre was suffering a diminishing crowd of shoppers must be due to hostile and overly suspicious shopkeepers. Incidentally, the shopkeeper's shopname was 'Moods' and she must have been in a bad one that day considering that her shop had no business. Especially to Chun See - considering the circumstances, I am willing to forgive and extend the olive branch to her, that is if I ever step into that shopping centre again and her shop is not closed down by then.

A Visit to the National Library

On 12 Feb 2006, I visited the spanking new National Library at 100 Victoria Street. It was my first visit since the library was opened to the public on 22 Jul 2005. I wanted to see for myself how different the new library was from the old red-brick one at Stamford Road.

It might not be obvious from the above photo but the 16-storey building actually consisted of two 16-storey blocks linked by 'sky-bridges' on every level. It certainly looked very modern and imposing from the outside, a far cry from the humble National Library of yesteryear.

Inside, the first floor lobby was no less impressive. In fact, I thought that it resembled the lobby of a 5-star hotel:

Every floor of the library had a pair of escalators but most of them did not appear to be working:

However, I found out why soon enough - I stepped onto one and nearly fell forward when the escalator suddenly moved backward. So the escalators had a power-saving feature which shut them down when they were not in use for some time. How suaku of me! Not only that, I had stepped onto the wrong one - there were actually tiny directional traffic signs beside each escalator:

I certainly was not aware that one needed a pass in the highway code in order to use the escalator safely. So paiseh, even though I had passed my highway code some 3 decades ago, I had failed to notice the tiny signs (must be my failing eyesight). If I had fallen and injured myself, I would definitely become the laughing stock of friends like Chris for getting myself injured while engaging in an activity as innocuous as a library visit. Luckily not many people older than me elderly people used the escalators, otherwise the library should seriously consider having an in-house doctor to treat fractures. (And the library was supposed to be elderly-friendly.)

I went up to the 14th floor which was as high up as I could venture. The glass windows at the lobby offered a panaromic bird's eye view of the city. One could see as far as Orchard Road or as near as the next building, St Joseph's Church:

On the day of my visit, the library was a hive of activities. There was even an opera performance at the Plaza which was part of Lovebites 2006, a charity event held in aid of the Association of Persons with Special Needs (APSN):

(Frannxis, an avid Cantonese opera fan whom I knew in blogosphere, would have been delighted. However, although I was not sure what language they were singing in, I was certain it was not Cantonese.) Besides talks, workshops and performances, there were several exhibitions which were held concurrently, including:

1 Zheng He (Admiral Cheng Ho):

2 Dream of the Red Chambers;

3 Singapore Literary Pioneers Gallery (permanent exhibition on Level 11); and

4 From Books to Bytes: The Story of the National Library (permanent exhibition on Level 5)

I visited the last 2 exhibitions and gawked at several antiques which brought back nostalgia for me. Among the items were:

A Remington typewriter with fountain pen and ink bottle:

The personal computer has largely replaced the functions of the typewriter, fountain pen and ink.

A red brick:

At least 5,000 of such bricks were retained from the old building in 2004 and now form part of a wall in the basement garden of the Library at Victoria Street. The bricks were baked at the Alexandra Brickworks factory, with clay from Jurong.

A book press:

This press was used in the book binding unit located in the basement of the Stamford Road National Library. Library staff were required to repair and strengthen books and periodicals through careful sewing and binding by hand. Notice that the book press was made in London and imported by a Singapore company located in Kling Street:

(Extract from singlishdictionary.com: "Chulia Street, called Kling Street once because Indians from southern India, known as 'men from Kalinga', or orang kling in Malay, lived there. Kalinga, an ancient southern Indian state, was corrupted into kling long before Indians arrived in Malaya. By 1918, however, kling had become derogatory, so Kling Street was changed to Chulia Street, with nobody seeming to mind that Chulia was just the northern Indian term for Kalinga".)

Microfilm, microfiche and reels of film:

According to the explanatory notes, these technologies appeared in the 1960s and 1980s. Microfilm and microfiche technologies are some of the more stable means of preserving information in today's information age. (No kidding? Can they be more stable than my computer hard disk and CD-Rs which I use to store my data?)

The library still had plenty of the traditional stuff:

But self-service terminals had largely replaced the traditional staff:

Even so, my unequivocal verdict was that the new library had a much more pleasant and conducive learning environment compared to the old one. You should visit it soon if you have not done it yet. I am sure that you will find the experience as fulfulling as I did. Do be extra careful when using the escalators though.