Day 7: Musical Chairs

Today is my break time! We met up at Bugis @ 11:00am, & on this fortunate occasion I was the 1st one to arrive! Yeah! This finally broke my continuous record of being late all the time. We ate at my usual haunt: Parklane Fried Wan Ton Mee. Then it was time for work as we head towards the National Library.

I've always admired the National Library. From a humble 2-storey red brick building, it has now risen to a 16-floor building of certain architectural pride. We take for granted, most of the time, when the Government puts down huge sums of money on public services. That's what the Government is for, right? & more often than not we would proclaim that it is our/my dad's money; the taxpayers' money. My friend couldn't stop exclaiming at the National Library building; with the escalators & floors, the layout, it looked more like a shopping complex. The tall ceilings certainly add to the "wow" effect too. "Singapore Government is rich." I wondered about that because in the neighbouring country where she came from, I know of shopping centres with roller coaster rides built indoors. & they have the world's tallest twins too. I guess it's just that no one would have thought we would put so much money down on a library. So I'm glad we actually have this big comfortable library to study in, although it serves no economic nor commercial purpose, the Government did not hold back on its development.

So we came to the library, hopefully to make some progress on our project by making use of its resources. Upon migrating a few floors up & down, & finally settling down in its Central Lending section, we set up our laptops & got to work. I decided to go source for some books, so we went around while my 2 friends continued to work on the Internet. We were up at the Reference Library on Level 7 when I received an SMS & an urgent phone call. We rushed back to B1 (the lifts were very fast), & arrived to see 2 librarians, a guy & my friends. That's the scene of an argument. The guy wanted a seat, & he had talked in a rude manner to my friend, took offensive action & removed the chair, & complained to the librarian. Wow was my friend angry. I would be if I had talked to the guy, but he was all quiet after that.

The guy sure declared his "rights" to own the chair in the library, if, by his uncivilised actions, he should even be allowed in in the first place. Would he have been better off insisting to sit here at the table, or just find some other place elsewhere? Would a trip to the toilet or making a round in the library searching for materials be considered as "chair hogging"? His actions of making a din had far outweighed & overshadowed the little etiquette mistakes we committted, if even any. Why are there always such hard-headed people who assume rights to everything in the public, & in their belief that they have a rightful share to claim these things, turn into selfish ugly creatures that grab & argue?

& so that was the game of "Musical Chairs" that the guy entertained us to. Most of the time I just keep away & surrender to trouble, but this has taught me that there are some people we should never give way to.

So our project did progress in the end, & we had done some preliminary research. After a discussion @ MOS Burger, it was finally the start of my break time. We walked around Bugis, saw interesting bags that I liked but didn't quite fit me, & ended with a cup of Iced Mocha & a short walk down Victoria Rd to City Hall.

No pictures for this post, we were supposed to be doing work ^.^