Library love

I love libraries. So I don't know why it took me eight whole months to finally haul my ass down to the Openbare Bibliotheek Amsterdam (OBA), or the Amsterdam Public Library. 

At 28,000 square meters, the Central Library down by Centraal (no, that is not a typo) Station is Europe's biggest public library. Brace yourselves for a huge photodump, because this is the most photogenic library I have ever seen in my life.

Some quick facts and figures about the OBA:

• 7 floors
• 1,375 seats (600 with computers/Internet/MS Office)
• 110 catalogue terminals and 26 lending machines
• Underground parking for 2,000 bikes and 1,200 cars
• 2.5 million users and visitors annually
• Awarded Amsterdam's Most Sustainable Public Building in 2008
• Also houses a theatre, radio station, conference rooms, exhibition spaces, "study pods", cafe and restaurant

The library is impressive in numbers, but it's even more so when you actually visit. For a bookworm like me, stepping into the library for the first time was like walking into Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, without the impending doom of weight gain.

More than a bookworm's wonderland, though, this is everything I love about Dutch design. 

Modern details everywhere, even on the couches and the floors.

Standing in the lobby, you can simply look up to see how the library is organized at a glance. It's a clever and irresistible invitation to explore.

Explore with me, after the jump. 

First order of the day: borrow the assigned reading material for book club. It took me a while to find the catalogue terminals at first. I saw these iMacs all over the place but I simply didn't think to connect "library catalogue" with "Mac. But that's exactly what they are.

Love the changing words on the screensavers. (Fietst means bike, as in the verb.)

Love the way the shelves are labeled, too. (Strips mean comics.)

Wandering around the library would probably do wonders for my Dutch vocabulary. I could while away whole afternoons here.

After I found my book, it was time to check it out with mijn pas (my card). 

Love the design of the lending stations. Even if you don't speak Dutch, the outlines tell you where to place uw pas (your card) and boeken (books) to be scanned for checkout. Simplicity is beauty.

Great design is just everywhere. Even in simple things like coat racks.

More than just being lovely to look at, I also found some details to be quite thoughtful. One of the details I appreciated most was the placement of solitary chairs in front of huge windows. This idea could have only come from a person knows the solitary pleasure of reading, of turning one's back on the world for a few hours to become absorbed in a book.

On the top floor is a large cafeteria-style restaurant operated by the La Place chain. 

It was a beautiful, clear day so the outdoor terrace was packed.



But we couldn't leave without checking out the view.

The turquoise building to my right is NEMO, the Science Museum. The rooftop becomes a big urban "beach" in the summer—but of course from experience, I've come to learn that urban is simply a euphemism for sandless and unswimmable.

As you can see, tall buildings in Amsterdam are rare. Most of the buildings are old, and are only five, maybe six stories at the most. So this view is pretty special. 

Books in hand and stomachs full, Marlon and I headed back down from the top floor...

... and made one last stop at the multimedia department on our way out.

The whole floor made me nostalgic for the days of Tower Records. 

At the same time, it felt like something all too current and familiar... like an Apple store!

The architects definitely belong to the cult of Mac.

Hello cult-mates!

Isn't this the coolest librarian's desk ever?

It's made entirely from pressed sheets of cardboard. 

Oh, a small aside: in the DVD section, I saw Basic Instinct right next to Horton Hears a Who. Welcome to the Netherlands, folks.



And with that we hop over to the children's section, which is in the basement.

Love all the fun elements they incorporated into the children's reading area, like making the shelves into a "fort" you can climb, and the teepee on the right. And of course, those awesome "jackstone" lights. May jackstones din kaya sila dito?

What a great way to make reading fun for kids. Then again, I never needed forts and teepees to make me enjoy reading. An awesome library always helps, though!

Skeletor

After having the hardest time selling our Ikea Expedit bookcase (see related cheapskate woes), Marlon and I vowed to move on from Ikea and give our beloved books storage they truly deserved. The number of books we now own have nearly doubled since we first moved into Singapore, and this time I was on the lookout for something that would be for keeps. 

I've realized that I've outgrown my Indian/ethnic phase and moved into a rustic/industrial phase, or today's more kick-ass, far less chintzy version of shabby chic. So some form of industrial shelving was on my mind, inspired by relaxed, modern images like this.

Eep, I can't remember where I pulled this from. 

I found a gorgeous version from Anthropologie online. But it was too bank-breaking to be even considered. Besides, they don't ship these outside of the US or UK.

Marlon and I spent a good part of an afternoon trekking to De Troubadour in Amstelveen, where we found this. But at nearly €1,000 for the size our books required, it was just way, way over budget.

After a few weeks of obsessively searching online, I was thisclose to taking up Marlon on his offer to build it himself from steel ladders and a few planks of wood. But then I came across Roeg Holt, a website featuring some thoroughly kick-ass furniture made from recycled wood. A lot of the pieces were too chunky for my taste, but there was this. 

I emailed the designer to find out about having this made to our specifications. My first email to him started off "Dear Roeg..." thinking that Roeg Holt was a person's name. When he answered, hindi pala Roeg ang pangalan niya. Oops! The designer, Gert Valkema, agreed to build a custom 2.1m x 2m shelf for less than €650, including delivery from Groningen, where he lives. Winner!

When he issued me an invoice, I had to laugh out loud. The bookshelf is called Skeletor! This is obviously a designer with a sense of humor.

Gert drove two hours from Groningen last Monday with Skeletor. I welcomed him with tea and some biscuits and we had a nice chat while he assembled the steel frames and wooden planks in our dining room.

The planks are recycled industrial scaffolding, so you know they're sturdy.

Skeletor after assembly, waiting to gain control over all Eternia hold all our books.

Finally, after over a month, the books are off the floor! I was forced to give up my idea to intersperse them with little knickknacks. Stacking them made me realize how many books we actually have. And so many are still unread!

Marlon was not a fan of my color-coding scheme back in Singapore, but now he agrees with it as it just makes this whole mass of books look better and neater. He gets one shelf for his comics and business books (and for Spiderman, who is on his knees in agony after the death of Mary Jane), and I get one shelf for my notebooks, work files, and writing and creativity books. 

Since Rogue used to knock books out of our bookshelf all the time, we decided to stack the books in vertical piles to make them more Rogue-proof. Rogue also did an inaugural climb of Skeletor all the way to the top shelf yesterday (don't ask me how) and made it safely back down. I guess that means they're friends now!

Take home

When I'm in Singapore, home is husband, house, work and routine. But the moment I touch down in Manila, home is my friends, my mom and my mad, unbelievable city. Every trip becomes a search for and rediscovery of pieces of myself to take back with me, so that I never really leave home... and home ends up being wherever I am.

And so after a week and a half back home, this is what I have brought home with me.

Triple-certified birth and marriage certificates for our Dutch work visas. The main purpose of our trip was to get our NSO-certified documents authenticated by the DFA, then legalized by the Dutch embassy, before submitting them to the relocation agency, who will be applying for our visas in the Netherlands.

I must say the process was a lot less painful than I thought it would be! I was really impressed with the DFA; I went in my grottiest outfit, ready to sweat it out for at least half a day, but both our visits (to submit and to pick up the documents) lasted for no longer than half an hour. Progress at last!

New clothes. Thanks to the miracle that is foreign exchange, Manila always means cheap shopping for me now. (Oh the days when Landmark was the pinnacle of my consumer ambitions!) I scored a dress from Cecile Van Straten's new collection for Heather Miss Grey, a jewel-print tee from the Ramon Valera collection at Freeway, plus a funky cat-print blouse from one of the small stores at Anthropology in Rockwell. 

A whopping crush on Akihiro Sato. On Friday night in Bantayan, I flipped on the TV while getting ready to go out to dinner. Big mistake. Survivor Philippines: Celebrity Showdown was on, and it kept us glued to the boob tube for a full hour. That must have been the most telegenic final four on Survivor, ever. I'd seen Aki before but with the full grizzly beard... rawr! Kume-Keanu Reeves ito!

New books for my already tall pile of unread tomes. After cheap clothes, cheap books are always a great buy. I found Beauty and Spindle's End by Robin McKinley (highly recommended by Gutsy, the YA lit expert), The Fashion File (a book on the style of Mad Men, by its costume designer Janie Bryant), and Nina Garcia's Little Black Book of Style, each for less than I'd pay for a taxi ride in Singapore. By far, though, the best book buy of the trip was Pacific Rims by Rafe Bartholomew.

I've never sat through an entire PBA game in my life, but I was astounded at how many memories this book dug up for me, how many names rang so many bells. Everything people have told me about this book—that you can't put it down, you'll laugh out loud, you'll love it even if you don't like basketball—is absolutely true.

A few new pounds. I managed to check off quite a few items on the list of my favorite comfort foods on this trip. Chocolate chip pancakes at Pancake House, a Regular Yum with Cheese at Jollibee, coffee pie at Cafe 1771, and pritong saging na saba at my mom's were just a few of the highlights. And of course, danggit and Cebu mangoes every day in Bantayan!

Freckles and a tan. Thanks to four days of sun and surf in Bantayan (plus two more beach trips scheduled for December), I am now well on my way to being the envy of all the Dutch with their pasty midwinter complexions!

A papier-mache and resin horse. How random is that? About two years ago, a hundred different Filipino artists took part in an auction that had them apply their own artistic touch to a taka, or a traditional papier-mache figure from Paete, Laguna. I got wind of it online and ended up buying a taka by sculptor Juan Sajid Imao, son of National Artist Abdulmari Imao and perhaps best known to us Ateneans as the maker of the crucifix at the Church of the Gesu.

I bought it sight unseen and it turned out to be huge! So the taka got stuck at my mom's for a while, and eventually it had to be repaired. I sent it back to Sajid, who was gracious enough to repair it, fortify it with a hardier structure and pack it for transit. 

We took it on the plane back to Singapore with us, and we get to bring it with us to Amsterdam with no shipping costs involved. It was also awesome to meet Sajid and his wife, who are such a warm and gracious couple.

Food for the heart and soul. Friends, family, music, and laughter... all the stuff that home is about.

I also ended up taking home a whopper of a flu that leveled me for four days after I got back. But considering how ragged I got running around and zipping back and forth to get this huge bounty of take-home goodies, maybe I should've expected it!

Books to commute by

Since I started working in Tanjong Pagar, the central business district of Singapore, my commute to and from home has become longer. Four more stops, or at least 15 more minutes, have been tacked on to my old MRT route. Sometimes I even end up taking the bus (which I don't normally do). And because my work hours are no longer always in sync with the hubby's, I end up commuting alone more than I used to

So I started reading books on the train. They sure beat the intellectual pambalot ng isda that is the local free paper. I've managed to finish five books purely while commuting. All of them are short; the longest is Ian McEwan's Black Dogs at 221 pages.

The thing with reading on the train is that I like whatever I'm reading to be light and uncomplicated. I always see people reading heavy instructional or self-help tomes on the train to work and I always wonder how they can absorb the material properly. That said, I tried to pick books that were brief and light without sacrificing quality. So if you're looking for some light reading, all these books are highly recommended!

The first book I read on my solo commutes was this one.

It was utterly perfect: one story for every day of the workweek. I would neatly end one story at the end of my commute home and begin a fresh one the next morning. And I loved that all the stories were about music. 

This book on creativity and out-of-the-box thinking would have been really inspiring and useful given the kind of work I do, but it kept reminding me about the actual work I do! I didn't find it ideal to read before or after work; maybe I'll re-read it on a sunny Saturday morning by the pool. 

In Black Dogs, I finally met an Ian McEwan book that I didn't like. I felt strangely uninterested in the characters, which made the climax of the book (close to its very end, which felt like eons to get to) much less satisfying. I had such a hard time finishing it. But I did and I still haven't lost faith in this author.

I've been a huge Vonnegut fan since I first saw a battered, yellowed copy of Galapagos in my mom's bookshelf almost 10 years ago. This used copy from Green Apple in San Francisco is my latest purchase in my efforts to own all his books. It's told from the first-person perspective of Vonnegut himself, in a fictitious attempt to use controlled near-death experiences to nab interviews with dead people. He never fails to crack me up, which can make one look a little silly on the train.

Reflecting the current state of mind (a.k.a. obsession) is Ian McEwan's Amsterdam, a city that does not make its appearance in the story until the last few pages yet holds the key to the resolution of its central conflict. I had wanted to actually read about Amsterdam from beginning to end so I could start imagining myself in it, but no matter. Highly recommended.

Do you read while commuting? Any books to recommend to a fellow commuter?