Catherine had read about the new Yishun community library opening at the Northpoint’s new wing, and so we decided to check out the place today. It was said that the library had a comprehensive collection of books for babies and toddlers so we thought it would be a great place to check out these books for Darius.

We took a cab down to Northpoint around noon time and walked towards the new wing, which was located beside the original Northpoint and next to the bus interchange. The skies looked pretty dark at that time.

The mall was crowded with people and being hungry, we decided to fill our stomachs first. Catherine had read about the mall’s unique foodcourt on the third floor, which is made up of stalls selling japanese foodstuff only. The place is called Ishi Mura, and has around ten stalls selling stuff like Omulette rice, rice burgers, curry rice, donburi etc.

After finding a suitable place to sit, we ordered two sets of Chicken Cutlet Curry Rice at $4.90 each. The curry was thick and delicious, but the cutlet was quite dry and hard, as they were pre-fried instead of bring fried on the spot.

The dry cutlet spoilt it...

On the bright side, after we ran out of the curry gravy, I requested for a top-up for the curry and the staff was friendly and took my request promptly.

Besides the drinks counter, there was a section with drinks and snacks made in Japan. We bought a small can of orange juice at $2.00 and it tasted pretty nice. Brought back memories of our Tokyo trip last year.

Wide variety of authentic Japanese stuff!

Judging from their uniform and other aspects, we concluded that the staff are employees working under the food court’s management, instead of them being the stall owners themselves. Some of the staff appeared to be pretty lost too and we believed it’s because they were still new to the job.

After our lunch, we went up to the 4th floor to check out the Yishun Community Library. It was previously located near the Yishun Polyclinic, which is somewhere between the Yishun and Khatib MRT stations. It was an inconvenient location and we are glad that they have shifted it here now.

The library was very crowded, with many families walking around, checking out the surroundings and books. We spotted the kids’ section, which was decorated by yellow-coloured shelves and cheese-like structures.

We came across this set of shelves with a sign labelled ‘Books for Babies’, and were disappointed to realise that all these shelves were basically empty, littered with only one or two books. Either the books have already been snatched up by parents, or the library had not yet brought in many books for this section.

Where have the books gone to?

With Darius fallen asleep in his stroller, we walked around in the library through the various sections and borrowed a few books before proceeding towards the exit.

We came across the e-Kiosk machines near the exit, and remembered that we had wanted to register Darius as a library member. We keyed in his birth certificate number, and the system prompted for some security questions such as his surname, date of birth and one of the parents/guardians’ names.

While we were wondering how we could collect his library card (we were thinking they will send us by post or something), a helper standing by the side told us to wait a while and before we know it, Darius’ library card had been printed and issued to us via the machine! We were pleasantly surprised and impressed by the efficiency and ease of usage of the system.

Darius is now officially a Library member! ^^

The helper also informed us that from now on till end of the year, each library member is entitled to borrow a maximum of 8 books (as opposed to 4). It’s no wonder the shelves at the babies’ section were wiped out swiftly.

Checking the watch, it was time for Darius’ diaper change and feed. We then proceeded to the restroom on this level and located the Family Room which is situated on every level.

To our dismay, the Family Rooms were not yet operational, though the rooms were there. Neither chairs nor changing tables etc were present. Even the hot/cold water dispenser was not working. The only things which were working were the doors and water tap. We were disappointed that the building management had decided to open the new wing to public even before the Family Room had been ready. Looks like parents like us are not much of a concern to them.

Nice layout...

...but with no amenity in it.

Anyway, we had to come out with alternatives and so we travelled back to the original Northpoint building, hoping to find a family room there. Instead, we were welcomed by dust and lots of construction works going on. We tried out luck with the staff from Kiddy Palace, who told us that there was no such amenity available in this building and asked us to check out the new wing instead, which we already had.

Leaving with no choice and with heavy rain pouring outside, we retracted to the new wing, since anywhere else would be better than the dust-ridden building, and went to the Family Room on the 3rd floor. In the end, we laid our changing mat on the dusty table top and changed Darius’ diapers.

We then had to think of where to feed Darius, and we could only think of the Ishi Mura foodcourt we visited earlier. Fortunately, the place was not yet crowded as it was still the mid-afternoon then, and we tried our best to bottle feed him there. We wondered where the breastfeeding mums could go. The restrooms probably.

Darius is quite fussy when it comes to feeding.

Darius was distracted by the walking crowd and thus did not drink much. Still, there’s nothing much we could do as we knew that we could not make him drink more (without getting really cranky) under such circumstances.

We then took a short stroll in the mall before having omulette rice for dinner (at Ishi Mura again). The food did not taste as good as it looked, but we made do with it anyway before heading home.

At this point of time, the place was not baby-friendly yet, which is surprising since the community library is already up and running there. There isn’t any shop for babies/toddlers too so parents probably won’t enjoy the trip there anyway. The japanese food at the foodcourt was quite disappointing too, thought we will still give chances to the other stalls which we had yet to patronise.

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