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I’ve come to learn that babies like to change positions while inside the womb. And sometimes, they simply like staying where they are.

For the past few days, my baby has been happily lying horizontally across my tummy, with his head on my left and his feet on my right. I can tell because the hardest kicks come from the right.

There’s now an added dimension to his behaviour. This morning in bed, I rolled onto my right side. Given that baby was still in the same position, this meant that he was effectively standing upright. Finding some solid ground (my tummy + the mattress), he started to stomp!

Stomp!

Stomp!

Stomp!

Then it became a two-footed stomp, because I could feel his other foot coming in.

Stomp-stomp!

Stomp-stomp!

Stomp-stomp!

As his stomping got harder, his head started to bump against my left side. So it became,

Stomp-stomp-bump!

Stomp-stomp-bump!

We were so amused just feeling his head and feet in action that we let him stomp away until he got tired.

Then I got out of bed.

So I'm now 4.5 months pregnant and my yet-to-be-named baby (whom I shall refer to as 'Baby' with a capital B) seems to have a mind of his own. How so? Let me count the ways... 

1. This Sunday morning at mass, the priest asked all fathers to stand up so he could say a special Father's Day prayer. My husband didn't want to stand up, but Baby had other ideas... just as the priest began his prayer, Baby gave me a kick!
2. This Sunday evening, a church friend asked me if I was going to take more than 4 months' leave to take care of Baby. I replied, "Initially I was thinking of it, but looking at my workload I may have to return to the office after four months--" And Baby kicked me again!
   
3. This evening, we read reports on how men who drink tea increase their risk of prostate cancer. However, my husband already had his mind set on a calming cup of Camomile tea. So he said defiantly, "I'm going to make myself a cup of tea and get prostate cancer." Baby kicked!

It was delightful to receive emails from a few of you who read my blog posts recently. Thanks for your well wishes. It is all the more a relief to me as I wondered if anyone still reads blog posts - it is so much more convenient these days to log into Facebook and view friends’ status updates instead.

Also, I have written a few times about the passing of people I’ve known, or barely known, or not even known at all. This has prompted people who’ve known them to write in to me - usually to thank me and share personal experiences they’ve had with their late friend or relative. One such thing just happened, regarding a post I wrote 5 years ago. Blogging is useful as a memorial, in this sense.

May we remember the lessons from the past, even as we look to the future.

I’m writing this past the stroke of midnight. Looking back, a lot has happened in the past year. I got engaged. We looked for a new home. Last November, we got married. We renovated our new home this March and moved in, a month later.

Looking forward, I’m still on the right side of 30 - but that won’t be for long!

Which is why, I am happy to announce, that we will be expecting a baby later this year :) It wasn’t something we planned judiciously but we were happy to go along with whatever God had in store for us.

The newspapers have been writing a lot about our ageing society and shrinking local population, and it sounds very much like the fault of people not wanting to get married (which is still the expectation in our conservative society), and married couples not wanting to have children. But this is not the full picture. I know a growing number of people who are still trying to start a family, sometimes at great cost.

So I am not taking our blessings for granted. Here’s to a new year of my life, and to a little new life.

Soon after blogging about Border’s closure in Singapore, we were hit with news that another popular bookstore, Page One, was exiting the Singapore market. Another crying shame, even more because Page One was a homegrown company that seemed to have found its own niche with its design-oriented collection of books and related products.

I visited Page One on Thursday morning to use up book vouchers before it closed down, and also because there was a 50% storewide discount. What I liked was that it really was 50% - not like other stores that advertise as such to lure you in, only for you to discover that the discounts are only for selected ranges. OK, except maybe for the music CDs which were 30% off. But some books were going for 60% off or more so that averaged things out.

Another thing I’d give credit for is the professionalism of the staff. Even though they knew the bookstore would be closing, they made sure that things were in order. Contrary to what I had half feared, it had not turned into a huge jumble sale, with books piled up in illogical fashion. Staff were working hard to pack related books together and making sure the queue to the cashiers didn’t block common passageways.

I’ve liked Page One’s selection of books, which would arguably be comparable to that of Kinokuniya’s - the last big regional bookstore of note. My favourite category remains business and management, followed by design, and thus I found myself in the former section, staring at rows of empty shelves, wondering if I would find what I was looking for. Not quite, but I found other titles that were good enough to bring insights to my work.

The children’s section, a slightly older colleague informed me later, was sparse (I have not progressed to that stage of my life yet). There were still many comprehensive design books remaining, and I would encourage the more arty types to dive in now.

All I can say is, what’s becoming of our bookstore culture? Two big stores catering to the middle to upper-middle class markets simply could not pay the rent. ‘Economy’ and student-friendly stores like Popular will still survive due to their low price points and bulk demand. But over the years I have seen the presence of local stores catering to middle-class markets, like Times and MPH, whittled away. Happily, niche bookstores seem to be springing up nicely - but again, that caters to a relatively select group and not the mainstream population.

And is paying the rent all that’s important to a shopping centre? Think of the intrinsic value that a good, big bookstore can bring. It draws in customers who may then patronise other shops and dine at your mall. It’s a great meeting point. In the long run, it widens people’s minds and grows intellectual capital.

My message to the uber-capitalists who look more at balance sheets than balanced tenant mixes: You could divide that huge, vacant space into lots of little kiosks which could fetch a higher rental yield per square foot, but you can never take away the magic of a good bookshop - or any other good anchor tenant, for that matter.