Schubert's "Standchen" from Schwanengesang

n

 David Garrett is someone you would consider a "cool" classical violinist, I discovered him while browsing through Youtube for Schubert's "Standchen", my most recent piano obsession. Garrett's mother was an American (he took her maiden name) and father, a German lawyer from Aachen. I like this rendition, but mostly because of the symphony in the background. He got a little too squeaky for me in the later section and this piece is really, for me, too emotive for Garrett's interpretation.

"Standchen" (or Serenade) is the 9th song that Franz Schubert wrote, based on the poem by Ludwig Gellstab. There are a total of 14 songs in the collection, Schwanengesang (or Swan Song) but obviously, Standchen stands out most. It was published in 1829 after Schubert's death. The piano score was transcribed later by Franz Lizst - explains why I had such a hard time locating it.

In terms of progress, I've got the first few bars down, but I really can't get much serious practice in because Ju is usually on my lap when I play and he doesn't really allow me to use both hands effectively while containing his wriggling body and palms pounding on the keyboard.

Here is Valentina Lisitsa's interpretation, it's of course, magical.

Waltz (Valse) Op 64 No.1 by Chopin

Etude Opus 25 No. 9 (Chopin)

My absolute Chopin favourite!

It's called the "Butterfly Etude" for obvious reasons, just listen to it. I've tried out the score, but it's technically out of my league. Too many black keys and need Schwarzeneggar's arm muscles packed in your wrist. Lisitsa makes it look like child's play, and the way she plays it is like she's doing the dishes. I love it.

Pathetique - Sonata No. 8 in C Minor (Beethoven)

 

The Big Deal About Money

I'm never going to add anything original to the whole uproar, hoo-ha and national soul-searching and hand-wringing that's going on about the salary of cabinet ministers in Singapore. If you just google it you would be au fait with almost every opinion -- officially sanctioned as well as disputed ones-- out there. Even The Economist jumped in with two or three cents of their own. 

I'd like to talk about just two related things. First, what economists discovered about income and happiness (the subjective experience) and second, why the PAP should not waste any more time and resources on the issue of paying people so they would be politicians because the logic it stands on is as sturdy as a deck of cards.

Money is important to our feelings of well-being and happiness, but only to up to a point and there is a number to it. Kahnemann and Deaton have found that while life satisfaction, a judgment about how one's life is going overall, does continue to rise with income, the quality of subjective experience improves until an annual income of about US$75K and then plateaus. They conclude that "high income buys life satisfaction but not happiness [i.e., subjective experiential quality], and that low income is associated both with low life evaluation and low emotional well-being."

Clearly, money does not buy happiness, but having more of it gives you more opportunities to live your life in a way that brings you more satisfaction and less stress. For example, if you didn't have to work two jobs to pay the mortgage, bills and the kids' tuition, you could spend more time with them and having more or closer family ties brings people more happiness. You also get more sleep, which studies have empirically shown, improves your mood and feeling of well-being. If, at 62, you had enough to retire on (read: if your savings haven't been eroded by your over-priced property or you had enough to save at all) you also would have opportunities to do things for personal satisfaction rather than for basic survival.

But on the other hand, if you were already wealthy, earning over that 75K a year, it would take a lot more in real dollars to make you feel any happier with life. Now, hold that thought and bear with me a little bit more.

Now consider how some politicians believe they ought to be compensated. The dubious logic being sold is if one were to take a drastic pay cut (from his last drawn salary) to take on the job of cabinet minister, then that person would see very little incentive to do so and therefore Singapore would have a serious lack of capable, qualified ministers/politicians. Okay, if we indulge this logic, we can easily point to two problems:

1) People are not pure utilitarians (see Chen Show Mao's profile)
2) The assumption that a public service position can be monetized like that of the private sector. (It's like treating a grapefruit like a watermelon and saying the former just has less juice)

It is a mistake to treat point 1 as an axiom of truth and the PAP did that to their peril. When you assume that all humans make decisions on a cost-benefit-analysis, you dangerously disregard many factors that go into decision making, such as emotions (any Psychology undergraduate or person who reads pop psych can tell you that). Any thinking droid who went to college would tell you that political participation, along with activism and other civil liberties like free speech does not originate from the side of the brain that does calculations at the supermarket cashier.

People participate, serve, volunteer and help because a MORAL imperative tells them to and not because they can buy a holiday home in the Hamptons as a result of that (incidentally the brother of one of our highest office holders owns such a multi-million dollar home along the banks of a river in the southwestern region of Australia and the tour guide that takes people on the river cruise on said river is quite happy to announce this).

So the top cadre is probably spending sleepless nights thinking of ways to make Chen Show Mao disappear (when they aren't wasting brain cells trying to discredit his proposals) so they can salvage the flawed assumption that good, capable people need to be compensated handsomely to serve the nation. But my quarrel is not with the logic of a "clean wage" system. The Workers' Party have brilliantly summed up the problem with the Stoogie Ee Committee's recommendations, and my point, going back to what I said about income and happiness is this:

Any person who earns the kind of money presently made by PAP politicians and ministers far exceeds the US$75,000 barrier where happiness plateaus. Besides this making a case for them being a lot more miserable than previously assumed, we can say that they likely have very little in common with the average Singaporean who makes US$25,309 a year (gasp, the median income in 2010 was S$2710 a month!). Now, the average Singaporean doesn't have to make US$75,000 to be happier, but surely a little more would go a long, long way to improving levels of happiness, in turn health and hence productivity.

So even if you halved the minister's pay, he wouldn't really be much unhappier. He would complain a lot, probably have to divest one of his 10 stock portfolios and order the $50,000 chaise instead of the $80,000 one, but heck, he won't quit. (Even if he did, it's a win-win because you get to sit on a moral high horse declaring the riddance of a materialistic office-holder unfit for public service)

On the other hand, if you paid less attention to getting the sort of people you think are motivated primarily by money and finding ways to increase the wages of the first 40th percentile of the population, you would likely have a lot less problems. But of course, if you think a handful of highly-paid politicians are the only people with the intellect to lift the dismal spirits of half the resident population here, we will have this same conversation in 2016, with one difference: there will be fewer ministers to remunerate.

Weather Woes

My mother-in-law is going to kill me.



I told her that weather in Singapore is the most angeneim (comfortable) in January and that she and Daniel's Dad should come visit. With February's discomfort levels rated as "high", I wonder how I am going to explain  when they get here next week that the angeneimer weather decided to depart early.

I have fond memories -- and Daniel agrees -- of last January being wonderfully cool and breezy oweing to the Northeast monsoon. Every morning, as we sat on the corner of our street having breakfast at approximately 7.15am, the wind would billow relentlessly from the northeastern direction and I would comment, "it's cold!". I was over 5 months pregnant then and trust me, my body temperature had gone up so if I'd said it was cold, it WAS cold.

It's January again and the heat just turned up over the weekend. Suddenly, our trusty monsoon seemed to have headed off in some other direction and I began to sweat just standing in the kitchen. A check on the forecast revealed puzzling results. How on earth could today's maximum be 30 degrees? I was out at lunch time and I was cooking under the sun.

As you can see, there is a northeasternly wind still blowing, it's just less of a monsoon than a hot breath of air.



It looks pretty bad from the 25th on. And the 25 degrees is probably at midnight which doesn't really help two Germans who have to cope full time with an 8-month-old and expected a breezy, winter Singapore.

Today's Lesson

Translation:

Family (from America): Thanks, Jesus, for this food

Jesus (from Mexico): You're welcome.

Project Baby: 7th Month Milestones

Ju's seventh month would probably be the most adorable and the most surprising one so far.  We went to Perth on Christmas for close to two weeks and in that space of time, he developed object permanence, separation anxiety and an intense temper tantrum if he was stuck in his car seat past his scheduled nap time.

If I could fit all the laughter I've ever had in the past 10 years in a bucket, it would be half as full as the one filled with the moments I've laughed and smiled at Ju in the past fortnight.  He is at once astonishing and amazing, silly and loveable.  This has really been the best month ever.

Object Permanence

I've been testing Ju's ability to recall the ball or toy as I hide them under a towel or blanket. As expected of most babies under 8 months, he immediately assumed it was gone the moment it vanished from his sight. Last week, he promptly grabbed the towel and tossed it aside. I was jubilant as he did it a second and third time. Just to be sure, I've been testing him every few days. Ju has definitely realisedthe permanence of the hidden object.

Separation Anxiety (or Attachment)

Call it a double-edged sword, but with his discovery of object permanence, Ju also discovered that Mummy and Daddy could disappear and not come back. One day, as we were playing with him on the floor of my Aunt's house in Perth, Daniel got up to leave the room. Ju immediately stopped his play and got upset. He got on all fours and went after his dad.  We were stunned for a while as until that moment, Ju couldn't care less if anyone got up and left him alone. We observed him closely and did variations of the Strange Situation experiment (one of us leaving him with the other parent; one of us leaving him alone; one of us leaving him with a relative whom he recognises), on almost all occasions, he would scurry after us in his adorable crawl and whine painfully if we did not come back.  

One night, he was so tired after a night out (his bedtime is 8pm and we got back at almost 9) that he refused to let anyone carry him except Daniel. He would wail when I reached for him. I was puzzled, and a little hurt to say the least. I concluded that he might have been associating Dad with play (he refused to be put to bed and threw a tantrum if we tried to) and me with enforced bedtime. On Saturday at a friend's BBQ (cum kindergarten since there must have been 20 kids and babies there, fetuses included) he allowed a friend (whom he has never met) to hold him as Daniel held her 6 month old. But as I approached them and stood next to him, Ju reached his arms out to me and intimated that the time was up. I gladly retrieved him and marvelled at how he's only just begun to discriminate between people in his camp and people who were not.

Ju is definitely developing a profound awareness of the world where none existed before. Psychologists explain the separation anxiety as rooted in his awareness that his primary caregivers are distinct from his Self and could disappear. The exceptions were when Ju was engrossed in a toy and did not notice when one of us left.  In addition, he interestingly regards his grandmother as a primary caregiver and may also be securely attached to her. This is because he gladly bid us farewell today in Grandma's arms as we left for work. As for whether he is "securely attached" or not, this remains to be seen at a later stage. I tried the Ainsworth experiment at my friend's house and he did not seem to mind when I left him with her and her 9 month old. It could be (a) he was familiar with the place and so it was not a new or strange situation) and/or (b) he had a whole floor of toys to occupy his attention.

Gross Motor Skills

Ju's physical development is off the charts.  He is scooting around on all fours like a pro and on top of that he is getting very adept at pulling himself up on his feet.  He tries this with everything: beds, stools, chairs, low tables, knees, walls, legs. It's crucial to keep an eagle eye trained on him when he's on the go as his balance on two feet isn't steady yet. Last week, as he groped the edge of the bed trying to stand up, he topped over on his face. The result was a slightly bloody nose and 15 minutes of pitiable wailing. It happened on Daniel's watch and my bet is he has a better grasp of the heartwrenching guilt I felt when Ju rolled off the bed last month. Ju is likely to take his first step as soon as he can steady himself on his feet, which he is attempting at every chance he gets, every day.

Feeding and Sleeping

Ju has been eating two semi-solid meals a day but I started him on a third because he's been waking up at 4.30am for milk.  In Australia, the sun would rise before 5am and it seemed to have an effect on Ju's sleep as well. As a result, he would start his first feed at 5am and end his day before 8pm. He has been having trouble sleeping through since the holiday. We suspected that it could also be linked to his cognitive development as he becomes more attached to the primary figures in his life and perhaps even his memories are solidifying. He didn't require a feed so we just picked him up and soothed him back to sleep, usually in bed with us. It's a terrible habit to foster, I know, but it was the easiest way. Plus, we were on holiday, I reasoned!  When we came back, the frequent interruptions ceased, thankfully, but he would wake at 4 to 5am, fussing and eventually yelling in hunger. The third meal didn't have an effect on him last night as he woke again for milk at 4.45am. We failed again to "train" him to stay in his bed as we were exhausted. 

The two likely explanations are separation anxiety and hunger or both. Tonight I will try an 11pm feed to see if Ju lasts till 6am. If it does, then we can rule our the anxiety. My hopes are slim. He still needs three naps a day,  after each feed, otherwise he gets cranky.

Social development

Ju remains jovial and open to other people. He does not cry or fret when strangers hold him. In fact he got along swimmingly with my cousins and aunt in Perth who were completely taken by his cherubic smiles and throaty laughter. He is still a little wary of babies who are a little rambunctious as his playmates are mostly adults. Still, he warmed up to his 9 month old friend, Dion, who was very eager to swat, poke and grab at Ju. At first, Ju was taken aback as Dion made a beeline (commando-style, Dion doesn't crawl yet) for Ju, arms outstretched. I thought Ju was going to burst into tears at the onslaught. After a while, Ju consented to have Dion hovering around him as he helped himself to Dion's toys. They even had a little chase-around when Dion made off with a favoured toy. It was hilarious. My friend commented that Ju, compared with most other Asian babies she had observed (Japanese and Chinese), was able to play independently without needing attention or coddling from me. Indeed, he is quite indifferent to us if he is allowed space to move and objects to play with, only needing assistance when he's had enough of confinement in his cot or high chair. He finds the littlest things amusing and laughs constantly and easily. He is making new sounds (that sound more like a young child and less like a helpless baby) and the wet razzing is back. All in, Ju is developing perfectly and I couldn't ask for more.

King's Park, Perth