5 Minutes of Perfection

Lang Lang plays Chopin's Op 10 No.3. The climax is at 2:45. Encore performance with the Berlin Philharmonic.

Lang Lang - the black keys etude (Chopin, Op 10 No.5)

Now watch him play it with an orange!

The Pot Calling The Kettle

Khaw BW was quoted by Channelnewsasia: "The Workers' Party needs to come clean with the people what information have they got about Mr Yaw and in particular, what did they know about him prior to the May election. And if they know, why did they field Mr Yaw. I think it is sad that the voters have been misled by the Workers Party".

Oh for crap's sake.

This is the sort of irrelevant snarky remark that I've never been comfortable with since hello, there's never been much of an Opposition presence for the PAP to make snarky remarks at. Khaw may have commented before knowing of the WP's press statement that the CEC had been clueless up to the point of YSL's disappearing act.

The minister went on to "remind voters to consider a person's character when they go to the polls, adding that there is no difference between a person's personal and professional life once he or she enters politics" -CNA. Very funny. I wonder on what basis I, a voter, am supposed to make a judgment of character? On spurious media reports? Gossip? Lack of exposed skeletons?

The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence of dirt, people. Before the pots start calling the kettle black, perhaps they should give the Straits Times free rein to go after any and all forms of dirt on the ruling party members the same way the ST got all orgasmic over the YSL scandal.

Dirt is dirt, there shouldn't be double standards.

Oh and I would really, really love to hear more about there being no difference between a person's personal and professional life once he or she enters politics.

Do I take it literally to mean personal and private domains are the same, and therefore what he wore to bed last night gets treated with the same relevance as which question he is going to answer in Parliament today?

Or should I accord the minister a little more credit and interpret him to mean that one's private life should be as open to scrutiny and accountability as one's public life? If so, then what's with all the lawsuits and even more curious, why didn't the senior cadre welcome a free-for-all discussion of Tin Peiling's ex-boyfriends and her weakness for Kate Spade, choosing instead to urge people to leave her private life alone?


We can hereby place KBW's comments as Exhibit 213 in the gallery of Foot In Mouth Moments. Perhaps in the near-future with a political landscape not dominated by the PAP, members can finally rest in their rightful place: the museum.

Clever, Clever WP

Photo from TOC

I am writing this quickly as the news just broke a while ago: the Workers' Party has expelled Hougang Member of Parliament and their ex-comrade, Yaw Shin Leong.

As stunned responses flood social media and office chatter heats up, the probable first question on your mind would be, by-elections in Hougang?

Besides it being a hoot (a by-election so soon after the last General Election), it would be priceless opportunity to put the PAP scorecard under scrutiny, it would pretty much be a great report card on their post-election (2011) performance.

When I commented that this was a brilliant strategic move by the WP, since it forces the PAP's hand, a friend had doubts that it would be a win-win for WP. They may not win a by-election. I disagreed. For these reasons:

First, the mood on the ground (from the blogosphere and online media reports) is Hougang residents don't much care about the adultery "scandal" that has been dogging YSL. It's great gossip fodder for the few who relish in the demise of others, but most people are more concerned about how their MP could and is helping them, and so far, YSL's performance as an MP hasn't been blemished.

Second, Hougang is a pro-WP ward but it was largely LTK that they have allegiance to and YSK was his proxy during the GE 2011. LTK's staunch supporters will see this sacking as a decisive move on LTK's part to remove the rot, and likely have even more "respect" for this bold move. In a possible by-election they would simply vote whomever WP pushes forth as the replacement.

Third, Hougang is a single-seat ward. No matter what, WP can parachute in a replacement easy-peasy, and my guess is they already have one in mind (hint: GG). I doubt the Elections Department can manage a redrawing of boundaries to make Hougang disappear in the next few weeks.

So, no matter what transpires from hereon, my bet is it would be a win-win for the Workers' Party.

And this shows very clearly that a few people in the WP are very, very clever indeed.

*******
Update 16 February & Postscript

Reports in the mainstream press (TNP and ST) have revealed some other interesting news from the WP press conference. According to the party, Yaw had not come forth to dispel or clarify the rumours when invited to by the CEC on multiple occasions. The implication is that the CEC was just as much in the dark as everyone else who had been clamouring for the "truth". In response to the PM's accusation that the WP had "let down the voters of Hougang", LTK rebutted this by claiming the WP had fixed the problem (by sacking Yaw). 

As expected, the PM doesn't sound very enthusiastic about the prospect of a by-Election, and I am not surprised (see by 3 reasons above). In addition to the inconvenience of having to rustle up a campaign that wasn't planned for like almost every other election (except maybe Anson) in our post-Independence history, the PAP are probably not feeling at the top of their game at this point. Reasons:

a) The memory of recent screwups is still fresh in the people's minds -- they likely will think about the transportation bungles like taxi fare hikes, SMRT train breakdowns and the incompetencies of its ex-CEO.

b) People are likely still pissed off about the Ministerial Salary Review, the recommendations (by the Ee Committee) which were pushed through hastily in Parliament barely a week before the media leaked the CPIB probe into ex-SCDF and CNB chiefs for alleged misconduct and possible corruption. Anyone with functional use of their left brain could put the two together and conclude that the news could've been embargoed till after the voting on the Minister salaries. Even if it wasn't true, my mind which has now come to be soaked in a conspiracy-theory paradigm, believes it to be plausible. Therefore, trust in the PAP remains low.

c) Social media and online media has exposed a lot of the dominant party's shortcomings by highlighting on a weekly basis, the latest foot-in-mouth moment on someone's Facebook wall, causing a cyber furore that even the mainstream press can't ignore. In short, no PAP chap can sneeze without somebody noticing, examining the snot and announcing its noxiousness online. And there are plenty of other people happy to re-post or retweet it. Add a bad PR management policy to this, and you can understand why the PM is loathe to go down another path of potential face-shaming.

d) The communication strategy of the PAP remains the same: informing the public, recording the feedback and over-focusing on critiques rather than welcoming an open flow of debate. It's not the outcome that matters, you can still do what you want, but how you roll it out matters to how the public perceives you. Plus, people are getting more immune to non-subtle forms of propoganda and sub-texting in the mainstream press. For instance, they don't take too kindly to ST reports that the bottom 20% of the population saw their incomes increase the MOST in 2011 and there being no journalistic examination of what the Statistics Department announced as their hard data. When the numbers contradict social reality, people resolve this cognitive dissonance by rationalising that the government is up to its tricks again.

I think the PAP have been doing the best they can in the wake of GE2011. They addressed many of the issues that were the bugbear of the election last year, like housing. However, they haven't done much on the KPIs that are not so easily identifiable: the political culture of Daddy Knows Best, re-thinking their communication paradigm and being vindictive (attempting to sue for "defamation"). Unfortunately, the policies (good and bad) of the PAP the last 40 years culminated in today's reality that our online and alternative media is probably the most left-leaning and critical of the ruling party in recent history. This means that social media, the most powerful communication tool, is working more against them than for them because of the profile of users and the profile of information purveyors.

Now that the WP have come clean with their audacious and shocking announcement, public perception will lean towards a more positive reading of the WP leadership because they come across as decisive in ensuring the integrity of their party members. This is a very telling contrast to how the government has reacted towards the hoo-ha about the ongoing CPIB and prostitution ring investigations. It's not a fair comparison, I agree, but people are not fair, logical and calm. They are easily-excited and prone to believing ideas because they match their personal biases rather than look for the evidence to disprove the ideas. The trouble with the PAP leadership is they seem to believe (or at least expect) people behave in the first way whenever something unexpected and detrimental to their image happens, and they believe and expect them to behave the second way whenever the time comes for serious policy debate. 

Or here's another thought: in 1986 when JBJ lost his Anson seat when he was convicted of falsifying party documents, the PAP left the seat vacant for a total of 22 months until the next General Elections in 1988. Same thing when their own MP of Geylang West died that year. So waiting it out may be the other strategy, but an option that I doubt would work out for the best. For one thing, people have longer memories now and a shorter attention-span and patience for idiocy; it would be very difficult to explain and justify not calling a by-election. For another, it would be silly to let Hougang become absorbed into Aljunied GRC since that would be how the WP will run things if no MP is elected for Hougang.

Nope, I reckon the PM is definitely not having a good week.

Performance Review

Two weeks ago, I proposed a little something to spice up our married life: a performance review dinner! So instead of just plain old dinner -- a la date night -- we would review each other's performance the past year as spouses and parents.

I know, you were expecting something more romantic like a surprise gift or some activity involving sand and champagne right? Well, that's not how we roll.

Plus, the one who fared worse had to pay for dinner. We hadn't worked out the KPIs, but we agreed to list all the things the other one has done well and 5 areas that needed improvement. Why five? It's easy to criticise endlessly over the smallest things, so we should at least pick the 5 most important ones we want addressed.

And since we agreed that the PRD would be on Thursday, the review period would be from the time Ju was born until Thursday. We both had to write the list down before going to dinner so we had to use some time to think about it. Perfect. 36 hours to do a little gerry-mandering, you know, offer a free massage (no strings attached) and do the dishes to put Daniel in a nicer mood so he doesn't remember the not-so-nice stuff I've done recently.

So when I sat down and thought about my review of Daniel, this was what I came up with:

THINGS YOU DID WELL WHICH I APPRECIATED
1. Taking care of baby like his bath, diaper duty, bottle-feeding and assisted breast-feeding.
2. Taking leave to stay home with me and baby the first month. That was not only a big help, it made me feel good and that I wasn't the only schmuck at the mercy of Ju.
3. Cooking dinner and doing the dishes when I didn't want to.
4. Doing the dishes when I didn't want to (this one counts as a bonus).
5. Sharing the chores like laundry and cleaning the bathrooms which I hate.
6. Being the one to come kiss me after we've had a fight because I won't do it anyway.
7. Washing your feet when you come into the house and not wearing dirty clothes in bed.
8. Being punctual.
9. Not getting angry (most of the time) when I lose my temper or snipe and snap at you.

THINGS YOU CAN IMPROVE ON
1. You rarely offer to massage me and when I force you to, you could put more effort into it.
2. You still complain too much.
3. Don't drive like a moron (sometimes) and stop saying "chao chee bye" and "fuck" when driving.
4. You can eat less candy and cheese so that I can have some too (the cheese, not the candy).
5. Forgetting that I require meals even if you don't (this applies to when you are out at football or working late)

So we both brought our lists (mine was typed) to dinner and we exchanged them. Here was Daniel's list:

So apparantly I got 4 nods: for being a good Mummy; for being cool with Tobi and his parents staying with us (note: Tobi lived with us for half a year, I deserve a medal for that); for not sulking and resorting to emotional blackmail when he goes to football; and for not blowing up like a whale after giving birth to Juju.

Hmmm. I didn't know what to think for a moment. Number 4 had nothing to do with "performance" per se, since I did nothing to lose weight after my pregnancy, it was all preordained in my genes. I thought 3 pluses was a little stingy, given my 9 accolades to Daniel. Now to the minuses:

I rejected number 1 because I had good reasons to lose my temper; number 2, mood swings go under number one; number 4 is ridiculous and we didn't even have to discuss 5 (my identity card now reads "Mrs Vivien Schmidt" under my original name but that is just so I can enter the European Union with Ju without immigration asking me pesky questions about my relationship to him, as if there is any doubt from the way he looks). 

So we both agreed that I would work on not stressing out over "small things" and keeping my temper in check, and he would work on my list of things he should improve because they were entirely legitimate of course.  

Marriage is really easy if you simply live life the way you did as a single with the exception of sharing a bed and the mortgage. It's much less complicated when you have the resources to subcontract the chores to a low-wage helper, a lot of negotiation and conflict resolution is instantly redundant. But when you've got to make room in your life for a baby who is completely reliant on you for his every need, who develops sleep issues after 7 months of tranquil all-night sleeping, then your relationship is put to a stress-test. 

We are lucky in that we get to go on with our work almost as per normal, as our parents have taken over child-caring so that we can do our jobs with the 100% concentration that other parents who need to contend with day-care arrangements probably can't afford. We are also lucky that we had lived together for 3 years before the baby came along so we've worked out our system for getting along with each other (and each of our inherent idiosyncrasies) and getting things done before the ultimate relationship stress test. We are also lucky to each have a sense of humor so that in spite of all other bad habits, we end up smiling somehow. That's really important, humor.

And of course, the final piece, somebody should usually get their way most of the time in order to ensure a healthy relationship. That's why Daniel paid for dinner that night.