2:00 PM: I have been playing the piano for about 40 years. It is an on and off affair. But whenever I sit on the chair and start to play the music that I play all my life, I feel that I am in my real element. The piece that I play for you now is called Traumerei, a part from Robert Schumann's Scenes of Childhood. Let's enjoy.

In 1984, while I was studying in South Carolina, I woke up from a sweet dream early to a Moscow concert of Vladimir Horowitz, the last romantic pianist of the 20th Century. He performed a long programme although he was 82 years old then.

I remembered very well that one of his encore pieces was Traumerie. I was awed by his playing because I have never heard a simple piece being played so gracefully and artistically. His melodic line sang the sound of a small brook, crystal clear. His playing was very soft and very piano.

I could imagine myself playing along this same piece with him because I knew Traumerei very well. But somehow I felt that my touch was always too heavy. I could not, even in my conceptual playing, do the light touch of pianism as Horowitz did.

Later when I acquired the video of Horowitz's historic performance, I saw tears running from the eyes of a man sitting in the audience. He was so touched with Horowitz's playing, magical and mersmerising.

Schumann composed Scenes from Childhood in 1838. It is a combination of individual pieces, intended to constitute a complete cycle. In Schumann's words, Scenes from Childhood represents "adult reminiscences for adults".

Schumann later wrote to Clara, who later became his wife: "What wild imaginings and dreams I experienced while writing these Scenes."

Indeed, when we recall our childhood, we mostly remember the time that we were happy running around the house and the neighbourhood. In one of my childhood's dreams, I walked alone in a small village and came across a deserted wooden house. When I stepped in, I saw nobody. The dust and webs were everywhere. It looked like a haunted house.

In the corner, I saw an old piano. I sat down and played the piano. That's the only thing I could do to keep my nerve steady. I was so afraid of seeing a ghost.

After finishing playing, I tried to explore the house. I visited different rooms, all of which were covered with white pieces of cloth and mosquito nets. I felt tired and laid down on a bed.

Soon in a half-sleep-half-awake state, I felt my body was floating slowing above the bed until I almost touched the ceiling. Then all of a sudden, I felt that I could move freely in the air. I started to fly from one room to another with rejoice, like a free spirit.

This is one of my most memorable childhood's dreams. 

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My grand piano 

I bought this grand piano about 10 years ago. It is a 7-feet Yamaha. The keyboard is made of ivory. Now due to the international ban on ivory usage, most piano keyboards are now made of plastic, which covers the wood beneath. When I play on this piano, I really feel that I am on top of the ivory tower.

Why do I like playing the piano?

Playing the piano allows us to express our intellectual, emotional, technical and physical expressions all at once. All the four elements have to come into play at the same time. I can't think of any other activities that allow us this rich experience like playing the piano. 

Playing piano is intellectual because you must have the intelligence to make the mechanical sound from the piano sound beautiful and meaningful, stylish and with good taste.

Playing the piano is emotional because once you master the technical side of the piece, you let your spirit guide your performance.

Playing piano is technical because you must go through years of training in order to acquire a technique necessary to do justice to the musical pieces.

Playing piano is physical because it demands the involvement of your entire body, from your arm, your fingers, your muscle, your back, your sitting and your toe.

That's why the performing art is the king of all arts.

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What do piano performance, tennis playing and monetary policy management have in common?

10: 15 PM: I do not want to claim that I am the first person in this world to try to compare piano performance, tennis playing with monetary policy management. This might sound bizarre. But do they have anything in common?

The answer is yes.

Piano performance, tennis playing and monetary policy management share an element of  gestures. Let me try to give you some explanation.

 I am now reading Charles Rosen's Piano Notes: the Hidden World of the Pianist. It is an excellent book, very intellectual and covering the various aspects of piano playing.

The piano is a very mechanical instrument. If we leave out a pedal, the most we can do on the piano is to play louder or softer. A single note on the piano cannot be played more or less beautifully, only more or less forte or piano and longer or shorter.

When you push a key on the piano, a hammer, through joints and springs, will hit the strings with greater or less force.

So how do we produce beautiful tone on the piano? Rosen writes: "A singing sound on the piano is not given by the instrument but by the way it is exploited with a specific musical phrase, and this exploitation is not mechanical and not a simple matter of technique: it requires at every moment a sense of the music. Beautiful tone production does not exist on the piano apart from the music."

There is also a relationship between physcial tension on the mood and the interpretation of every musical passage.

 "The heartbeat quickens and the body tenses during passages of raging fury: The body imitates the music. It goes the other way as well: the music that one produces will inevitably imitate the bodily state. Above all, because of the way so much of the body of the pianist comes into action while playing, this reciprocal mimesis is greater with the piano than with any other keyboard instrument. The gestures of the pianist are inevitably a visual translation of the musical sense," Rosen adds.

The gestures of a tennis player are even more apparent. You can see most tennis players doing their footwork constantly while they prepare to return a service of their opponents. This kind of gesture has nothing to do with the service return, but it helps the tennis players to prepare their state of mind and body while they are waiting for the fast ball that travels at times 120 kilometres an hour.

When Sherapova roars in the tennis court with every return of her racket, her gestures intricately become part of her tennis playing. She lets her psychological drive to do as much work as her physical extension to overwhelm her opponent for the winning scores. 

Her "ahhhh....." that accompanies her use of the racket to hit the ball becomes the aural translation of her mental and physical performance. 

Monetary policy management is all about raising or lowering the interest rates, injecting or sucking money out of the financial system. It sounds very mechanical and very boring.

Once the banking authorities ease the interest rates, they go for easy money to stimulate the economy. Banks automatically cut interest rates. Borrowing enjoy cheaper funds. Businesses start to get buoyant. The consumers feel a relief with lower credit burden.

If they decide to raise the rates to curb inflation, the opposite will happen.

But a lot of time, things do not go smoothly with the banking authorities's monetary decisions. This can be explained by the lack of proper gestures that accompany their crucial decisions. If the financial markets can't understand the banking authorities' gestures, they are bound to panic or get into turmoil.

Alan Greenspan was very good at making gestures to the financial markets with his monotone. He practiced it like a high art.

On the contrary, I don't see gestures accompanying the Bank of Thailand's monetary or administrative decisions. If the gestures are there, they are quite confusing.

When the BOT imposed capital controls in December last year with an aim to curb the baht rise, it failed miserably to communicate with the financial markets about its real intention of doing so.

The financial markets could not understand the BOT's gestures. "What the hell the BOT was doing" was the common cry of the fund managers and financiers. Would the Bank of Thailand want any foreign investment?

The BOT's statement was also murky, different to dicipher.

A Goldman Sachs official said in hindsight there was nothing wrong with the BOT's attempt to stabilise the baht because other countries such as China or Malaysia also have resorted to capital controls to keep their financial systems steady. But the problem was that the BOT failed to communicate its real intention to the financial markets that its action only meant to maintain exchange rate stability. Then the international money managers were afraid that the BOT might prevent them from taking their money out of Thailand, hence the panic withdrawals of investment from Thailand.

Since the BOT failed to cut the rates in the final quarter of 2006 to stem the baht rise because it misread the financial situation, it opted for the harsher measure of capital controls. This has dampened confidence from both the local and foreign investors.

Ever since government rhetorics have become louder in the countries's monetary policy. You could see that the gestures from Dr Kosit Panpiemraj, the deputy prime minister, are more visual than the gestures from Tarisa Watanagase, the BOT governor. The BOT has become sloppy afterward at its monetary policy committee meeting to determine the interest rate direction because the political gestures are stronger.

When the BOT decided to hold the interest rate course steady by keeping its policy rate unchanged at 3.25 per cent earlier this week, the financial markets were caught in a surprise. Because a day earlier, Kosit signalled that he would like to see an interest rate cut.

Tarisa appeared to try to regain the BOT's credibility with this stand pat on the interest rate policy. Thanomsri Fongarunrung, the economist at Phatra Securities Co, tries to look for a clue or a gesture of the BOT's no-action, which she interprets as a pause in order to cut the rates further twice before the end of this year.

The BOT may want to look at the indirect impact of the US subprime loan problems on Thailand before it makes any move. Because if the US subprime crisis does hit Thailand eventually, it would have more room to cut the rates to ease the financial turmoil.

That's the slight gesture given out by the BOT this time. It is a so-far-so-good gesture after all the mishaps.

Probably Tarisa and her team need to play the piano or tennis more so that they improve their gestures accompanying their crucial monetary policy decisions. Gestures, which might have nothing to do with the mechanical side of the financial system, cannot be separated from monetary policy making because they signal the direction ahead or reflect the current state of thinking of the monetary officials.

In this sense, gestures may at times speak louder than economic and financial data.