Notes from a piano teacher

Exactly 10 years ago, I arrived in Salzburg. Enamored with old-world Europe and empowered with a deep sense of purpose of wanting to absorb all that was possible from my new cultural environment, I was dizzy with a miraculous disbelief over my newfound status as a music student. My short time in America liberated me from that notion that it was impossible to do a second degree in music and I was doggedly determined to get to and stay in Europe, with the same degree of intensity that I put into getting out of Singapore. Over time, that initial idealism has faded and my former enchantment with Europe has morphed into a less romantic, more sober appreciation—I still love all things ecclesiastical, la dolce vita , the gilded opera houses, leisurely boulevards, cool summer nights and old cafes where the literati philosophise over cake, coffee and crinkled newspapers, the changing of the seasons and their rhythms, the anticipation over the first appearance of seasonal pro