fazioli

ok I just cannot get over that I actually had the privilege of playing on a Fazioli. It produces an incredibly beautiful sound, the touch is not too soft or hard, it is gorgeous. The piano is hand crafted from Italian red spruce cut from Val di Fiemme, which is the same place that stradivarius got wood for his violins. the wood which has the highest natural resonant quality is selected by the the craftsman. and ohmygod, it is so quality. people you want to know what quality is? play a Fazioli, it is QUALITY. I cannot stress how wonderful it is.

the memory of the sound and the feel makes my heart race and want to explode. ok I must aim to get one by the end of the next ten years. they cost a couple hundred thousand singapore dollars maybe? if I work hard, and get good grades and get a good job, and stop eating, maybe I'll be able to afford one at the end of the next 10 years.

heaven is not in a wild flower. playing on a Fazioli is heaven.

Caerdydd

Despite the fact that the weather was quite dreary and that my shoes and socks were completely soaked through by midday, today was really fun. we got home at around twenty past midnight.

we loaded up ewan's things into matt's car and said goodbye to everyone. I spent a good time pestering martin who was still mostly asleep. they were all leaving emscote today, and would've been gone by the time we got back. I think we all took naps in the car, while matt drove. it felt kind of nostalgic, taking another road trip. I don't think I've done one since back in the US when we used to drive all over the east coast. we had chocolates and digestives in the car to eat along the way.

Ewan's parents were really friendly and nice and all. I was very nervous about meeting them. I hope I was as polite as possible, although I did miss a cue to introduce myself. and I guess ewan had been telling them I was really eager to play their piano because they knew that I wanted to which made me feel a little embarrassed but I mean come on, it is a fazioli. so his dad let us into the room where the baby grand was. and I couldn't believe I was sitting down in front of a fazioli. I just sat there touching the keys at first because I was just amazed that I was actually touching it. it sounded so awesome and felt really good. they thought that I was quite good, but I didn't think so, because i kept messing up. later on his dad lifted the cover to let more sound out and he played a little. It sounded so good it made me want to cry. and I know people think I cry all the time anyway, but it's not really true any more I think, and really it sounded so sweeeeeeet.

we had lunch at his place. orange juice, bacon and tomato 'dwiches' with crisps. we sat around and talked about the rugby match in the evening between france and wales. it turned out to be EPIC. I kept looking at the books they had on the shelves. they looked really interesting. books on classical music, composers like debussy, or chopin., and other books that looked more like fiction. it looked pretty down right cool. anyway we might have a piano in our super kicking house next year because they said they might let us have one of the ones that they didn't one anymore, but happened to be stuck with at the moment. I felt kind of embarrassed when they offered because I think everyone thought it would mean the most to me, to have piano in our house.

later on we went out and took a train from Llandoch into central Cardiff. It wasn't raining at the time, but the sky was still dreary. I loved how the city was bustling with so much activity, mostly due to the epic rugby match for the six nations in the evening. there were people on street corners shouting, hoping to buy or sell extra tickets for the match, which apparently, we heard it over the news increased in value when wales stood to win the grand slam. they were priced at close to one thousand pounds! there were people selling french or welsh flags, scarves that said 'Alles les Bleu!' doing face painting in random corners of the street, the red dragon was stained on a lot of people's cheeks. when people started heading towards the match there was singing in the streets. patriotic songs.

we walked around for a bit. we walked around cardiff castle, which looked really cool from the outside. we decided to go to the museum instead, since it was free. croissant and I decided that we'd go to warwick castle at some point, which is supposed to be epic. there were impressionist french paintings on display in the museum. and that made me really happy. REALLY HAPPY. I saw Renoir's La Parisienne, a painting by Van Gogh, can't remember the title. and lots of other paintings that were thought provoking. and I saw Monet's Waterlilies. not in a picture book or anything, but framed. in front of me. It just took my breath away. now I feel like I've lived a little more.

A lot of streets were cordoned off today. people were just walking every where, with colourful hats, or fake colourful wigs. aside from all that, cardiff reminds me a little of a town out of a charles dickens book. some of the buildings are really old and look a little dirty or sooty. no offense to the city. It was really interesting anyway. I'll remind myself to remember the streets. chippy land and looking down one of the streets and thinking about how it looked like it could've been from old industrial britain in the early twentieth century. I won't say it's the most beautiful sight in the world, but it was really interesting.

we wasted a bit of time in the natural history area of the museum, and lost matt in the process. seriously matt got up to some strange shenanigans today. I couldn't stop laughing. he was helping some random lady take photos. and when we came out looking for him, she wanted to take a photo with him and he started panicking and wanted her to be really quick about it when he saw us coming. I could not stop laughing when we were outside. and later on while we were on the street, I think we walked in between an old man and his friend just as he started to talk really loudly which made matt jump and put his hands up and just look a little ridiculous. the old guy pissed himself laughing. me too.

later on we spent a lot of time looking for a pub to watch the match in. I got really drippy because I didn't have a hood and it was raining steadily. I got to take a shower later. it was crowded every where and there were lines to get into some pubs. eventually we went to a place with a pub in the basement. nothing fancy or anything, it felt like a den where college students usually go to hang out. I think ewan said that not many people knew about it. it was a small place. it was a little packed for such a small place with an average sized flat screen. eventually croissant picked me up and set me on what I think was a tall chest of drawers. after which he looked at me with a very horrified expression on his face and said 'you really heavy!' which was really comforting.

matt tried to teach me the french national anthem really quickly, which didn't work. I doubt there were any other french people in that small place aside from croissant and matt. it was a really great experience. especially when wales scored their first try. every one jumped up and was yelling and some jumping on their seats banging the ceiling with their hands. and they were chanting WAAAALES WAAAAALES WAAAAALES which was reverberating throughout the whole city, I'm sure. I was secretly supporting france in my heart of hearts. but I'm glad that wales won in the end, or the city would not have been so ridiculously happy.

We had dinner at a pizza place ewan likes a lot. it was really nice stuff. I found it hard to eat quickly though, I don't get how they did it. matt had eaten half his pizza before I had managed to get at my second slice. it was a thin crust and all and was really yummy. after dinner when we went outside, there were still people going WAAAAALES WAAAAALES WAAAAALES in the streets. people high fiving each other with a lot of exuberance. some one even high fived croissant, which was random and made me laugh.

anyway we took the train back to the ewan's village. many of the trains were canceled which caused a lot of people headaches. on the train some people in the carriage started singing patriotic french songs which a lot of other french people joined in to. you could hear cheers from the back. it was really endearing. one of them looked like stalin.

matt is a trooper! he got us all the way back to campus which is like a 2.5 hour drive. and we had 'huggies' before he went back to leamington. I think I tumbled into my room feeling shivery and cold. my teeth couldn't stop chattering for a good five minutes.

it was definitely a really really good day. I'm more alive because of days like today.

heat

A lot of us went to heat last night. It was really fun, because we actually danced. I don't know, it's strange that we had heart warming moments and words despite the thumping loud music. martin put flowers in my hair, which sounds some what gay, but it was really fun. he and I kept hugging stephie because she kept going aww and saying we were so sweet and that she missed her boyfriend. we kept hugging ewan as well, because he's so huggable. plus he dubbed us 'best couple ever,' although it might have been because he was drunk.

and I saw simran! <3 <3 <3 who just ran up to me and was very excited and made me very excited and we had hugs and kisses. so then she met martin and told him that he better be good or she'll hunt him down.

Unfortunately at one point natalie accidentally punched me and stepped on me, which was quite horrifying. I think it was just that the song was violent. martin and I left earlier than every one else, because he felt tired. so we walked home and talked about politics and lots of other things. like how all my friends have threatened to hurt him if anything happens to me.

fat clock is the ultimate.

bnp

there is a referendum on campus on whether to ban fascist and racist organisations from speaking on campus. freedom of speech is the main argument for the group against banning them, while safety and security issues are what the group for banning them is focused on. It's a difficult debate I suppose. I haven't really made up my mind, but it did spur me to do some research into the british national party.

The supposedly intelligent individuals at the head of this racist and facist party are so incredibly, mind-numbingly myopic. and the people that follow them deserve a nobel prize for being weak minded and short sighted. There were a few things that they pointed out that were quite true. For example, racism works both ways and it's completely possible that there are anti-white racist issues in society. but while I was reading the statement, I had the impression that their examples and sources were fragmented, the argument wasn't fully explored and was merely touch and go, possibly even misleading, and that the analysis was weak. you get people complaining about reverse discrimination and 'their' jobs being taken by non white individuals. although how they can claim that the job belongs to them without them actually having been employed in that position is ludicrous.

I see it as that the bnp would instill preferential treatment in the United Kingdom, in favour of, as they put it, the truly British with the 'British genotype.' So quite possibly, it may lead to a situation in which a 'truly British' individual who is less qualified and less able to perform a certain job well compared to another candidate who is not 'truly British,' would get the job simply because he is 'truly British,' despite being less capable. In other words, instead of relying on one's own merit to do well in life, one would be able to fall back on race in order to advance. Needless to say, this would affect the economy and society adversely. This whole concept reeks of regression.

ohmygod, I actually wasted so much time doing this when I should be studying financial management.

earthquake

I forgot to write about the earthquake. from what I read it apparently measured 5.2 on the richter scale at it's epicenter, which was around lincolnshire, if i'm not wrong. It hit us at around one in the morning. I was about to go to sleep when the building just shuddered suddenly. It was quite strong and I thought it was the wind suddenly being extra powerful. Ewan was still awake at the time and said that his room kept shaking after the first tremor. maybe there were little seismic waves. It was actually kind of exciting and entertaining when we found out that it was an earthquake the next morning. There weren't any casualties, although there was one student in another school who's pelvis got crushed cause his ceiling collapsed or something like that, which is really unfortunate.

yesterday roxanne and I wasted more than an hour trying to do a crossword. there was a point where we just sat there staring at it. after a while we'd get up and check google or something for one of the words and hope that it would help with the others. I pretty much wasted my whole day yesterday, except for some business legal stuff.

I am going to dedicate my day to studying financial management!

spring

I don't think it's quite spring yet, but there are flowers blooming. There are a lot of daffodils and smaller white and purple flowers around campus. and the willow tree that I pass by every day on my way to class is growing it's leaves back.

I think paris will be very nice in spring. hopefully croissant will find time to give me a tour of the city. Jessie and I want to go to the palace of versaille, and maybe watch an opera if we can afford one. I'm really excited thinking about celebrating easter sunday in Notre Dame! That's like one of the most ultimate good juju things ever! I'm going to force them up early in the morning and charge down to the cathedral. ohmygod it'll be awesome.

What would be really awesome if we could organise a trip to cardiff to visit Ewan and his FAZIOLI piano. ok it's his dads. but a FAZIOLI piano! croissant and matt asked me if I wanted to go to cardiff with them but I doubt it'll happen because they haven't planned and will probably not really plan anything. they were thinking about sleeping in the car over night, which is just ridiculous.

Financial management is so tricksy and deceptive. I've been feeling really sleepy and fat lately. but I have been doing a little bit of exercise. I went bouldering, which is really fun. my arm muscles hurt and I don't really think it's a cardio kind of work out but I get so tired. I think some of the problems were meant for taller people.