HAPPY SEVENTH MONTH DEAR!!!

...even though she fell asleep again. Oh well, she'll see this the next time she checks.

Princess and I celebrated our seventh month together early by making a splash at the Music Platform with the Allegro Appassionato op. 43 by Saint-Saens. A phenomenally difficult piece for ensemble work, it was originally meant to show her off at string performance class, but VH liked it so much that we got a place for the platform. Sweet.

Also, the Rosamunde quartet was the only string quartet to grace the stage that day. T'was infinitely preferable to a repeat of both the Haydn and Tonwarachet. That'd surely put the audience (and most of the players too) to sleep.

Platform rehearsal was screwed up, with VH using the time to rehearse the Debussy, and in my opinion he wasted a lot of time on Haydn and the Tonwarachet. He then left the venue for the last three items (the Beethoven piano/wind quintet, Rosamunde and Saint-Saens) to run through. With no one supervising the rehearsal, we were very hard-pressed for time, and the winds managed to complete their rehearsal, but the string quartet had only about two minutes to run through, and PRINCESS AND I HAD NO TIME AT ALL ONSTAGE TO TRY THE PIANO LID, which we really needed to do.

You can imagine how pissed off I was just before going onstage. I felt like I was being sabotaged, either consciously or unconsciously, because both the items which were shortchanged of time were mine, in a way. I made up my mind to skip orchestra if the Saint-Saens bombed.

By a miracle of God, it turned out much better than I expected. I fumbled the usual spots, and skipped the optional octave higher part to avoid unnecessary risk, but it was overall good. My sound was soft, but at the same time full and resonant. Credit Mingxi for doing a great job with a new soundpost and minor alterations to the bridge and fingerboard, and my teacher for the last-minute advice (short bows with full bow contact) which enabled my ending to be nearly perfect.

The quartet, on the other hand, was bad, by most accounts. We played safely, for sure. Princess said we were out of tune. But don't be discouraged! We were the best of all the string quartets, that's why we were able to play for this platform.

Today, we continued celebrating (the anniversary is rightly on Friday, the 28th, but we decided to go out a day early because we are comparatively free on Thursdays, and not so on Fridays) at Joaquim Restaurant at Suntec Convention Centre for a porridge buffet (9.80 nett on weekday afternoons). Sounds fun, eh? It was quite interesting, with a rather small spread which got me a bit bored after a while. It was a bummer that there was no fish for princess, so she fixated on the kung pao chicken and shrimp chili, which were truly good, though no particular favourites of mine. And the mussels were stale. I enjoyed my salted vegetables and plain porridge though. The herbal chicken was also fantastic, but unfortunately cut into small pieces with lots of bones.

After walking around a bit at Suntec, we stopped at Skinny Pizza for a snack of Spanish donuts, also known as churros. This was served with an add-on of marshmallows and a chocolate fondue dip, which princess was not able to enjoy much due to the fact that the chocolate had coconut in it. She decided not to take her chances with it.

Sorry dear.

It was back to Dhoby Ghaut after that, where princess went for a dance class at the newly-opened Jitterbugs at The Cathay. When she ended, she was presented with my anniversary gift to her, which was her very own conductor's baton.

Yep, when she was enjoying herself dancing away, I was at Plaza Singapura Yamaha trying batons. Tried about 10 of them for balance and feel before I made my purchase. I was careful to peel off the price tag on the plastic container. It actually cost me $16.50 before discount. She thought it was in the range of $50-60. =)

It's the thought that counts.

After her class, it was dinner at Subway, after which we returned to school for a bit of time-wasting and listening to bad music before heading home.