Meh

Aiyo... who knew buying a harp is so problematic even when going through a dealer who is supposed to do everything for you?

Btw I'm really happy about the dealer I'm going through because she doesn't charge you any commission and what you pay is exactly what is stated on the Lyon & Healy website, not a cent more. Her profit comes because L&H gives her a dealer's discount. If you know anyone who wants to buy a harp please contact me and I will give you her contact no. If you can possibly avoid it do avoid buying overpriced harps (well, duh): scout around the market, as well as online, to see what prices are like. L&H, for example, states all their harps' prices on their website. Great company, L&H. Lovely harps, good service, wide variety... I like the Salvi harps too, from Italy, though of course Salvi did buy over L&H when it ran into financial problems. Such a large and reputable harp-maker like L&H running into financial problems. No prizes for guessing in which country they are based in.

Read more of 'Mao's Great Famine' today. What a disgusting guy. What got me the worst was what he said: "It is better to let half of the population starve to death so that the other half may eat their fill." Of course, the half that eats their fill inevitably includes him and his cronies. Persecution of the Jews during the 3rd Reich? That's nothing. Stalin's Great Purge? A joke. I mean, these two actually had a motive to kill. Mao Zedong indirectly killed 45 million of his countrymen for the sake of saving face. He might not have signed an execution order, but he condemned them to death when he stopped caring about whether they actually had enough to eat, or warmth in winter. And many new agricultural measures introduced by the Communist Party were unscientific and untested, backfiring spectacularly. The rush for quantity over quality (to look good) created a chain of wastage when many products were simply unusable. Mao said, "There is no such thing as a reject product, one man's reject is another man's grain." Ha! What sheer stupidity... there are no words. It's a wonder no one started a revolution, or maybe everyone was too hungry to do so.

And so I shall head to bed. I'll be meeting Nambi tomorrow, as part of a group. After 2 years, I finally made it to his church's 'school meetings' in NUS which I couldn't go for before because it always seemed to be on a Friday when I always had one lesson or another (still do). This academic year though, because some people graduated so there can be changes to the timing of the meetings, and it will be held on Wednesdays. The best part is that it is held in Utown, where Nambi lives. AND it's close to my school, which is a big big big bonus, instead of having to travel to Science faculty and finding whichever random lecture theatre they have commandeered for the day. Bet the others will coerce him to show us his room, and I've always wanted to know what a Utown room looks like. Should be interesting.

P.S. there is a slightly yellowish stain on my bolster cover, barely discernible, but it's there, and it's exactly the size and shape of the tearstain that I left there yesterday. Which I created when I was on the phone for a blissful yet painful 16 minutes (I'd promised to time the conversation and put down the phone in 10 minutes, but it dragged, and we were saying our goodbyes when his phone ran out of battery. Just as well I guess). Being able to hear his voice but not see him just accentuates the pain. And the crying also left me with a hugely swollen right eye so I could hardly do my Italian homework. You are lousy, Karen. When I mentioned to Hazel that the yellowish stains on my bolster (the bolster itself, not the cover) are due to tearstains, she said that it could be simply due to saliva. Well then, the stain on the bolster cover is proof that it's not saliva: if saliva caused it, then my bolster should have been brown through and through a long time ago.