Could have made her mine for ten or twenty bucks. Hammers are broken or warped, felts are waterlogged. From the outside, it looked restorable. Inside, she's toast....
If a piano falls in the forest and nobody hears it...
- Thread starter Omicron
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Well, everyone else was making noise upstairs (and I wasn't snooping; I'd been told where to fetch more wine).
I figured it was covered to protect it from dust, which made me think it was in good condition, and then I noticed it was a Yamaha, which is my favorite upright, and I could see it was feeling unappreciated and alone...
Well, I didn't play loud to make a show, but actually I think you've nailed the issue... it had been left in her care, which puts an extra degree of protection on it.
Honestly, what ticked me was that I hadn't anticipated the reaction. I spend time dealing with assorted cultures and sub-cultures, and I'm usually pretty good at interpolating social norms, so I felt dumb not seeing that one coming, which got my head racing...
Specifically, I wondered if I'd violated a Taiwanese norm, or just that one person's. It's something you have to watch out for when sizing up other civilizations. You'll hear foreigners say things like, "Americans are jerks", when in fact, no, they just happened to meet *one* American who was a jerk. Plus, if she'd been HK or PRC, it wouldn't have surprised me (and I wouldn't have touched it), but Taiwanese tend to be friendly.
I'm now thinking it most likely that because the hostess was in charge of guarding the instrument for a friend, she'd slapped a general "nobody touch" policy on it.
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Ok, forget the cultural thing, she did with that phone call giving you h***. She'd agreed to store it for someone and "guard" it. Methinks most likely the person she was storing it for heard that somebody had played their piano (Doh! Then store it somewhere where there isn't going to be anyone near it, like a climate controlled storage unit you newt brained cheap b*****d!). So the owner phoned her and gave her h*** for just chucking a blanket on it & leaving it unguarded while she had fun at her party, the hussy! It's probably her boss's piano, betcha!
So she, having been reduced to a hungover, very damp hysterically sobbing newt brained twitess did the only thing she could think of to make herself feel better - making someone else feel bad - phone the polite guy who's too polite to respond with, "If it wasn't to be touched why weren't you right there all night making sure it wasn't? "quack, quack, quack...." Ok, if you had to have guests while storing the piano then you should have used what common sense you could muster before guests came and locked the keyboard, tied, chained or duct taped the blanket round it & put a large sign saying "DO NOT TOUCH" on it! Guests, parties, booze & unguarded not to be played pianos are not a good mix, it was up to you to make sure no-one could touch it or play it and knew they mustn't! Toodles!!
Sheesh!
(Valuable & sentimentally important classical guitar owner who never lets anyone touch it and would never entrust it to someone else to store. They can play the fifty year old cheapo, steel string Johnny Cash one if they want to play.)
Sing us a song you're the piano man....
What a crock eh. What's a piano for if not for playing. As long as you don't beat the hell out of it. Sounds like your host is not too familiar with musical instruments and became overly protective when you were ratted out for playing the instrument.
I'm the proud owner of a 1982 Tobacco Sunburst Gibson Les Paul Custom guitar valued at $3000. Anyone who can squeeze a note out of that slab of mahogany are more than welcome to give it a go. It's a musical instrument fer gawd sake, not a piece of furniture or art work. Band members would always shake their heads when I'd offer it to some Joe Blow if he wanted to jam with the band. My argument is this...let the young kids know what it feels like to play a quality instrument instead of some cheap Japanese knock off. It might spur them on to be a better musician. The guitar has been played by many people over the years and I believe in my simplistic mind the guitar is thankful for all the attention. She sings like a bird.
You can tune a piano but you can't tune a fish.
What a crock eh. What's a piano for if not for playing. As long as you don't beat the hell out of it. Sounds like your host is not too familiar with musical instruments and became overly protective when you were ratted out for playing the instrument.
I'm the proud owner of a 1982 Tobacco Sunburst Gibson Les Paul Custom guitar valued at $3000. Anyone who can squeeze a note out of that slab of mahogany are more than welcome to give it a go. It's a musical instrument fer gawd sake, not a piece of furniture or art work. Band members would always shake their heads when I'd offer it to some Joe Blow if he wanted to jam with the band. My argument is this...let the young kids know what it feels like to play a quality instrument instead of some cheap Japanese knock off. It might spur them on to be a better musician. The guitar has been played by many people over the years and I believe in my simplistic mind the guitar is thankful for all the attention. She sings like a bird.
You can tune a piano but you can't tune a fish.
She should not have phoned you up after the party to tell you off for playing the piano. If she had caught you playing it she would have been justified to politely ask you to stop.
Given the circumstances, I don't think you should have played the piano. You were sent downstairs to an area of the house where the party wasn't happening for some wine, and while you were down there you snooped around and found a piano covered by a sheet. You shouldn't have been lurking around down there in the first place, and you shouldn't have disturbed the sheet. You should have gotten the wine, and gone back upstairs.
Given the circumstances, I don't think you should have played the piano. You were sent downstairs to an area of the house where the party wasn't happening for some wine, and while you were down there you snooped around and found a piano covered by a sheet. You shouldn't have been lurking around down there in the first place, and you shouldn't have disturbed the sheet. You should have gotten the wine, and gone back upstairs.
And this right here has got to be one of the worst excuses I've ever heard. She's an immigrant, so you should be able to poke around in her house and touch things that don't belong to you? She shouldn't be able to ask you not to touch her belongings because you "let her in"? You're really grasping at straws here!