How I Spent My Bonus!

Sleek piano keys.

Alhamdulillah, the results of our bonus are out and 2014 was ultimately a good year for me. Despite the plummeting oil price, the Dutch Oil Company posted one of the best business performance factors for the year while I scored one of the best individual performance factors in my career. Alhamdulillah, syukur! (I hope the company is not preparing us for a no-bonus scenario next year!)

Instead of buying a handbag with my bonus, I finally splurged on something I have always had my sights on... my own piano! I last wrote extensively about my old piano here. To be honest, a piano had always been on my wish list, but I never had the courage to fork out so much cash for something that wasn't a necessity (and a handbag is a necessity okay!!) *grin* Also, I didn't know where to place the piano... our house is already oh so full with furniture. Is this a sign for us to get a bigger home? *yeah right*

A million and one excuses later, I finally made up my mind and marched to Yamaha to buy myself a piano. Even as I signed the credit card receipt, the full impact of what I just did didn't sink... until about later in the afternoon when I found myself texting a group of close friends to tell them about my bout of indulge! That night I even found myself wondering whether I made the right choice. I guess my biggest worry was that I wouldn't have time to play with it and in the end it would become just a white elephant in the room!

The weekend finally arrived, and with it came the piano. The minute the delivery man rang our doorbell, I was already bouncing off the walls in nervous excitement.

The minute I saw the huge box, I was already thinking of all the possibilities I could construct using it... circus ticket booth, anyone??

Trust this boy to climb on anything! Even Mummy's new piano!

The setup took like half an hour only! I guess since it was no monstrous grand, it was a pretty simple piano to assemble. Boy oh boy, the piano world has certainly changed much since I last played with one. Being a digital electric piano and all, it requires minimal maintenance. It doesn't need to be tuned and I only need to turn the electric on when I want to use it. I can also plug in a headphone in the jack, which meant the ability to practice music in silence for my ears only. As for the touch and response, despite it being an electric piano, I felt that it had the sound and the pedal feel of an acoustic piano! Seriously, if you are contemplating getting a piano, I now believe that an electric piano is the way to go - it is compact, sleek and practical but expresses sound just like a traditional acoustic piano. You can even choose to get the examination spec version, in case you want your kids to pursue piano exams and all.

Other than that, there are so many extra functions and features above and beyond what is available with the acoustic piano. For starters, it has a built in metronome and volume control - both buttons which Ian simply loves to press when I am playing on my piano. There is also a recording function to record your performances for later review. There are multiple musical instrument voices too, so you can choose to play as strings, organ and many more. Stored within the piano, are 50 preset piano recordings, which corresponds to music notes from a piano book - 50 Great Classical Hits for the Piano, included with the piano. (Two of my favourite piano pieces are featured in the book i.e. Piano Sonata No. 15 and Turkish March both by Mozart.) Hubby also loves to turn on the preset piano recording and act as if he's the one playing the beautiful music; which simply cracks up both Aiden and Ian! The only regret that I have is not choosing a model that has music accompaniment - the piano automatically producing full backing parts to accompany your music. Of course, this feature only comes with pianos that have the full bells and whistles, which meant dishing out a larger amount of money that I wasn't quite ready to part with.

After moving quite a bit of furniture around, we finally made room for the piano just by the dining hall.

Aiden's picture gracing the top of the piano.

All my hard work in 2014, translated into this beautiful gift to myself!

So is Aiden going to start taking piano classes? I guess time will tell!