Driven by some factors, I decided to buy another pack of flute pads in May, and had it a go for the last time. Having experienced innumerable times of failure in the precedent years, my skills in adjusting the shims to make the contact air-tightness of the tone hole and the pad must have progressed that I finally get all the 16 notes sound though the sound quality is not very good, it produces sound and I can play flute again. If any of the readers is interested in knowing more about how I revived the function of my flute, please click here.
Every night after I have made the flute sound again, I play it for 15 minutes routinely during the peak time of my medication round and before going to bed. One night when I landed on one page of the sheet music titled "To A Wild Rose", a memory about a chat with my teacher during the lesson time one evening in 2000 on how Asians looked at rose, and my talk on rose before our flute lesson started amused my teacher. This bit of memory urged me to practice this piece. I am still able to play it without much mistake because it is not long, and more importantly, it is a slow beat tune which suits me. So I decided to record it into a video for my teacher.
I only know my teacher's first name, however I know where she and her family were from. As she is a prominent flutist, I am pretty sure Google can find out her where about. It was as I had anticipated, a few strokes on the keyboard, There were a list of snippets relating to the name I was after displayed on the monitor. I sent her an e-mail, and in less than 5 minutes, I got her reply saying how surprised she was when she received mine.
Having not been in touch for 9 years, as her student I knew she must be curious to know if I am still playing flute, if not, why? The stories related to my Yamaha flute I have possessed for nearly 21 years have been posted in my blog site, so I sent her the links. This saved me a lot of time for me to do the story telling.
Teacher was saddened by the story about how I mistakenly DIYed the repadding of my own flute in 2011 resulted a total dis-functioning of my flute. From a video clip of my play on To A Wild Rose I recorded right after I had finally revived my flute 3 years later, she told me that the sound of all the notes under G were still not right although they sounded like they were. In another e-mail she sent to me she mentioned about sending a flute which she had not used for long time. I thought that was the flute she used in the lessons for me during the two year period when I was learning from her. That one looked quite old as its silver plating was almost faded. I thought perhaps she intended to give me one with some faults in it for me to repair. So I replied to her, yes I loved to have that flute if she really wanted to give away.
About a week later, I received a parcel sent from Sydney and I knew immediately it was a flute from my teacher. I could not wait to drop the thing in my hand and hurriedly proceed to unpack it.
As I took the first layer of the packaging off the parcel, the elaborated protecting packaging began to tell me it could not be an unwanted old flute worthwhile to be packed so nicely. But why my teacher sent me something else? When I finally unzipped the case and opened it, a glitteringly silver plated flute was exposed to me, it was a brand new flute. My hand shook. Shook violently. Why did my teacher gave me such a valued gift?
I assembled the flute joints and tested a couple of the low end notes. "oh! my goodness", the sound was solid, compact and crystal to me as a beginner flute player. I had never experienced flute sound of this high quality.
I rushed to my computer and sent my teacher an e-mail to acknowledge the receipt of the parcel and more importantly to tell her how I felt upon unpacking and discovering the very surprising and unexpected gift. I told her that all I had felt was only concluded in "Thank you very much".
Since my receipt of the new flute, I have been practicing flute daily, and recorded some of them for my teacher as a way of telling her "your former student Kuei-sen is saying thank you through playing with this precious gift you have generously presented."
--the end--
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