I went to the common room to study, and I heard someone playing “Speak
Softly, Love” from The Godfather. It turned out to be Joe, whom I've
seen at coffee night before. He's an oido: he plays things by ear, so
his rendition of it was in a different key and was slightly different
from how I remembered it.

I showed him the opening notes of “Speak Softly, Love” based on the
arrangement my sister learned when we were kids. I knew the opening
part because I annotated the notes with letters for her. We had a lot
of fun chatting about his piano teacher's style. I thought the
emphasis on learning the feel of the music made much more sense than
the exercises my piano teacher made me do when I took lessons, and I
wish my piano teacher had been like his. Still, maybe I can work on my
ear, just as I've worked on my coordination and grace. <laugh>

We talked about computers, too. It turned out to be the first
computer-related conversation he'd had in a long time, and he enjoyed
being able to rant about the brokenness of Java and other geeky
topics.

I didn't end up reading any more papers, though. <laugh>
Tomorrow, I'm really going to have to work on my questions for the
class and my summary paper. After my FIS requirements are done, I can
throw myself into the reading paper…