My Very Own Oboe, Annelies

Yup, I closed my eyes and forked over the $18 to get the film developing with PictureCD, just to have pictures of my real oboe on this site. Her name is Annelies, after a character in Ana Praemodya Toer's book This Earth of Mankind which I read for a class. She was going to be "Beatrice" after the Missing Lance Project song, but my mother advised me to defer to my brother who was going to name his new $600 bike that (and he'd saved for months for that bike.) My main reason to name the oboe was to make double entendres and dirty innuendoes. While I was considering homely-sounding girl's names to fill the customary requirement, I remembered the name Annelies. It's all for the best that she wasn't named Beatrice. It's the name of my academic advisor's little daughter (which I learned after naming Annelies). too awkward.

ANNELIES' VITAL STATS:

MAKER: Noblet--uncertain if before or after buyout by Leblanc. Leblanc case.
MATERIAL: Wood. Accept no substitutes.
AGE: Noblet was bought out in about 1960. Annelies' keys are unusual in that the bottom hole before the right pinky keys is completely closed, where as that hole is open on all the other oboes I have seen. Older arrangement? Try to deduce from that.Your guess is as good as any.
WHERE I BOUGHT HER: [hangs head in shame] EBay, for $475, in July of 2000, from some guy in Texas. She bears scars (chips and cracks) from abuse in her past, at the hands of public school bandmembers.

Annelies' case. (customized by yours truly)

The whited-out area on the case is where I hope someday to get some rock-star autographs. (Desperately Wanting Better Than Ezra's signatures.)

Annelies on the windowsill

(I had to be quick with this one, and snap the picture before she could fall from such a precarious perch.)

That's my oboe. My pride and joy, and my frustration.

BACK TO CONTENTS