Time and time again

November 22, 2006

Beep beep. My phone made a noise to let me know that I had a message, “Hey, it is Cyrille’s Bday tomorrow, so few of us thought of having dinner with him at 730 this evening at Brown’s. Can you make it?” The message was from Zern. I texted him back asking whether the dinner was tonight or tomorrow. Then I looked at timepiece on my phone, which said it was 1800. Hmm. Only about an hour or so to finish work… This is cutting it close…

Zern texted back within minutes to confirm that it was tonight. Well… I certainly did not want to miss this one. As I went about my task of getting the barest minimum amount of work that needed to be tended to, I soon realized that it was only 5:15 or so rather than 6:15. I had not changed my clock to adjust for the end of daylight savings hour; some years I go through the whole winter without changing any of my clocks.

I was the last to arrive; I left work at 7:15 and ended up parking some distance away from the restaurant. At the table were some of my best friends in the Cambridge Salsa scene: Sergio, Mimi, Euvian, Zern and the birthday boy Cyrille. I’ll leave out details of what transpired at dinner except to say that merry times were had by all with everyone feeling free to say silly, outrageous and mean things to each other in an affectionate manner. It was hard to believe that I have known these people (except for Sergio) for less than a year (as well as the fact that we probably won’t stay as a group for a very long time – our time in Cambridge will seem so fleeting when it's over). Was it really just 8-9 months ago when Mimi, Cyrille and I were conversing during a lull after one of the classes, and Cyrille proposed that three of us should start up a Salsa school? By the way I wasn’t going to write about the dinner at all except we ended up going to Club Salsa afterwards – predictable, aren’t we?

I was less than fully prepared for dancing; I was wearing what could qualify as hiking boots and glasses. The latter is something of a health hazard when dancing (even Ivan, who sometimes uses his glasses as a prop, has been seen to get his glasses knocked out of his face by his dance partners in middle of her spins). Sergio too was less than fully prepared (glasses and wet shoes) while Mimi claimed to have wrong shoes and wrong outfit (I thought she looked great, but then again she always looks great). Euvian on the other hand seemed more prepared (well… I think it was she who brought the cake).

We arrived at Club Salsa around 10:30 or shortly thereafter. Agnes, Stephanie and Nina were present, as well as Nicola and Susie. Generally I kept my dances simple for myself (because of my heavy shoes) – meaning in this case that I made my partner do more work. The exception was with Mimi, who earlier said she didn’t have appropriate shoes for spinning (of course, there’s no need to spin the girls a lot to have a nice fun enjoyable dance).

Towards the end, it looked like Mimi, who was perhaps the most reluctant to go dancing tonight (this girl really has a lot of things on her plate – she plans to get up at 3 in the morning tomorrow for her classwork or something), was the last among us to leave the dance floor. And then Cristian put on Un Verano En Nueva York (El Gran Combo), which prompted me to get Stephanie on the dance floor and spin her around like mad – perhaps leading a pair of double-quadruple turns. I think I was a bit out of control, but Stephanie fortunately was willing and able to put up with me. Thus I ended up being the last one among my original party on the dance floor.

Cristian played a few Bachata songs while we were there, and I was gratified to see many from yesterday’s class using the routine taught yesterday to a nice effect.

On the drive back, Mimi saw that my car clock read 12:45 and lamented that she knew she was going to end up staying too late before Sergio and I told her that my clock was one hour early. Also on the same drive, Sergio mentioned that he received his message from Zern around 3 and that he too was confused about the date of the dinner. When I finally got home, I checked Zern’s original message again. It was sent at 1:40. So my building being very efficient at blocking mobile phone signals apparently made it seem like I was getting the invitation at the last minute. I guess I was lucky that the signal became strong enough when it did so that I did receive the message before whenever I would have left work otherwise. I guess I wasn’t meant to get a lot of work done this week.

I believe everyone at Club Salsa was aware or by the end of the evening became aware that tomorrow is Cyrille’s Bday. Everyone else will be clued in soon enough.

Exchange of the day (not exact… but it would take too long to try to get a full transcript) – “Why would you want to go to Istanbul in June?” “Why not?”

I had a song going through my head during this exchange...

Istanbul was Constantinople
Now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
Now it's Turkish delight on a moonlit night

Every gal in Constantinople
Lives in Istanbul, not Constantinople
So if you've a date in Constantinople
She'll be waiting in Istanbul

Even old New York was once New Amsterdam
Why they changed it I can't say
People just liked it better that way

So take me back to Constantinople
No, you can't go back to Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
Why did Constantinople get the works?
That's nobody's business but the Turks

Istanbul (abridged)

They Might Be Giants