How to say A B C

March 22, 2007

Time of arrival – around 9:30. It’s a combination of many factors. I am trying to get some extra work done before heading off to Madrid. Also I think it might be good idea to concentrate on On2 instructions and in particular the method and logic behind leading technique advocated by Sergio. This is in part because there isn’t a lot of time left but more importantly because I find his approach to have a very solid and sound basis. Of course, it’s not like my On2 dancing is progressing very fast. As I told Ed early in the evening, there are not many people to practice with.

As for Madrid, I bragged to Cyrille about booking my accommodations last night. It was made interesting because the people at the hostal did not speak English. I decided to hang up the first time when I learned that the person at the other end of the phone did not speak English. Then I spent about half hour brushing up on my Spanish including finding out how to say A, B, C in Spanish before calling them back (because I figured that I would have to spell out my name). It was a bit of a struggle, but I got it done after about 5 minutes on the phone. Afterwards, I asked a native speaker to call the hostal to make a minor adjustment and to make sure that the reservation was made correctly – everything was correct except that I was apparently booked for one more night than I intended. Zhenzhi joked that this must be my first long vacation in 5 years. Ugh. It's not that bad.

I thought I would try to simulate how things might be in Madrid by asking only the people I don’t know (and people who have not seen me dance before) at the start of the evening. I ended up asking and getting no for an answer from the first five people I asked! Ouch. Perhaps it did not help that I tried not to look too confident or enthusiastic. I might add that I was a little apprehensive also because satisfying dances have become rare in recent months.

Nowadays I often find myself thinking along lines of “I don’t like this song” or “I don’t want to dance with most people here to this song because I think it’s going to be a mess (either because the song is too fast or because the song is going to make me want to lead moves which will overload most followers.” Also there’s the issue that I only dance at most once a night with most people, and I don’t want to waste a dance with good followers on a non-optimal song. There’s another issue that a particular follower I want to dance to might not be available when a good song comes on. Finally, the she may not like the song or think that dancing to a particular song with me may not be so fun for her even if she’s not dancing with anyone.

It was an okay night. It took a very long time for me to getting going. Lindsey told me to smile during dancing with her when I asked her for a dance. The song was Mambo Mongo and I found it easy to oblige her. I also liked a rare late-night dance I had with Sally to Merecumbe (Los Titanes version). Other songs played tonight include a couple of versions of Ran Kan Kan (including the one from Mamborama and another one Enrique used to play a lot but not the Tito Puente Jr version), Pico Swing, Mundy Baja, El Quinto De Beethoven (Cesta All-Stars – too fast and too long for my taste right now – it was on just before Mambo Mongo), Ahora Quien. Sergio thought Babarabatiri was played too, but I think he’s wrong.