Prodigal sons return

September 28, 2007

I guess today more or less marks the third anniversary - for me starting Salsa lessons with Johnny and Serap as my first instructors. I guess it was an odd coincidence that Vishal decided to use tonight to give public thanks to Johnny and Serap for teaching Salsa for past 8 years with him. As pretty much everyone must know by now, a team led by Joe Davids will be taking over Friday classes starting Oct 19. Laminated fliers with photos of three instructors have been floating around all week. It signals an interesting shift for all considered - not least of all for Joe who recently ended partnership with Bar Latina in London according to a statement he made in one of many public Salsa forums floating in the internet.

In a few days I will have my fourth anniversary for my move to the UK. The first year without Salsa had me almost exclusively at work battling bureaucracy seemingly designed to prevent work rather than promote it. The second year was more of the same except I had Salsa as a minor diversion. It increasingly became evident that what I wanted to do at the time was not achievable within my abilities during my third year. As for Salsa, things were quite tumultuous at start of my third year here and I suppose thing have been quite different since. Recently I re-read some unpublished entries that time (yes, I sometimes choose to not publish things in this blog), and I thought it made a quite good reading. The fourth year was of transition at work - arguably less work too. So what's in store for the fifth and what I think of as the final year? What about after the fifth year?

Tonight looked like a quiet one until the gang made a surprise show around 11:30. The big returnees generating the most excitement were Sergio and Cyrille - Cyrille bought three bottles of Sang Miguel for us. Zern, Euvian, Sebastian and Polly all showed up at about the same time also and helped to boost atmosphere. Sergio is still feeling unenthusiastic about dancing or so he tells me. He says he's still interested in the music though - except for the ones he's sick of that is - and pointing out things he find interesting to me from time to time. Cyrille seemed like his old self more or less, and his return allowed for us to talk about logistics for the upcoming UK Congress. I certainly was happy to see them although I will admit to being a little jealous about the welcome and goodwill they received.

Quote of the "day" - One of the enduring but creepier features of the emotional life of the British is envy.

Taken from a book review re: Henry Stanley … rest of the paragraph is good too.