Year of the Rat

February 7, 2008

The House of Catherine invited a bunch of people for CNY dinner this evening at the Peking Restaurant. The food was supposedly more authentic Chinese than any other restaurant in the area – nothing better until you get to London. Perhaps the most memorable part of the dinner was the wave after wave of chilli in the air followed closely by the gregarious proprietor with four daughters - she was very friendly with Zern.

Eventually Cyrille and I made it to Club Salsa after a second round at the Tram Depot – followed a little later by Zern. The number of people at the social was decent despite what I would have considered a diluting factor of new Tuesday evening venture, which probably has most amount of overlap in interested people. Surprise show included Steph, who apparently is stuck because of a train breakdown.

Unlike on Tuesday, everything but one dance tonight was On1. I suppose the dances of note included the one to Cachondea by Joe Cuba Sextet with Steph and one with Agnes where I decided to avoid free shines for the entire song. I also had my first Bachata in nearly 3 months. Despite staying until a little past midnight, however, I think I ended up dancing fewer than I did on Tueday.

Sally apparently decided not to DJ tonight so the duty fell mostly to Mark with some relief by Haihan. The general tendency was playing of very fast songs early in the evening and pretty much all night. By the end, Ivan seemed exhausted. I joked that he was getting too old for so many fast songs. I suppose there are other factors for him too – 7 weeks to go for him.

Other fast songs (well above 200 BPM at its slowest by my definition) I remember being played Merecumbe (Johnny Colon), Fuego A La Jicotea (Marvin Santiago), Puerto Rico (Frankie Ruiz), Hacha Y Machete (Alfredo De La Fe as well as Hector Lavoe), and Clave Mambo (Joe Cuba Sextet). Other unusual musical choices tonight (by Thursday standard anyway) included two Cha Cha and three Bachata.