Let's see. How often have I kept writing whatever came into my mind? I would say, most of the times. How often have I not edited what I wrote? Never. So when (e:Paul) challenged me to translate my stream on consciousness here, I was a bit intimidated. I still am. Writing without editing is a luxury that only the most careless or the most devious can get away with. I don't think I am either. In fact, I fear that I will say something inappropriate here and be forced to hide the entry before too many people read it.

Nevertheless, I think the challenge is an interesting exercise in exploring what I am really thinking about...I am recalling the salsa class today. It was fun, but it was not so fun. We didn't have enough partners to rotate in intermediate class today and as a result I was dancing alone for a large portion of a complicated partner-oriented routine. The next time we switched partners, the routine had advanced to include even more moves. I didn't even have the basic moves down yet. And of course, my lack of clarity on what a proper frame means didn't help.

When I first started with the class back in November, Sarah and Sean rotated with the students in class. They somehow stopped rotating earlier this year. So I don't get to dance with them so much. Sometime Sarah dances with me to demonstrate moves to couples nearby but I miss November. I miss that first month of dance. I miss that feeling of floating on clouds. I miss it so much.

Today, when I was bald in class and dancing alone, I realized that the pain of getting cancer lies, perhaps, not in the disease itself but the pain it brings to your interactions with others. You interpret each little disappointment in the light of the disease. I think today, of all days, dancing a dance that was designed to accentuate everything that is right with me and this world, I felt so out of place and so completely in sync with what it is like to have cancer.

But I had fun when I was not dancing alone. I am so glad that Philip is in the class and is always so kind to rotten dancers like me. Today would rank as a complete disaster without him. I love salsa but I hate that it depends so much on partners. I doubt I will ever socially dance because it is painful to feel that you are not enough by yourself. It might be true but I don't like that feeling. Self-reliance is the key to happiness. If you can't have faith in yourself, you can't expect to enjoy life the way it is. Intermediate class leaves me feeling unhappy and feeling inadequate. I hate the feeling. I hate this stream of whiny consciousness. This is SO not making it to the publish button.

If you didn't know already, the awesome yoga place at Bryant and Elmwood (Hand to Heart) has a really wonderful deal going on today.

5 classes are for $15. You can get a maximum of 3 of these passes for yourself and gift some more to others.


(e:metalpeter), this is your chance! Maybe I will bring along tea cups so you can balance them on your head doing the urdhva dhanurasana. ;-)

Dear Gobo,

As you have probably noticed by now, I am trying out the hip hop class this month instead of the breaking class I took last month. Last week we learnt around 30 seconds worth of slick moves in an hour. Yesterday, my class pretty much forgot every step from last week (and of course the entire Fugazi patron crowd turned up to class mysteriously) so a crowd of us re-learnt it all with body and shoulder movements added to the footwork and then learnt 3 more seconds of extra moves.

So that brings it to a grand total of 33 seconds of hip hop learnt in over 60 minutes of sweating over intricate footwork, hip hop rhythm, staggered body movements, feet-ball change, swoops and runner's stances and whatnots. Seriously, hip hop is COMPLICATED! And rather hard on the vastus lateralis and the vastus intermedius muscles. I have never felt these two muscles as sore as they are today. It feels like I spent all day beating these two muscles with a rolling pin. I have no soreness anywhere else.



Another strange thing I noticed in class was that everyone else seems to be familiar with the songs that our teacher (Michael Burton) plays ALREADY! Don't ask me how. Either the bartenders at Fugazi are on the same wavelength as our teacher or maybe there is some secret music cabal where they memorize words to random hip hop songs.

Right. So I was going to make some observations about how hip hop is very different from breaking. The primary difference is, of course, the higher level of induced activity in the vastus lateralis of your dominant leg. You are welcome to validate this observation. Hip Hop footwork and body movements seem to be a lot more complicated and controlled in space and energy. While breaking gives an illusion of an out and out battle where you are using the music to show off the strength of various elements of your body, hip hop is more like using your body as a composite as a very gliding and sometimes subtle expression of the music itself. The problem is there is no "basic latin step" as in salsa, so it's proving somewhat difficult to feel the central pulse of the dance form...I can only hope that I get it by the time we reach the last 30 seconds of our incrementally complicated routine...

till the next dance-postcard,
TP.

I think if I had to choose the one meal that probably defines me the most, it has to be this:


The colourful and absolutely unexpected bhelpuri.

Come to think of it, it's not unlike (e:Paul)'s bowl-mania. The base is a spiced up version of crispy rice (like popcorn but made with rice). This is layered with raw onions, chopped coriander (cilantro), chopped sharp ripe tomatoes, boiled and spiced garbanzo beans, spiced fried or boiled potato cubes, freshly-squeezed lime juice, chopped hot green chillies and garlic, fried sev (crispy spiced noodles made of lentil/gram flour) and roughly smashed crisp "puri" (a fried flatbread made of either pastry flour or whole wheat, depending on who's made it...). Finally the whole mix is served with hot green mint and coriander chutney and a sweet/sour tamarind-jaggery sauce. Some high-end restaurant versions also have fried paneer in them. The possibilities are endless.

The result is often unexpected but always interesting and too delicious to put into words. If I were left on an island forever with a choice of one meal type, I would just choose the bhelpuri. You could change the proportion of just one ingredient and arrive at a perfectly unique bhelpuri. If you changed the proportion of more than one ingredient, you could pretty much change the entire dish in a flash and yet have an awesome meal. You could endlessly tweak everything to make it as light as a snack or as heavy as lunch or maybe sweet for a dessert or a breakfast. The possibilities are endless...

Why, thank you (e:paul).

An assorted case each of Valrhona, Pralus and Askinosie (Davao) unsweetened drinking chocolate and super dark eating chocolate bars from the same brands.

Or maybe add $150 more and get a super-heavy duty sewing machine (babylock or maybe one of the higher-end brands).

Or maybe a livingcolors lamp.

Or a case of true full-spectrum lamps.

Or take intensive private ballet lessons! :)

Now, could you please send the check to my address. Thanks.

Duele, duele como duele la vida, duele...



Or my alternative chorus
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I am on a new resolution of trying as many new activities as I possibly can within walking distance from home at reasonable times of the day. The thing is I find it hard to find information about classes and performance arts in Buffalo downtown in one place. Maybe there is some list out there but I haven't found it yet. It's almost the same as the downtown Buffalo grocery scene when I first came here. I know getting groceries is probably not a very good comparison to dance classes... but I am going to follow a similar approach and scope out things I am already into or want to do in the near future in downtown Buffalo.

Looking for: Newer physical ways to challenge my body.
Criteria (1): Walking distance within or around downtown Buffalo.
Criteria (2): Neighbourhood that is not creepy or uncomfortable around the time of the class/activity.

• The first on the list is of course Salsa by Sarah Hooper and Sean Ortiz. Thursdays. 6:30PM to 9:00PM, Configuration dance studio at the corner of Lexington and Ashland

I am in love with this class. I pretty much like everything about it. The teachers are the best, the most patient and probably the most talented you can ever hope to have. The music selection is amazing and very fresh (intermediate class). The studio is large, inspiring, covered in mirrors and filled with light. It just inspires you to dance. The floors are a bit sticky so dance shoes help a lot. The sound system is very interesting - because it separates channels and you can actually hear the percussion separately from the harmonies. Sometimes it helps you to dance better, but sometimes it can get confusing.

A tiny annoyance stems from the nature of the dance itself. It is, in the end, a partner oriented dance. So if your assigned partner is not the most positive of people, is not there to really learn the dance but for goodness-knows-what-purpose, is whiny/controlling or or doesn't get the concept of constructive criticism or is excessively self-obsessed and couldn't care less about whether you learn or not or is just an irritating combination of all of these, it can cast a shadow on the proceedings. Or you could end up with a partner who is so magical you feel like you are the best on the dance floor, it feels just right and you are floating on salsa wings. I have been incredibly lucky of late and classes have been nothing short of perfect but that doesn't mean I haven't experienced these annoying elements in the past and reconsidered the class.

My newest dance teacher can dance fluidly in any pair of boots at insanely cold temperatures on treacherous amounts of snow and ice in front of City Hall smack in the middle of the legendary Buffalo winter.



Can yours?!

We learnt a 30s routine in around a hour this past Monday and had too much fun doing it. Half my office and extended office contacts made up around 85% of the class. To what end, you ask?

We hope to be able to star in Missy Elliot's latest video and replace the Japanese blokes in around a year.



Watch out. The 345-BMR-Bloc* is learning some serious Hip-Hop!

---

NB: That's our kewl office nick if you didn't guess already.

I just realized that I have been tagging all my yoga posts as "dance". That was because I started doing regular guided yoga to get better at salsa. My categorizing OCD kicked in recently and I wanted to re-label everything as "yoga" or maybe "fitness". But it's too late.

The yoga classes have somehow evolved into sessions of extreme performance art and creative mental dance. Yesterday, for instance, we tried to become one with the sinuous forms of this exotic looking flower called the bird of paradise...


Too bad, none of us ended up quite like this bloke:


Even secretly-super-yogi-power-(e:Paul). HEHEHE


But I maintain that I could have totally done it if I were at that crazyawesome beach in the background. You shouldn't believe anyone if they tell you that it depends on the extreme flexibility of hip joints and core balance. It's so obvious that you need to be at the beach.

Oooh, there is more. Erin also demonstrated to everyone how to stand on our heads.


This time everyone in the class ended up like this.


Except me. I was stuck in Figure 31 for an eternity...


before this rather unfortunate image made its way into my head: "And yet you incessantly stand on your head - Do you think, at your age, it is right?"

I wimpily decided it probably wasn't, at that particular time and gave up.

But hey, all was not lost. I was able to do the exclusive "Erin-asana" - an inspired soulful yogasana conceptualized and breathed into life by the one and only Erin at Hand to Heart. It's so exclusive, I can't even find a google image!

After class, Paul and I got a bottle of vodka (if you are thinking that it was probably to drown our mediocre birds of paradise hell, you would be wrong), had some delicious sautééd mango in sauce, crispy noodles, sushi and rice delicacies at Blue Fin (arguably the best Asian fusion restaurant on Elmwood Avenue), bitched about tech stuff, got some smashing groceries, including an out-of-this-planet olive bread, talked conspiracy theories and discussed housing markets, in that order. If you had not been at some crowded beer club, you could have enjoyed the Yogi's choicest...

Too late. It's time to honour your practice now. Or come to another adventure with us next week! :-)

The incredibly sad news about (e:joshua) reminded me of the last time I had a substantial conversation with him, in person. I think it was a couple years back at (e:Drew) and (e:Janelle)'s labour day breakfast (or was it July 4?) I remember it was a classic American holiday and (e:Drew) was making delightful pancakes. Obama had just been elected or maybe he was about to be elected... I am not very sure.

In between a mash-up cross conversation about current research and medical management of early-onset hypertension and where to get the freshest coffee beans in Buffalo, I was asking (e:Joshua) what he thought were the redeeming qualities of being a Republican and he said, "Fiscal Responsibility". He also gave me quite a run down of all the different ways that the US would not do well under the Democrat-led spendthrift government. He made a special case about how the debt of social security payoffs and public health programmes such as medicare and medicaid would cripple the economy in the near future. He stressed on how important it was for governments to focus on being debt-free as a long-term strategy instead of trying to bail out of trouble short-term and abandon ship after their elected terms were over.

I am not quite sure that I understood all the nitty-gritties of his argument. I remember thinking that he was being rather severe on the Democrats but I do agree that fiscal responsibility has been and will always be a crucial cornerstone to not only the success of governments but also individuals who make up the population that is being governed. I continue to believe that being responsible with our money shapes several aspects of our lives and makes our toughest of choices easier. Looking back, I think that was the core idea that (e:Joshua) was trying to explain to me over breakfast.

(e:Joshua), that was an interesting conversation and it has remained with me since. I didn't always agree with your ardent support of Republican policies across the board and your relentless criticism of a large number of ideas slightly left of centre, but I think we did agree that day over cilantro and mint chutney with crispy rice and raw onions. Hope you are having a swell time, wherever you are now! I always thought you looked awesome smiling (and resembled Major Healey from I dream of Jeannie). :-)