A 5000 years loving embrace

A rather tragic acronym: Thailand Open Source Software Festival

Well, they certainly do need a bath after the competition.

I was on the train to work this morning, lightly tapping my feet to the dance routine I just learned and wearing a big smile on my face as I remembered the funny music we danced to. At the next stop, a few people got on, which distracted me a little and I used that moment to do a people-watch: a brief scan of the carriage. I noticed something really strange about nearly everyone sitting around me and it took me a few glances to realise what it was:

• They were all dressed professionally, on their way to work.
• They all had expressionless faces, with lazy, emotionless eyes which would try to avoid contact with everyone else's.
• Nobody was smiling; some looked like they were sitting on a barge pole.
• They all had their iPods on with the cheap wanky white earbuds.

Sitting right in front of me was 3 brunette women of that exact description and similar build, who were all looking to their left. For a moment there, I thought I was in a scene in The Matrix. It kinda freaked me out!
In hindsight, I think I was the weirdo who was smiling on the train to work on a rainy cloudy morning. Ah well, can't help enjoying life.

A pretty face and nice cans just ain't enough. You gotta look at the full package.

"Click me, click me now..."

I had last Friday off - a long weekend for me - so I went to a number of Swing social dances: the usual Thursday night at the CBD disco and two new places that I haven't been before: Fun Pit and Jazz Jam.

Fun Pit

The Fun Pit dance floor is twice as big as the CBD, with mirrors on one side, so it looks a lot bigger and you can see better, including your fine self swinging in the mirror. There's no bar though so you need to bring your own drinks or go to the nearby 7-11. The instructors there (Brad and Jennifer) are the straightforward Swing type (versus Tim & Nicole @ the CBD who are the Funk-Swing type) and it's quite easy to follow them. Level 2 starts with a free dance instead of the usual swingout-basic-circle warm-up. The class setup is: Level 2 -> Level 1 -> Social Dance, so there are a lot of Level 1 dancers staying for the social dance. I danced with a whole lot of new follows and learnt a few new moves from the advanced dancers from observing them then tried them out later. It was the first time I could learn some moves on the fly.

Jazz Jam

Jazz Jam is purely a social dance ($14 entry inc. a half an hour fun lesson - cool moves, not the basic) with a live band in a very jazzy looking restaurant. Great environment and I reckon the live band makes you dance better. They kind of lead couples with how they play the music. It gives you some extra springs in your steps and courage to humiliate yourself in front of the crowd by trying out that cool move you've been day-dreaming about. :-D Best to dance in full view of the musicians as they will likely play and select the next songs to your mood and liking. The hardest part is that occasionally they break away from the actual song and play something really funky and you're meant to get out of your current move for a bit and, well, do something funny or funky, while preparing yourself to get back into the previous rhythm (very easy to lose control of the beats). There were also a few cool routines from Brat Pack: the same ones they did at Meet The Scene plus the Big Apple, which will be taught at the Solo Jazz workshop.

Half of the crowd at both places are the same ones I see at the CBD and the Fun Pit. I've danced with most of the rest, including a few Brats from Brat Pack. They are damn good (captain obvious!) and will inspire you to develop your own dance expressions.

Short version: :-(

Long version: we played well, especially in the second half, but hit the post way too many times while our opponents converted every single chance they had.

Longer version: can't be fucked. Too disappointed. :-( Nah not really.

Next season starts next week, yay! The company that runs this league is good at making money and loves doing it, so we don't get any season break. Two of our main players will be gone in August so we need to get on the "transfer market" asap.

I participated in my first Run To The G on Sunday June 17 in the 10km event. It was a surprisingly beautiful day amid a series of very cold and wet days, otherwise I think I'd struggle a bit to get out of bed for the run! There were over 15 thousand runners from all over Australia and also some internationals crowding Federation Square to prepare for the start. One of the most memorable sights for me was some fathers running in the race while pushing their babies' prams. They were damn fast too!

The first 2km was easy and fun as I raced pass a lot more people than I had ever run with! The next 3km was quite tough as my feet were adapting to the harder surface outdoor, since I'd only been running indoor after Boot Camp finished in early March. They got much better in the last half of the race and my speed slowly picked up towards the end, when I went for the last 500m sprint. I did exactly what I hoped to achieve before the race and better than what I thought I could do during the race. My result was just over 50 mins for the 10km run. I hope to get it down to 45 mins next year.

Unfortunately, my personal journalist aka my old man visiting from overseas jumped up and cheered me instead of taking the bloody photos, so that effort was kinda wasted! I'm still grilling him for it, especially since he did manage to take a lot of photos of female runners with bouncing tits (nah he didn't). I still have a slim chance to get my photos from sportingimages.com.au, if I'm lucky.

We played the only semi-final of this season, as the other one didn't happen due to a team pulling out because of the lack of players. We were in front for the whole game with some slick passing and really good team goals. I got one of those and it's the best one I've scored for the team. Thomas sent a long ball from our end to Stef at the left corner, who immediately lifted the ball to the right corner for me to volley home with my left foot. The ball was kept in the air through the whole move. 8-)

The opponents were the dirtiest little bastards we've played against. They resorted to tripping or kicking us even when the ball was nowhere near, while acting as if they were being severely fouled whenever they got a perfectly legitimate shoulder-to-shoulder push. They lost 11-5. Ha-ha! Take that, bitches.

I just started doing tap dancing with Tap Patrol, which is a part of Swing Patrol. At first I signed up for the Beginners Level 1 class but they didn't have enough people and gave me 3 options: a refund, to wait until next semester or to switch to Beginners Level 2. Without a second thought, I picked the last one. :-D

It is easily the hardest style I've ever tried. The number of basic moves is quite high compared to other dances I've done and it didn't help that I started with Beginners Level 2 where things go at 5 times the speed of Beginners Level 1. I was wearing my runners to the first class because of the timetable change (Beginners 1 -> 2) which made it even worse. After that, I had to go buy a pair of proper tap shoes asap. It was much easier with that pair as there's enough weight on it to perform the moves. It's very slippery though and I'm still not quite used to balancing on it yet.

Lesson 2 went much better. I started to "get" it. The hardest part of tap dancing for beginners is that every wrong move you make is amplified by the sound coming from the shoes, so there's no hiding! On the bright side, you have one additional way to learn the moves: through sound, beside obviously the visual one. We started with some basic warm-up moves then went on to learn the routine that Tap Patrol troupe did at Meet The Scene, the one that made me so excited that I signed up for the class.

I believe tap dancing will help my footwork in other dances a lot (other than providing me with more solo moves in my repertoire).

• Very clear distinctions between basic moves: step, heel, dig, stomp, brush, slap etc. If you screw up, you'll hear it!
• The importance of weight changes and relaxed upper body. I knew that from other dances (and Wing Chun) but in this one, if you don't do them properly, the execution of the moves will look - and sound - a lot worse, or very very hard to do well.
• Keeping the tempo. Another thing that beginners always screw up (understandably) in every dance, but in this one, you'll hear it (again!) and it will sound horrible together with the music.

Now I can do some of the basic moves with normal shoes and even slippers! :-) I'm incorporating some into my Lindy Hop 8-beat routines and will test them out at the next social dance.