The Long Road Home

It's official. I will finally return to Brooklyn, New York City.

I have a few loose ends (weekly classes, private lessons and Workshops in Minneapolis) to tie up before I start the journey, but as it stands here is the current plan:

Jan 28: Last day in Minneapolis

Jan 29: Fly to Kansas City

Jan 30: Workshops in Lawrence, KS

Feb 2: DJ @ CODA in Kansas City, MO (Tentative)

Feb 3: Amtrak from Kansas City to Chicago

Feb 5: Perform at Milonga ñ Grand Opening, Chicago

Feb 6: DJ @ Los Besos Milonguita, Chicago

Feb 9: Amtrak from Chicago to Portland, OR

Feb 11: Arrive in Portland

Feb 11-16: Portland Valentango!

Feb 17: Fly from Portland to New York LGA

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Details of Weekly Classes in MSP:

Wednesday Classes at Social Dance Studio

* 7:00: Foundations 2/3, Topic: "Rock the Boat"

* 8:15: Intermediate: Topic: Musicality & Connection

Thursday Classes at Manzanita Escuela de Tango

* 7:00: "Essential vocabulary"

* 8:00: "Technique for Everyone"

2010 and Beyond - A resolution

I had long ago discarded the idea of making new years resolutions, though this year it seems that the resolution made itself for me. Yes, that sounds strange, allow me to explain.

In early December I was in saint Louis for the Hot Winter Tango Festival. One of my mentors, Brigitta Winkler, had honored me with the opportunity to assist her in a class that she was teaching. During the class she whispered to me that in her teaching philosophy, always demonstrate or explain things in the positive. Meaning say things like "try to do this" instead of "don't do that". This was something that she had told me about a few years ago and had forgotten about.

This idea was in the back of my head for the rest of December, I would randomly find myself pondering it even when not teaching. It felt sort of persistent in my mind and I accepted that this was going to be my resolution starting this year.

Announcing: Minneapolis Pre-Holiday Argentine Tango Marathon 2009

I am glad to be able to finally annouce this event. A number of us in the Minneapolis Tango have gotten together to create what will sort of be like a holiday party for tango dancers, ie, lots of dancing.

The concept of the event is simple. Every year around the holiday season, tango dancers either travel to visit family or they have family visiting them, and of course these family people do not dance tango. So it is no surprise that they wont let the dancer out. Hearing "I/you didn't come here so you can go dance tango with your friends" is commonplace. The obvious solution is: do whole lot of dancing while you can.

The Marathon will be the third weekend of December (12/17 - 12/20) 2009. It is composed of mostly regularly scheduled milongas and practicas.
I will be teaching two mini-workshops on Saturday afternoon the topics are: "Phrasing for Vals" and "Changes of Directions".

Click Here for the full Schedule, Locations and Pricing

Pizza and Mobsters

Today I had some pizza in Minneapolis, the name of the place was "New York Pizza by the Slice". "by the slice" was something I had to get accustomed to. It seems that most pizza places outside NYC (with the exception of chains /franchises /etc) only sell pizza by the pie, so places that sell by the slice usually have "by the slice" in their name or somewhere in their signage. In New York there are very few places that only sell by the pie and such places will usually have a sign on the door "no slices". (I can only think of one place, Grimaldi's in Brooklyn, that doesn't sell slices.)
So what made this place "New York Pizza"? In one corner of the place there were photos of yankee stadium and other yankess memorabelia. One wall had various pictures of NYC tourist spots like the Statue of Liberty, the Twin Towers, the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, Central Park. On the same wall were two pictures of Italy, one of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the other of a bridge over one of the canals in Venice. Yes, pizza as we know is derived from an Italian food by the same name, but I am not sure it originates from either Pisa or Venice.
One entire wall was devoted to pictures of characters from various mob movies such as "The Godfather", "Goodfellas", "The Sopranos" etc.... Yes, I get that these movies were set in New York, and that the characters are of Italian descent, but I've never seen anyone in a mob movie eat pizza (I have not watched the sopranos), so "what gives?".
New York is not all about pizza either. New York is about every kind of food whenever and wherever you want it. When I was down in Kansas City, Janey said to me "You New Yorkers, every time you leave New York, it seems as though you are afraid you're gonna starve to death!". It's true. In The City, you never have to walk more than 3 blocks at any time of day or night and you can get a fresh bite to eat. We're not talking about chips and pretzels. We're talking hot sandwiches, salads, tacos, gyros, and so on. Everywhere else I've been, eating takes planning, especially if you are at the mercy of public transportation. In some cities it is impossible to eat after 10pm, or if you can you must drive for 25 minutes to some bad chain sort of place.
While New York is not "only about pizza", some places are known for certain things. Kansas City - barbecue. Minnesota - the walleye fish. Wisconsin - beer, cheese and sausage. Wisconsin is a funny place. Drive down any street or highway in the USA and you will see signs at gas stations that say "GAS - BEER - CIGARETTES", in Wisconsin they say "GAS - BEER - CHEESE - CIGARETTES". "Say Cheese :-) "
At the end of the year I will be in Seattle, known for good coffee and its smoked salmon. I'm looking forward to it.

My Adventures getting to/from Denver

There is nothing quite like waking up from your 30 minute nap in a panic that you will miss your flight, coupled with the memory that you haven't yet packed nor do you have any clean clothes. Nothing except for the blast of cold air that hits my face as I run outside after having stuffed an arbitrary amount of dirty clothes in my bag, seeking to catch a bus that departs in 3 minutes. Yup, I've done it again. Stayed up all night, the night before an early morning (10:30am) flight. My destination - Denver for Nick Jones' "Natural Tango Festival".

I arrive in Denver, Nick picks me up at the airport and we go to the house. I throw my clothes in the washing machine. As tired as I was I decided to not take a nap in favor of watching the tango music rehearsal in progress - three bandoneóns and piano!

In general, I had a nice time at the festival, every night at the milongas there was good live music. I met new people, I took some of the classes, hung out with friends and had the opportunity to study a few hours with Nick.

Wednesday. My flight back to Minneapolis was scheduled to depart at 3:10pm. I arrived at the airport at 11am because my ride was dropping of someone who had a 12noon flight. I don't mind - I had plenty of typing to do.
At some point the gate agent announces that they are doing maintenance on the plane so our departure will be delayed. We board an hour late, de-ice, then sit on the runway for a while, and finally take off. I had counted on delays so this was all fine "As long as I get to Minneapolis before the Manzanita class on Thursday".
After flying for about an hour - of and hour and twenty minute flight - the captain announces that there was some kind of mechanical issue "but it is not an emergency" and we will be returning to Denver to get it straightened out. At 7pm we land in in Denver, the captain apologizes for the inconvenience and announces that "we should be glad we made it safely".

Well, this was an adventure! Here are my winnings: A 6:40am flight the Thursday morning, a $9 meal voucher, $100 travel voucher and free one night stay at a local hotel. I spent the meal voucher on a burger with fries and a drink (I had to pay 7 cents out of pocket). When I arrived in the hotel I realized that I have been on the road since July 21 and this was the first time I had privacy, ie, was not living in someones house.
Guess what - I did it again. Rather than going to sleep at a decent hour, knowing that I would have to catch the 4am hotel shuttle to the airport, I stay awake till midnight.

Thursday, 10:30am, I arrive in Minneapolis. A bit tired, but glad to have not gotten snowed in at Denver and be able to teach my class that evening.

You win some, you lose some....

This morning I woke up in Portland, OR (no it was not a surprise) reflecting on my day of travel yesterday. I found that my day was a mixture of little victories and failures, variously ironic comedic, and fateful.

Over the course of the weekend Kyla's ipod had been misplaced, it was discovered after she left Princeton. I was given the ipod to bring to Portland with me so that I could return it to her. After I left Princeton yesterday morning I realized that I had left my jacket behind. Ipod - Victory. Jacket - Failure.

As I mentioned in a previous post I got really cheap tickets EWR to PDX - $115 to be exact. Of course there is a price to pay somewhere. the flight plan involved a 5 hour flight to phoenix a 45 minute layover then a 3 hour flight to PDX. I knew this when I purchased the tickets but I reasoned that if there are more than 4 hours of flying time, the whole day is wasted anyway between getting to the airport etc, I might as well conserve cash and buy the cheapest ticket. Cheap ticket - Victory, Wasted time - Failure. Actually the time wasn't entirely wasted, I did manage to study about 90 Kanji and load them into my digital flashcard program, I hope to study another ~100 today. Japaneses studies - Victory.

If you'll recall my drivers license had expired and created some fun experience mentioned in previous posts. I did get it renewed, but until the real thing comes in the mail I have the temporary - a piece of paper. Instead of being proactive and asking if it was ok like I did last week flying into NY (resulting in a thorough search) I went through security showing the expired picture ID and had no problems. Victory.

Did I mention that I was bringing my viola with me? Probably not, I don't think I have mentioned the viola at all - I will in a subsequent post. The viola is relevant here because as you might know the airlines only allow "one carry on luggage, and one personal item". Yesterday I had my roll-aboard and my backpack as well as the viola, a total of 3 pieces. My victory was that on the first flight (EWR to PHX) I managed to carry everything on. While boarding the second flight (PHX to PDX) the gate agent informed me I would have to check on item. Ultimately the first victory is insignificant because I had to wait at baggage claim for 30 minutes for my checked luggage to appear.

The best for last: Upon exiting the jet-bridge from my first flight (in PHX) I looked around found the nearest Arrival/Departure screen and headed for the gate that said Portland. As Murphy's Law might predict, it was one of the last gates on the A concourse. I leisurely strolled toward Gate A29 and got a bite to eat once nearby. I get to the gate and the screen indicates "gate closed" and had a departure to San Jose listed. Confused I went to an Arrivals/Departures Screen and realized that A29 was an arrival from Portland and that my departure to Portland was out of B9 and was now boarding. Run.... Epic Failure.

You can't have it all.

My study of Japanese

A little bit of background.

My introduction to the Japanese language came through the so called "loan words". These are English words or words of other languages that are used in the Japanese language, but the pronunciation is changed to conform the Japanese phonetic rules. I first learned certain brand names, like McDonald's becomes Ma-ku-do-na-ru-do, Ba-ga-kin-gaa, some foods: Ha-tta-do-gga, ham-ba-gaa, and other random words like su-ppo-tsu-kaa.
I was intrigued by how the pronunciation of these familiar words were so drastically changed to "Japanify" them. Soon thereafter I bought a book called "Japanese for fun" it was a phrasebook written in "Romanji". As I went through the book I encountered phrases that are very similar in English but completely different in Japanese. I assumed this was due to grammar rules and immediately purchased a grammar book. Bad move, it is completely overwhelming. Though I saw that studying the language was going to be and ever greater challenge than I ever had imagined, I was hooked enough to keep at it. I decided to look around online for peoples experiences to see how they had learned Japanese. I ran across a website www.alljapaneseallthetime.com I like his method, though I am not applying it as extremely as he prescribes. I decided to learn the Japanese writing systems first.

Here are the books that I am working through:
Lets Learn Hiragana by Yasuko Kosaka
Lets Learn Katakana by Yasuko Kosaka
Remembering the Kanji by James Heisig

There is plenty debate about which of the kana to learn first (hiragana or katakana), I went with hiragana.
Also, there are many Kanji books out there, had purchased two in an effort to get started, one listed every possible reading and meaning of the 2045 Joyou Kanji and was way too much to tackle, the second was written by Japanese authors, had an On readings in Katakana, a Kun reading in Hiraga, a basic meaning and example sentences written in hiragana with kanji already covered, the book only introduced 300 kanji, but is not useful to me at this point because it assumes a level conversational japanese (to understand the example sentences). When choosing how to tackle the Kanji I think it is important for the learner to first understand that people learn things in very different ways and it is important to know what works for you and what doesnt. I found that "Remebering the Kanji" is a book that presents things in a way that works with my way of learning things. I highly recommend reading at least the introduction (the intro and the entire first third of the book are available online in a pdf as a free sample).
If only I had the discipline to actually do the work...