I dance a lot

I moved a lot between 1988 and 2001. The longest I was in any one place was about 2 years, and the shortest were summer apartments during college. Because of that, I remember the year something happened by where I was living and the season. For example, I read the Science article on sequencing Saccharomyces cerevisiae in early spring when I lived in the apartment with Ken. That puts it as 1996 or 1997, and PubMed says it was February 1997. (I might have read it a month or two after it came out, but not much longer as I moved to California about then.)

These days I remember days by what dancing I did and where I did it. Friday evening I went to Club Cosmopolitan for tango. I had gone once before, last December, and danced with Ingela. The place is an art gallery. The atmosphere is a bit off-putting. It felt like I needed to be prim, proper, and precise in my style. I tend more toward the dramatic. The mood reflects the viewpoint of the owners who, for example, prefer people be dressed well and not in jeans. At one of Luren's milongas in Santa Fe I went in jeans, button down shirt and leather vest. The combination worked well, but then it was Santa Fe.

Saturday I could have gone to a salsa workshop near Liseberg but I decided against it. Instead I called up a friend of mine in China and talked for a bit (Vonage is great), caught up on various bits of reading, and did some work. Starting to get back into DAS development work. The problem I have is I don't have an end-user handy. I work best when I'm working with people who will use what I develop. Otherwise I have a combination of analysis lock (trying to figure out which approach to use, when there's no good way to judge appropriateness) and apathy (why work on this when no one needs it?).

Walked around a bit in the afternoon. Military jets were flying around in formation. I wandered down to the harbor, which seemed to be where they were circling. There was some event in the free harbor, with stands set up and large video displays of two teams racing each other to put togther a stretcher. There were small navy boats on the river. Looked like some military event, or perhaps a Red Cross event. I did read "försvarsmaktendag" on a sign. Let me see. för = for, svars = responsible, makt = power, en = definitive form, dag = day. "The responsible power day"? I'll just go with "the Swedish equivalent of Armed Forces Day" until I talk with a Swede.

Sunday was more tango. There's a festival called Glada Göteborg (Happy Gothenburg) organized by a culture society. They want people to learn more about the culture in the city. "Together with more than 250 organisations. "Happy Gothenburg" will be carried out by approximately 4000 participants - musicians, singers, dancers, gymnast, jazz and Rockgroups etc - from all over the town of Gothenburg." They asked El Abrazo (one of the local tango orgnanizers) to get some people together and dance on a temporary stage just off the Avenue, between Stora Teatern and the botantical garden. (Hmm. Which places should I translate into English.)

In the evening many of us headed over to Röda Sten for more tango dancing on the small wharf in front of the building. Nearly everyone had bikes to get there, or a car. It's not quite 10 minutes from the nearest tram stop, which itself it 18 minutes from the Avenue. I should get a bit when I'm back here this fall.

Today was salsa at Liseberg. Didn't dance with that many people. One was Irina, who I know from tango. Because she knows both dances we danced a combination of salsa and tango, which is quite fun. There aren't many people who can follow multiple dances and switch between them during the same song. The most I've done is dance swing, tango and salsa to the same song, which even fewer can follow.

I continue to see people I met during my last visit. There was Johanna from tango and Ulrika from salsa. Ulrika says there's a salsa event in Halmstad in a couple of weeks. That's where she lives. B will be teaching the intermediate course there with Wyn. Johan will teach the intro course. Both will teach cuban style. Lars-Olof will teach line style.

I see this blog is on planet.python.org. I'm surprised. I have a technical writings blog which is much more relevant. Here I'll mostly be babbling on about dancing and people, meant mostly for dancing friends and family.