Dance like no one's watching

Am typing this while on the Amtrak train from Philly to NYC. It was a great visit to Philly. Loved the visit to the Masonic temple and the Eastern State Penitentiary. Lovely city and I can’t wait to share my photos when I get back.

One thing I observed was that the vagrants in NYC tend to be Blacks but in Philly, most vagrants were Whites. I’m assuming Philly, which was one of the first cities to abolish slavery, had something to do with it. Maybe having more free Blacks historically also meant more who were hardworking and keen to earn their own keep. But I’m not sure. This is purely my conjecture.

Anyway, here’s wishing the Malay community Selamat Hari Raya and HAPPY NATIONAL DAY SINGAPORE!

Wanted to use my laptop to check my credit card statements and Windows wouldn’t load after I keyed in the password!  Tried a few times, rebooted, used face recognition to log-in but everything failed!  The error message was:

User Profile Service Failed The Login

Yikes!  No idea what that was.  Win 7 has been pretty stable and my Lenovo laptop hasn’t given me much problems to date.  My husband said his colleague had this error previously and the laptop was taken to IT – and could be fixed.

So I did as he suggested – turned to the almighty Google.  Found a very useful site (https://kb.wisc.edu/helpdesk/page.php?id=15318) to resolve this error:

1. Boot into safe mode
2. Click on the start button, and type “regedit” into the search bar.
3. Hit enter to open regedit.
4. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList
5. You’ll see two “S-1-5….” folders with long names. One of them will end in “.bak”
6. Rename the one that does not end in “.bak” to “(long string of numbers).bad” or “.old”
7. Remove the “.bak” from the other one.
   • With this folder selected, double click RefCount and type 0 and then click OK.
   • With this folder selected, double click State and type 0 and then click OK.
8. Reboot the machine, and it should be fixed.

It worked.  Phew!

I may not be in IT but I can solve my own IT problems.  Yay!  Heehee.

Finally got down to sorting out my Shanghai photos. A lot of which turned out to be historical buildings. Haha. Can’t help it. I like old buildings. This was my 2nd trip to Shanghai though the 1st didn’t really count because I saw nothing apart from the airport, my hotel & my Shanghai office. Hence, when I was tasked to go Shanghai again, I decided to fly in 2 days earlier to do a bit of exploring.

It’s quite easy to get around Shanghai thanks to the cheap taxis (avoid the dark and bright red cabs – at least that’s what I was warned and I adhered to it) and vast metro network. The residents are also a lot more civilised than other Chinese cities – I could really see why Shanghai is considered “tier 1”. Food wise… nothing great actually. I got to try some traditional Shanghai dishes – only liked the rice cake in black sauce gravy, the xiaolongbao and the guotie.

One thing I observed was that the PRCs are very hardworking and will persist in their attempts to earn money. For example, the taxi touts I met at the airport who tried sooooo hard to convince me to go to the 3rd floor when the real taxi stand is on the ground level. In fact, majority of the tourists were convinced and went up to level 3. When I insisted on taking the escalator to the ground level, they followed me all the way and tried non-stop to convince me that I was headed the wrong direction.

From a S’porean point of view, if I were the tout, I would have given up once the person takes the escalator down to the ground level. And that’s the difference – the more comfortable your life is, the less persistent you are. It’s probably good to learn this “never say die” attitude from them. I think the first generation of S’poreans who came from China probably had this mentality too. But it’s been lost as we become more and more a nanny state, expecting the government to do everything for us. I’m quite ashamed.

Here’re some pics I took from the touristy places I went.

SSAW Hotel near Yuyuan station – great value for money! Love the room!

Quaint building at French Concession area. 

The famous shady trees everyone talks about when they mention the French Concession area 

Soong Ching Ling’s former residence. 

Dining room 

Dr Sun Yat Sen’s photo 

Kitchen 

Living room 

Front of Soong Ching Ling’s residence 

Soong Ching Ling’s cars 

The Bund 

Customs House 

HSBC Building 

Narrow streets of Tianzifang 

Yuyuan – a famous classical garden located in Anren Jie, Shanghai. It was finished in 1577 by a government officer of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) named Pan Yunduan. 

Yuyuan – a famous classical garden located in Anren Jie, Shanghai. It was finished in 1577 by a government officer of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) named Pan Yunduan. 

Qibao Ancient Town

Fu Lu Shou sculpture at Xintiandi 

Shikumen building – Chinese and Western style house hybrid of the early 20th century particular to Shanghai. Developed in the early 1900s to meet the housing demands of booming old Shanghai, they are urban Western adaptations of traditional Chinese courtyards.

Wouldn’t mind returning to Shanghai for another holiday!  Too many places left unexplored!

The Asian WCS Open, aka Swingvitation has come and gone. Great fun. I took the choreo class by world champs Jordan and Tatiana and we performed the routine on the Saturday night of Swingvitation. It was really challenging and my takeaway from it is, in performing any choreo, it’s vital to have the right partner.

I also took part in the Jack & Jill. Newcomer category so no points awarded the world swing dance council. Came in third, which was more than what I expected so that’s really happy news.

Here’s a pic of the partner, Matthew, I drew in the finals.

I’ll still be continuing lessons at Mosaic. Hopefully, I’ll be good enough for novice level next year. 🙂

Took part in my first Jack & Jill on Sun (7 Apr 2013) at China One’s Viva La Fiesta event!  Well, it was just for fun, no WSDC points awarded but was a good experience.  I was in Heat 1.  First partner was Daelus, then Philbert and last partner was Paul.  All cool.

The whole event did make me acutely aware that I need to be less gan cheong and hold my count for fast songs, even if the guy tugs me forward.  Gotta roll roll roll that foot into the floor.

Here’re some pics captured by China One.  (Daelus is no. 211 and Philbert’s on his left).

Although we rotated partners randomly based on numbers chose by the audience, I ended up partnering 3 guys who were standing next to one another when we started off the line up.

Paul and me!

Group shot of all competitors

Pity I didn’t get any pics with Daelus or Philbert.  Someone from the dance studio did take a video but I need to see how I can get hold of it.  Heh.

As for results?  Er, none.  Hahahahaha.  Now onto the next J&J at Swingvitation 2013!

There’s been talk in WCS recently about the merits of having “leveled workshops” at WCS events (i.e. having workshops that are marked out for different levels such as beginner/ intermediate/ advance, and the merits of going to the extent of having to audition before you can take the workshop).

I think some form of “leveling” is definitely necessary.  As it is, I am irritated when I go for an intermediate class and some guy turns up and doesn’t even know the basics like how to anchor!  It’s a waste of my time in class whenever I am rotated to that guy and I think I will be equally annoyed if I were to attend a workshop and the same happens.

That said, I can understand that from a commercial perspective, if all workshops need auditions, you may scare away students and that would make your event not viable (from an revenue generation point of view).  Perhaps the balance would be to have workshops marked with different levels and implementing auditions for the most advance workshops only.

From my personal rookie point of view, that way, I know that if I flunk an audition and hence could not take the advance workshop, everyone else who doesn’t qualify would flunk with me.  Not like the L4 class now (L4 being the highest level at the studio where I’m  learning from)… out of respect for the system and the teacher, I do not participate in the main class because I’m not of the required standard yet.  I stand in a corner and observe the class and practise the moves with a classmate who also goes to observe the class (so we won’t slow the class down).  However, when I look at the main group in the class, I realise half of them shouldn’t be there too.

真金不怕火炼！

Tired.  Was playing the silly game Plants vs. Zombies on my iPad till close to 3am last night.  Was super tired but couldn’t sleep after that!  Brain must have still been thinking about how to crush them zombies.  Hahaha.

It was a real chore waking up and staying awake during a presentation on claims that I had to attend this morning.  Now I’m super unmotivated at work.  Setting myself hourly goals so that I can finish my tasks quickly.  (Well, I’m 20min ahead on my current goal hence I can blog!)

Last Friday was a good WCS day.  Had a productive time at social as I was able to follow well (not well as in “good” but well as in to the best of my current abilities).  Dance is a process of time.  Not only must you get the timing right, you also need time to improve.  Sometimes, when I look around the dance floor, I feel that I am lousier than some of the girls only because they have been dancing WCS for the past 1-2 years whereas I only started this year.  I thus wanted to quickly catch up with them… and that means squeezing what took them many months to achieve into the 2 months that I’ve been doing WCS.

Then I read what one of the instructors posted in the group chat I am in:

“People… you will get there when you get there. Don’t be too preoccupied that you’re not progressing as quickly as you’d like or as fast as X or Y.

While I can understand the natural inclination to improve as fast as possible, I think the best part of it all is always the journey. How much fulfillment would you get if I told you you could progress to All-Star tomorrow just by eating some magic chicken rice or something… vs someone who has to work through the hours refining his/her craft, struggling but persisting to get better to where he is/was at that point in time.”

And I agree.  While my competitive nature means I will never be satisfied with where I’m at, I am also acutely reminded that I need to allow enough time for getting better.  Most importantly, I must enjoy the process.  Instead of applying everything that was taught in class on the dance floor, I am now going by the rule, “if you don’t feel it, don’t use it”.  I’m sure I will eventually get the moves that elude me – at a later stage.

I was very heartened last Fri when one of the more advanced leads asked me if I have other dance background because I have improved very fast (yeah, the poor chap danced with me at my very first WCS social after having attended only 2 lessons.  Lol.  2 months compared to 2 lessons would definitely have been a big contrast).  I also asked another friend for feedback since I have not danced with him for 2 weeks and he said he was pleasantly surprised because there was a marked difference from before he went on holiday.  In his words, I am the most improved rookie recently and am now better than some who have been dancing for almost a year.  That was gratifying because I am a rookie.  No pressure on me to compete with the better girls!

And I believe I will catch up.  Someday.

Didn’t take any leave for CNY this year cos there’s no one to cover for me for my main bank account. The thing about this bank is that some of the deals can be closed within 1-2 hours. So it’s quite important that there’s always someone on standby to quickly ring underwriters for terms & put a policy together. Unfortunately, the new person who was supposed to be my backup on this account only started work on 14 Feb so I didn’t feel comfortable taking leave.

Good thing is, my new colleague has started work so once he gets settled into this account (in addition to technical knowledge, client management is crucial, in my opinion), I will be able to take leave. Yay!

The bad news is, my new colleage is only working with me on 2 accounts. On all other accounts, Foxconn has been assigned to back me up and that totally sucks. Not only do I find her lacking common sense, she has absolutely zero initiative and expects to be spoon fed all the time. Really irritates the crap out of me. Not to mention her English is terrible! After a year in the company, she has as much insurance knowledge as the department secretary. Argh! Such a pain in the ass.

I haven’t decided how I intend to allocate work to her but it looks to me that Foxconn will remain an overpaid admin stuff (and even doing admin, she sucks. Super careless!)

Sigh.

My office “forces” us to use the same screensaver for branding consistency.  But the screensaver is this huge white background (covering almost the entire screen) and our company logo in the middle.  I really don’t think a huge patch of white is energy nor screen saving!

I truly believe that in dancing (and as Iceman pointed out in sports too), practice makes permanent. So if u don’t nail your basics, u’re permanently screwed.