My Blue Heaven

International Dancers Workshop Take 3

*sigh* Exhausted, sore and happy.. I had the best weekend. The International Dancers Workshop was abso-friggin-lutely AWESOME! 😀 All up – 11 classes, 11 hours, over 2 days. Plus I went out on Sunday night to Cave nightclub with a bunch of dancers from the workshop, after which we went to Pancakes at the Rocks for some much needed chow. Ended up getting home, bone weary, at about 4:30am. (Yes of course I’d taken today off work. I knew what to expect!) Suprisingly, I’m not actually as sore today as I’d expected. Definitely not as sore as last time. Maybe I’m more fit now than I was then. 🙂

A quick review – I liked Roger Lee’s classes the most. His choreography is awesome, and his classes are fun.. he’s quite a funny guy too! The routines were quite difficult and fast. Very exhausting, being pushed to your limit… but nailing it is the best feeling! One routine that stood out in particular was to this song “Don’t Cha” by Tori Alamaze (I never heard of her before, but apparently she was the backing vocalist for Outkast “Hey Ya”). Anyway, this dance was hot hot HOT! The hottest dance I’ve ever learnt. And we all LOVED it! 🙂 (I scoured the net today trying to find the song. Heh). We also did a beginners routine to Ciaras “1, 2 Step” which was great, though more like intermediate level! It was really fast!! I don’t know how a beginner would have coped with it.

So in summary, my fave routines were Roger’s sat morning intermediate class, sun morning beginners, and sun morning advanced. All Roger’s classes yeh… hehe told ya I liked his stuff! The other teacher, Peanut (thats her stage name), was good too. But for some reason I didn’t find her classes as fun. She focused too much on detail (you can’t afford to get that caught up on detail when you only have an hour), and she was too serious – bordering on moody at times – she had this attitude thing going. But still.. she had some pretty cool choreography. And some really wierd moves! We even did an african style routine with her – the music was wierd.. the timing was way out (some african style music).. I couldn’t pick the beat at all! So she told us we needed to ignore the music and dance to the counts in our head.

Anyway, oops this turned into a longer review than expected. I’m off to bed now – gonna watch an episode of Stargate (season 4) on my laptop (in bed :D) and then get some much need zzzzzz’s.

Current listening :: “1, 2 Step” – Ciara Ft Missy Elliot

Gone!

So.. more about the Switchfoot gig on Tues night. It was pretty awesome! Not so much awesome in terms of the band’s live performance, though it was quite good (but I’ve seen better – still, Jon Foreman is quite a good live performer, and works well with the crowd). But awesome just in terms of the atmosphere and enthusiasm and fun to be had by all. Even with everyone shoving and pushing, and getting majorly crushed during the night. Like sardines in a can. And then put that can in a sauna. I was absolutely totally soaked in sweat by the end of the night. You could prob wring out a cup of sweat from my clothing. Ew. :\

But I had a great spot (which I am proud to say, I managed to maintain the whole night!) – right at the front, one person from the barrier! I took quite a few pics on my phone – which I’ve uploaded to my moblog.

It was great being there, getting into it, surrounded by everyone singing along with the songs. Gigs are so much more fun when you really know every song they play. They even performed one or two from “A Walk To Remember” (or rather, their earlier albums) – like “Learning To Breathe”.. (though they didn’t do “Only Hope”). And Jon had some cool antics too – like getting up on the crowd barrier… he stood right above me at one point.. I could even touch his jeans. Hahah. I felt like such a teeny bopper fan. ^_^

So anyway, a shout out to the blue singlet crew. 😛 Thanks for letting me jump the queue with you guys. It was nice to meet Joe and his friends Colin, Marty, Dunc and Yimmy for the first time IRL. *waves hello* Catch ya’s on the blogosphere. 😉

Self-Inflicted Stupidity and A Really Really Dumb Blonde Moment

*yawn* Am sooo tired again today. Totally self-inflicted of course. A repeat of Monday night’s stupidity – in bed at midnight, ready to go to sleep. And what do I do? I pull out my laptop, pop in a dvd to just “check it out”… and end up watching the entire movie, getting to sleep at 2am, when I KNOW I have to get up in about 5 hours time. Why am I so dumb?

To add to this, I had a really really dumb blonde moment last night. *blushes* I’m almost too embarrassed to share this with the www.. but what the heck. I was trying to connect my laptop to my pc via ethernet connection.. so I plug in the cables to both ethernet slots.. and I’m like, hmm.. its not even recognising the cable or connection. Why?! So I get my dad to have a look, and turns out I was using a telephone/modem cable instead of a cat 5 ethernet cable!! :\ I think that wins the prize for the Most Dumb Blonde Moment of the year. *hides under a rock*

Current listening :: “This Is Your Life” – Switchfoot (I really like this song… for some reason it really speaks to me. Like my other fave from this album – “Twenty Four”)

*YAWN*

Ok. Brain has finally kicked into gear, and I am actually awake enough to concentrate in this training course. Gee… that took only 4 hours (after getting up).

I am sooooo soooo tired today. Getting up at 7am does not agree with me. Esp after a hard night at the Switchfoot gig last night (more about this later – but it rawked!) All I can say for the moment is 2 words: sardines and sweat. :\

Ok back to completing this lab exercise……. hmm procedural techniques in XSLT… fun fun fun..

Current listening :: “Gone” – Switchfoot (How good was this closing number last night! “GONE!” :D)

Hello from Aspect

I’m currently in my “Exchanging and Transforming Data Using XML and XSLT” Microsoft training course (at Aspect Education, Nth Sydney). Just finished a lab exercise early, so am taking advantage of the internet connection here.. hehe.. gotta love having a net connection on your computer at training. 😉 This course is pretty alright – for the techie-minded, I’m learning stuff about XML, navigating nodes using xpath location statements & functions/expressions, and XSLT stylesheets… so far. 🙂

Went on a bit of a CD shopping spree yesterday after class. Bought myself 3 cds and a single!! Including the new Jack Johnson “In Between Dreams” (limited edition with DVD extras), the new Jennifer Lopez “Rebirth”, the new Michael Buble “It’s Time” and the Ciara single “1, 2 Step”. 😀 Yay… lots of new music to enjoy! My review so far:

• Am really loving “In Between Dreams”…. I like the new songs, in his usual cruisy laidback feel-good style. I think my faves so far are his more upbeat numbers “Never Know” and “Good People”.
• The new Michael Buble is alright too – I really like his rendition of “Dream A Little Dream”. Love that song! So romantic… *sigh*
• J.Lo is ok. I bought it coz I really like the single “Get Right”. Such a great song to dance/club to. 🙂 The other stuff is ok…. don’t really like her ballads though. They’re a tad on the cheesy/cliched side.
• Love “1,2 Step” by Ciara & Missy… mostly coz of Laura’s hiphop class. Hee. We did an awesome routine to the song. 😀 Now whenever they play this at a club, my friend and I dance the routine… usually on a stage.. hee!

Oh yeh, and I also bought the new Doves “Some Cities” cd last week. Not bad either. They seem to have moved away from the whole piano sound (think “Sea Song” from Lost Souls)… and concentrate on more guitar oriented songs (as they did in The Last Broadcast). But I think this one is a bit more mainstream sounding? Not sure… will have to listen to it more…

Anyway, better finish up.. I think he’s gonna continue teaching again soon.. or is it lunchtime now..?

Current listening :: “Good People” – Jack Johnson

The proud new owner of..

A Toshiba Satellite M30 (R00) laptop! Yeah baybeeeee!!! 😀

I’m quite happy with my new baby. Been enjoying it’s beautiful large 15.4″ widescreen display. It’s so clear and bright! Great for watching dvd’s. And for such a big screen, it’s not actually that heavy. Bit bulkier than your average “thin & light” laptop, but still fairly slim and only 2.8 kgs. And with a Pentium M 1.8GHz, 512mb ram, 60Gb hdd, Geforce fx 5200 graphics with 64mb ram…. Very happy I am. 🙂

Weekend Update

Anyway, I had myself a rather nice weekend. Friday night went to an awesome advanced jazz/funk/hiphop class at SDC. Juliette Verne taught, and she is a great teacher! Love her chore. 🙂 After the class, I met up with some friends who were gaming at City Hunter (on sussex st), and joined them for a few hours of Unreal Tournament and Counter Strike. Hee. Unleash the nerd within! 😎

On Sat, went to Coogee beach with some friends who were playing in the beach volleyball comp. (I really need to maximise on beach time now while I can – while summer lasts, and while I’m still in Australia! *sniff*) Then picked up my laptop from Harvey Norman in the city afterwards.

Sat nite I went for dinner and movie with a mate – we watched Constantine.. which was so-so. Cool effects, mediocre storyline and really really dodgy theology. I mean, come on. They could have at least tried to make the theology even slightly accurate. Ah well. Got home and stayed up late playing with the laptop 😀 and then slept in today till about 1pm. Chilled at home most of today, went to church, had dinner, came home. And now I really need to get to bed!

Got an early start tomorrow. I’m gonna be on a training course for the whole of next week – on XML/XSLT. That’s 5 days, work paid for, Microsoft XML training course. Hehe. Hopefully I’ll have internet connection on my computer there, so might be able to post occasionally. 😉

Anyways, nitey nite all!

Current listening :: “Come Away With Me” – Norah Jones