The Pictures-from-last-night’s Adventure

Posted on by taniacreations

So I decided to write about the Sydney Salsa Congress and the Sydney Latino Festival all over my blogs. Got a new notebook, a new pen, printed my new business cards and forgot my camera on top of the table at home.
I’m not a photographer so I just wanted to have the human interest side of the experience, give my blogs colour and life. Quickly I found a solution: called my sister and asked her to bring her camera as we were going together to the shows.
Perfect! I took good pictures, lots of people in them, interesting details and all.
Went home and before going to sleep, (already more than 1am, even having to wake up at six) I had to get the pictures to my USB so I could publish them today…

Sydney Salsa Congress 2009

First I found out the card was not the one I have an entrance in my computer for. I got to all my boxes of cables to find the one from my camera, one hand cable searching. I was glad it fit. Also the camera didn’t want to connect and then the problem was the driver was not installed. I didn’t want to go after downloading and installing something last night so I gave up. But not in my mind… kept trying to find a solution.
Before going to bed I got one: take the cable with you to work and try to do it tomorrow.
This morning I realised it wasn’t going to work, I cannot download files at work and I would need it to make it work.
So I thought: great ! I will be arriving in the city early because I’m getting a lift with my friend, I’ll go to one of these photo kiosks and ask for their help.
No luck. They were all closed before 7.30am…
My sister was probably sleeping and there wasn’t time to go to her anyway.
I got to work and still gave it a try with no success.
I will have to publish all my posts with pictures with funny titles: soon to be a picture of Don & Rae, or soon to be a picture of the Twins, or……
I cannot believe, I keep looking at the camera trying to download the pictures with my brain power without success.
It’s so close and so far!!!

(Orble Votes: 62)

“Don’t Dis my Ability” – “Disabled” people are Super-Humans!

Posted on by taniacreations

How many times have you heard: ‘don’t complain, there are lots of people worse than you.’

I hate this phrase because it can make people not try for better things or a better life. But I have to agree that not being able to use my left arm for a few days (I’m a rightie) is a ridiculously small problem.

I feel like an idiot because things that were so easy and quick are turned into a drama. Fixing my long hair for example, I look like a mess with a tiara but it’s the only thing I manage to put on. Even though, I put it right inside my eye once…

I’m eating on paper dishes, just so I don’t have to clean them; and I got really envious of my sister just by seeing her wash a knife with both hands.

I’m in a constant state of alert, looking everyone around so they don’t accidentally strike my arm; children specially; and people not holding themselves firmply on the bus.

I’m avoiding crowds and I cross the street if I see a drunk coming in my direction.

Because of all that, and a few days into sporting a fractured arm, I got to the conclusion that people “worse” than I am, are actually much better.

Someone that manages to live with one arm, is actually a super-human as you can say this person has an “extra-human” ability, wouldn’t you say so?

Now I really got what that amazingly intelligent advertisement campaign was saying… even calling it a “disability” is inexact.

Whatever a person has to compensate for, it means he or she has something more than the rest of us. This is coming from someone who is typing ridiculously slowly with their dominant hand and feeling the meaning of this on her skin.

Read later today the story about this amazing guy dancing at the Sydney Salsa Congress last night… super-human for sure! (See: Super Human Salsa Dancer Don & Rae)

(Orble Votes: 54)

The Sydney Latino Festival Starts Tonight

Posted on by taniacreations

It is starting tonight and it is part of one of the best Latin Dance Congresses in the world! It is a series of performances with dance parties, it’s something like I’ve never seen.
Imagine the State Sport Centre at the Olympic park filled with 5000 latin dancers on the floor. It’s a passion and an energy that I felt really privileged to be part of.
Every night there is a series of shows with the best latin dancers in the world then a huge party where everyone can dance. There is even a workshop for the beginners to learn a few moves and join the party.
For the already dancers you can join the whole thing including lots of workshops during three full days and the shows and parties at night. Salsa, Samba, Zouk, Bachata, Cha-Cha, Afro Cuban, Reggaeton, Gafieira, it’s all there, each a different style.
If you go and see a bunch of angels performing that is exactly where I was going to be, right in front, in the middle.
I have a fractured bone so won’t be dancing this time. This year I’m the official writer.
My poor dance partner will end up dancing with one of the best in the world, my teacher Dani de Francesco. I told him that if he is the least bit happy with my accident I will kick his butt! Poor guy, such a difficult position, on one hand his partner is injured crying her eyes out (that’s me), on the other the amazing Dani is dancing with him (she is beautiful and a great dancer), and last but not least, Tony Lara, her partner is performing and watching with orders from me (the said sad dance partner) to kick him if he even smiles… He can always say “but we are supposed to smile when we are on stage”! I would say: Yeah! NOT YOU!!! He he he
Just kidding partner, have fun for me!

(Orble Votes: 44)

There is Life Outside Dancing

Posted on by taniacreations

– Don’t move that arm.
When the x-ray guy said that my mind went: “Houston, we have a problem!”
I fell off a horse at the beginning of the year and injured my arm. It was getting better everyday but then, it stopped improving so I went to see a doctor.
X-ray done: it is fractured; had been for 15 days. Waiting for the specialist in the waiting room I had tears rolling down my cheeks while I was thinking “my salsa congress! My performance!”
I’m a dancer. Any doctor will tell you the worst patients in the whole wide world are in this order:
1) Doctors, they do not admit they are sick;
2) Dancers, they know they are sick but will not miss the rehearsals, “give me something fast I have to heal in the next hour” attitude, and they always have bulimia or anorexia in different degrees;
3) Sportists, same as dancers but not necessarily bulimic or anorexic.
The doctors at the emergency room were looking at me as if I was a freak. (No, I am not). The first doctor asked quietly:
– Have you been dancing?
I smiled a cheeky smile and said:
– Yes, but only with one arm. To prove it I showed my good arm, though I didn’t seem to have impressed him much…
He seemed robbed for words. Didn’t say a thing. I think he was considering calling psychiatry on me. Fortunately “they” didn’t show up. I could have been committed if they did.
The nurse kept looking at me and tsk-tsking, then she asked once:
– Didn’t it hurt?
What they don’t get is that dancing does never know total absence of pain. You always have at least a blister, or a painful muscle, a few bruises from the tricks and dips, etc. Not counting the accidents, the falls, the hurting feet after dancing eight hours straight. So a fractured bone is painful but bearable, as all those other pains are.
Anyway now I have this broken wing and after my fair share of crying decided to get the best out of it.
I will have to understand that there is life outside dancing.
The other day I went out with some new friends. We were at one of their houses. I hope I wasn’t looking too stupid because it’s how I felt. They were playing this music trivia game. All I could think was: “I’m an alien!” I had no idea. There is a whole universe I don’t know about! It was if they were talking another language. Complete gibberish. I seldom recognised one name of one group or artist and I had no idea which Motown act scored the most different #1 singles in the same year. I only know what Motown is because of a choreography I saw…
Oh, I love music, I dance them, I listen to them, but in my ipod they are always listed as track 1; track 2; track 3. I don’t get it, what’s the point in buying the original CDs if the songs still appear as track 1; track 2; track 3? I’m probably doing something wrong here, but never have time to sort it out before the next rehearsal.
What stroke me that night was the thought: “These are normal people, not dancers. The kind that go out for other than dancing and have other interests and have lives full of other… things!”
I cannot imagine my life without dancing. I had to stop for a few years and I remember that page of my life as my “dark age”… none the less I can only believe now that this fractured bone has come to show me that there is something else out there!

(Orble Votes: 42)

Here I am again

Posted on by taniacreations

I don’t know if I should dread or embrace these feelings ruled by hormones.
If I should treasure them while they are here or simply hate these days that rule me to something in-human, or maybe just extra human…
The colours are brighter; the air has a sharper smell. And I can’t avoid checking on the male presence around me.
Have you noticed how your own mood and thoughts change the way people react to you? Don’t you get reactions every day that you look in the mirror and think “Oh, but I’m beautiful today!”. Or didn’t you notice how some people are beautiful just because they think they are? And take the attitude out, well there wouldn’t be much left. That kind of thing always made me wonder… Danny de Vito is a great example of that for me… he is short, ugly, fat end now a bit older… and HE DID A STRIP TEASE IN FRIENDS!!! He is a Hollywood actor and has acted alongside some of the most beautiful women in the world. That is attitude.
Another example is the president of Brazil, now on his second mandate. As a Brazilian I am ashamed to say that my president has low formal education, barely speaks Portuguese well, has had drinking problems, he tried the presidency quite a few times before he got it and he is ugly and fat just to get it all. How oh how did he get there?
That is why I think on the days I give out this vibe… It’s like it is another part of me…

(Orble Votes: 45)

Roller Blading in Sydney

Posted on by taniacreations

I just found out I have a broken arm. So I went looking for things I already had written to publish. As a one hand typist I’m an excellent dancer… I found this text I wrote about a year and a half ago when I went to my first city skate. Here it is:

“As I said I would, I went roller blading in the city last night. It was one of the coolest things I’ve done in my life. Writing about it now I can feel my pulse going faster, I can even smell the breeze. I’m listening to a music from Olodum called Gravity… it was playing in my mind last night when I arrived back at Circular Quay.
It was magic… there is no other explanation. Simply a group of around eight flying in the city. I felt like I was in the middle of a music video clip or an advertisement of an adventurous product.
The whole idea played with my imagination.
I learned to roller skate (at the time there was no roller blades) when I was eight years old and I lived in Paris in France with my parents. My mother is a physicist and was doing research there at the time. As the sun would go down even before 4 pm in winter and I was usually roller skating with my friends until around 5 or 6pm, I had the impression that I was completely free even at that young age, and could go around at night adventurously with my friends. I have recollection of dodging people, going down and up ramps and stairs, climbing over a fence and on top of an abandoned factory.
Since then I didn’t have the chance to ever do anything remotely like that. I always kept in my heart that experience of being able to do anything with those wheels in my feet.
In Brazil it is impossible to roller blade, there are really very few places you can go to do it. One of the first things I got when I arrived here was my first and cheap blades.
Last year I got my good ones, with it came a free lesson where I learnt to stop when going down hill.
But if you trust fate… it puts things in the right place at the right time. I’ve been training on and off to one day be able to do this thing but until now never felt it was the right time.
And suddenly, the idea came to my mind this week. I said. I’m going! I’m ready now.
I knew I was fit enough, I could stop down hill and got control of my movements, and most of all, when I thought about it, there was no fear of anything.
So I went.
It was two full hours of a full speed adrenaline rush! You can concentrate only on what you are doing and your mind feels empty of all doubts, all anxiety, all fear. There is no space for anything else except your senses.
Have you seen an advertisement from Nike where the woman is running and she is leaving behind all her problems…? I felt like that.
The view is amazing, we went around all the wharfs of king street… the pavement is mostly very smooth and you can speed like the devil is after you… well, maybe it is! 
The night was absolutely perfect, the moon was smiling to me and the air was hot with a cool breeze. With the speeding the night was caressing my skin like a lover, I could smell the sea and admire the incredible sight that is Sydney at night. There was a ship entering the harbour and even fireworks to greet me.
My brain could only produce one single thought: I LOVE THIS CITY. These are my dreams coming true.
It was the most powerful sensation not only because of the act itself but of the steer it caused. Everywhere we went through and there were people around we caused sensation.
We had the quiet and perfect moments and the turbulence of being admired and screamed at by cars passing by, people in the pubs, walkers in the streets.
I felt I could do anything, although I was the worse and obviously last of the group; Still I felt on the top of the mountain, being part of a selected group. Like what you feel when you see people bungee jumping… I felt special!
It was great, we went down hills and up hills, we dodged people and crowds, there were up stairs and down stairs, all this in the coolest city in the world, looking at the harbour bridge and opera house.
It was a lot of fun seeing people unexpectedly being overtaken by one blader, and then two, three, four…. Five, six…. Seven, eight!
I felt incredible to do all that without any fear. To be able to do the whole thing, that I didn’t fall once, that I didn’t kill anyone or even went over anyone’s foot, that I got to the end…
When people said on pitt street mall: “roller bladers!” and I realized they were talking about me it was like when we are on stage. Your life just has some magical meaning.
I lived a lifetime in those two hours.”

(Orble Votes: 51)

About Bread, Buses and Dancing

Posted on by taniacreations

After living in Australia for five years I went back on vacations to Brazil. I woke up in the beautiful city of Fortaleza, up north, and the first thing that came to my mind was: fresh bread. Real freshly baked bread. We have something there called the “bakery in the corner”. Meaning there is one everywhere and it is a wonder! Fresh bread baked every half hour, crusty, delicious, just baked buns.
If I was a cartoon I would be flying on the delicious smell through the air…
The fact that this wonder is not available here in Aussieland made me look for the reasons. First would be the labour costs then the technical limitations. Apparently small baking ovens for quick production are not easily obtained around here.
I’m a writer, so whenever the urge to go for a great business idea strikes me I write about it extensively. For the ones that actually put them in practice I leave you the idea of a chain of stores that would bake bread every half hour, all day.
Back to Brazil, I was there, in front of the bakery when a bus stopped. When the doors opened I could only think: “Gosh! Someone is going to fall off!” By now I’m used to Sydney buses where the driver stops people coming in when the vehicle is slightly packed (at least in comparison). To see that bus so full that people were actually falling from it was chocking. And it got worse! When people from outside started pushing and by sheer miracle managed to squeeze another ten in!
I had to seat down to laugh. People started looking at me thinking me completely nuts.
Talking about crowds, Fortaleza is a city of Forro a popular couple’s dance style. So, as a dancer, I had to check it out. It was there that I promised I would kill the next Ossie that complained to me about either full or hot Salsa dance floors in Sydney.
Only being in Brazilian Forro’s floors you can fully comprehend what a really huge hot and full dance floor is. The idea of personal space is turned into a myth. Every inch is fought over with elbows. The body heat generated is enough to warm Siberia for a month!

(Orble Votes: 52)

From Dreams to Reality

Posted on by taniacreations

And one day you wake up and realise how the so many little pieces of your life had to connect to take you where you are now. How every turn, every detail, every decision, people, objects, twists, all came together to make this dream come true.
You play “if” for a little while, including the bad corners but if you hadn’t done that, chosen that, gone through that other, you would not be here where nature painted this amazing picture for you, where the Universe has shown what life is really about.
Amazing…
To that only one expression: thank you!

(Orble Votes: 51)

Funny Bits: Do not Disturb

Posted on by taniacreations

Airplanes are always a font of inspiration. Something always happens.
We started with the little container problem. I’ve told my sister that she couldn’t take more than 100 ml containers in the plane. We come from a family that loves little containers for shampoos, creams, lotions, gels, etc. When we travel we carry a lot of them. So when she went to the check-in with that x-ray stuff she got caught with a bag full of little containers.
It is ok to carry one or two, but she had so many! Her bag was stopped on the x-ray because she didn’t hear the lady saying anything like that should be scanned separately. On top of that she left one or two big ones that were thrown away. The worse was when her other bag was stopped and another bunch of little liquids apprehended. The woman inspecting the bag tkist-tkisted my sister and mom was allowed to carry a few of the things for her…
We were still laughing at that when we went through a strong turbulence.
My cousin is a very special person, specifically in terms of speech patterns, its like she has a language of her own, you need either a translator or subtitles to understand what she is saying, even if she is talking in the same language as you.
She has this expression: “Oh, he caught air!” Which means that the “he” in question got upset with something and had some kind of angry display.
Why she says it? Noooo idea.
Anyway when the plane dropped noticeably everyone got nervous but my sister and I started cracking up when I said to her:
– Oh! The plane just “caught air”!
Our last plane adventure were the stickers’ that we found with our phone systems, nice printed things saying: “Wake me up for lunch” , “Do not disturb” and “Wake me up for free shop”. Great idea, the only problem is that we actually didn’t find anyplace in the plane obvious enough to put it. What were we supposed to do? Put it in our foreheads?
I’m still trying to find an answer to that one.

(Orble Votes: 57)

Funny Bits: The Hitchcock Ducks

Posted on by taniacreations

There is nothing better than telling the funny parts of a trip.
One of the things we have done on our trip to New Zealand was to feed the ducks. We actually were just trying to feed ourselves. We had a nice bag of sandwiches for a picnic and innocently seated near the river that crosses the main park of Christchurch. It was a beautiful day, the water is crystal clear and the ducks are supposed to be so cute.
Have you seen that old Hitchcock movie called “The Birds”? Basically it’s about a town where the birds go crazy and attack people. So that is what the cute ducks reminded me of. They went for our food! They would take it out of our hands, bitting our fingers.
Not only that, they thought my dad’s toes were food and tried to eat them! Also my cousin’s anklet: they loved the dangling bits trying to rip them out.
Even the babies were like that.
We had a laughing fit and had to eat it all very quickly deflecting ducks and keeping the hands high.
Across the water we saw a father with a small daughter of around 2 years old come to feed the ducks and leave running with the baby on his arms.
Such undisciplined bunch those crazy ducks! But I laughed so much!

(Orble Votes: 48)