Ed Byrne & Roda de Samba (16th May 2009)
I've had a busy and fruitful day today, starting the morning by taking Dvita to Dress-Smart in Tawa with me for some shopping. Dress-Smart is small shopping complex with about 35 shops and is said to sell clothings and items less than 70% of the normal retail price. I'm not sure if that is true but I found a few nice tops and a dress - 6 items of clothing, some winter wear, for less than $200 which I thought was quite alright for shopping in NZ. And I needed those turtlenecks as the weather is getting colder these days. Dvita did a massive shop, getting gifts for friends and family back home. Oh yeah, our little princess is leaving us in June - she's decided to head home when her contract ends. Sad to see another good friend go, sigh...
Dropped Dvita home, did a bit of my own stuff then headed out to Cubita to catch up with Bill over coffee. I've seen Bill at many salsa events but hardly ever got to talk to him so I would have to say, he wasn't a friend but more an acquaintance. It was nice to get to know him better over our 3-hour long coffee session - there was so much to share and chat about! Haha, he IS indeed a Mexican trapped in a white man's body. He speaks Spanish like a native speaker! A very interesting person with a positive attitude towards life. Rather refreshing to spend time with someone that oozes out positive vibes as he speaks and it rubs off on others - I like that :)
Rush, rush, rush - back home at 5pm to shower and get dressed before Colm came over to cook us dinner. He offered to make us a steak dinner instead of us heading out somewhere to get our steak fix tonight. So long as you're doing the cooking, it's fine by me :P I wasn't much help to him but kept him company and chatted over red wine as he cooked away. I have to say, dinner was AWESOME! He seared the steaks medium-rare, just how I like it, served with a blue cheese sauce (I'm no fan of cheese but the sauce was yummy!) with Angel hair pasta cooked in coconut milk and stir-fry veggies. Thank you, Colm :) That was SO good! In fact, you can come cook at my place anytime hehe...We polished a whole bottle of Merlot and shared a Bavarian chocolate cake I bought for dessert enough to feed 8 between the two of us. Ops, it'll take a week to work off our dinner tonight but I don't care right now :P I'm having a great time!
Around 8.30pm, we left my place and headed to the Opera House to see Ed Byrne's comedy show, Different Class. I saw a bit of his show one night on TV and thought he might be fun to check out. Better still, why not ask my Irish mate, Colm, to come along? I'm sure he would appreciate the comedy from someone of his home country :) Cost us $45 per person for the show and we got seats at the Grand Circle, which was at the top level. Gee, walking to our seats at the front row does cause a bit of vertigo...Dvita, Kelly and Chris were also here for the show but sat a few rows away from us (they got their tickets last minute).
The show was 2 parts of 45 minutes and during the interval, Colm and I went to the bar and I got everyone a round of beer. I thought Ed Byrne was funny but I didn't laugh till I cried like with Jason Cook. It could be that the two were somewhat similar in some ways, like how both would do this feminine curtsy move and had a little voice in their heads, telling them to do things. Still had a good time though - laughter is by far the best medicine to a happy life!
After the show, the 5 of us headed out for drinks at Hope Bros Bar & Restaurant where Rachel was having drinks with her work colleagues. Dvita and Kelly wanted to check out Roda de Samba who were playing at Matterhorn tonight so we headed over after 1 round of drinks at Hope Bros (hmm, where did Rachel and her group go??). Roda de Samba played mostly bossa nova music and the usual Brazilian crowd was there as I had expected. Lots of cheek-kissing and hugging as I flitted around the dancefloor greeting people I knew. Having been in this social circle for about 3 years, I do know quite a lot of people. Some things never change though - I still get asked how I'm coping with the split from my Brazilian ex and often hear friends tell me "Oh, he still loves you and will soon realise what a grave mistake he made", or "He's only ever loved you" and the like. Frankly, I'm quite tired of hearing all these which is probably why I haven't been attending many Brazilian events. My split with my ex is now history, a chapter in my life closed for almost 2 years now and we've both moved on with our lives but sometimes I feel our friends just aren't helping us get on with lives by digging up old memories. Well, I can't control what a person wants to say but I sure can change my attitude towards what they say so these days, when anyone starts rattling on about the possibility of me and my ex getting back together, I just put up my hand to stop them and say we've both moved on. With time I'm sure they will get the message.
I danced a bit to the music but it was too hot to dance in my turtleneck and jeans - I really wasn't dressed to samba dance tonight. One by one, the gang left for home when the gig ended around 1am. Wow, the moment the band finished their second set, the sudden mass crowd on the dancefloor disappeared! My cue to go too!
Dropped Dvita home, did a bit of my own stuff then headed out to Cubita to catch up with Bill over coffee. I've seen Bill at many salsa events but hardly ever got to talk to him so I would have to say, he wasn't a friend but more an acquaintance. It was nice to get to know him better over our 3-hour long coffee session - there was so much to share and chat about! Haha, he IS indeed a Mexican trapped in a white man's body. He speaks Spanish like a native speaker! A very interesting person with a positive attitude towards life. Rather refreshing to spend time with someone that oozes out positive vibes as he speaks and it rubs off on others - I like that :)
Rush, rush, rush - back home at 5pm to shower and get dressed before Colm came over to cook us dinner. He offered to make us a steak dinner instead of us heading out somewhere to get our steak fix tonight. So long as you're doing the cooking, it's fine by me :P I wasn't much help to him but kept him company and chatted over red wine as he cooked away. I have to say, dinner was AWESOME! He seared the steaks medium-rare, just how I like it, served with a blue cheese sauce (I'm no fan of cheese but the sauce was yummy!) with Angel hair pasta cooked in coconut milk and stir-fry veggies. Thank you, Colm :) That was SO good! In fact, you can come cook at my place anytime hehe...We polished a whole bottle of Merlot and shared a Bavarian chocolate cake I bought for dessert enough to feed 8 between the two of us. Ops, it'll take a week to work off our dinner tonight but I don't care right now :P I'm having a great time!
Around 8.30pm, we left my place and headed to the Opera House to see Ed Byrne's comedy show, Different Class. I saw a bit of his show one night on TV and thought he might be fun to check out. Better still, why not ask my Irish mate, Colm, to come along? I'm sure he would appreciate the comedy from someone of his home country :) Cost us $45 per person for the show and we got seats at the Grand Circle, which was at the top level. Gee, walking to our seats at the front row does cause a bit of vertigo...Dvita, Kelly and Chris were also here for the show but sat a few rows away from us (they got their tickets last minute).
The show was 2 parts of 45 minutes and during the interval, Colm and I went to the bar and I got everyone a round of beer. I thought Ed Byrne was funny but I didn't laugh till I cried like with Jason Cook. It could be that the two were somewhat similar in some ways, like how both would do this feminine curtsy move and had a little voice in their heads, telling them to do things. Still had a good time though - laughter is by far the best medicine to a happy life!
After the show, the 5 of us headed out for drinks at Hope Bros Bar & Restaurant where Rachel was having drinks with her work colleagues. Dvita and Kelly wanted to check out Roda de Samba who were playing at Matterhorn tonight so we headed over after 1 round of drinks at Hope Bros (hmm, where did Rachel and her group go??). Roda de Samba played mostly bossa nova music and the usual Brazilian crowd was there as I had expected. Lots of cheek-kissing and hugging as I flitted around the dancefloor greeting people I knew. Having been in this social circle for about 3 years, I do know quite a lot of people. Some things never change though - I still get asked how I'm coping with the split from my Brazilian ex and often hear friends tell me "Oh, he still loves you and will soon realise what a grave mistake he made", or "He's only ever loved you" and the like. Frankly, I'm quite tired of hearing all these which is probably why I haven't been attending many Brazilian events. My split with my ex is now history, a chapter in my life closed for almost 2 years now and we've both moved on with our lives but sometimes I feel our friends just aren't helping us get on with lives by digging up old memories. Well, I can't control what a person wants to say but I sure can change my attitude towards what they say so these days, when anyone starts rattling on about the possibility of me and my ex getting back together, I just put up my hand to stop them and say we've both moved on. With time I'm sure they will get the message.
I danced a bit to the music but it was too hot to dance in my turtleneck and jeans - I really wasn't dressed to samba dance tonight. One by one, the gang left for home when the gig ended around 1am. Wow, the moment the band finished their second set, the sudden mass crowd on the dancefloor disappeared! My cue to go too!
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