Mein(l)

I try to avoid impulse buys, especially when I don't know exactly what I'm buying. I'd planned to get a conga drum (actually, a quinto) when I got to the end of my ten week CityLit course.

My teacher at CityLit said he'd let me know what was a fair price for anything going on eBay. I got sick of practicing on a desk, though, and now I'm under contract to buy these little beauties. I hope my teacher agrees that £130 was a reasonable price. I've got to jump through some hoops with PayPal before I can transfer the money, so I think it will be about another week and a half before I get them. I can't wait!

Memory for Music

What lies in the back of your brain?

BoingBoing does Latin Music

BoingBoing mentions a couple of tracks on Swapatorium today. I'd never heard of Swapatorium, but if it has chacha and mambo, I'm interested.

I haven't listened to the tracks yet, so I don't know if they're as "great" as the article claims. I'll put my opinion here later.

Jail this Thug

Vandal assaults police officer and two members of the public, given community service order.

I wonder what the Daily Mail would make of it.

Missed Opportunity

Everything I planned to do on Sunday took too long, so I had to miss out on The Sultan's Elephant. Public performance in London normally makes me think of the not very impressive entertainers in Leicester Square or Covent Garden, but the Sultan's Elephant looked pretty cool.

MamboCity 5* Congress

In 2004, I went to my first salsa congress, organised by MamboCity at Heathrow. Last weekend, back for the third time in as many years, I took it easier but had more fun.

Latin Percussion

I went to my first Latin Percussion class at City Lit yesterday afternoon, and turned my hands bright red.

Local Elections

What a lovely day it was yesterday. Who wouldn't want a pleasant five-minute stroll to their polling station, to indulge in the shaping of their government?

Well, probably more than sixty percent of the population. Non-voters really wind me up.

New Toy

I'm writing this on my new 'keyboard', an Alphagrip AG-5. So far these sentences have taken about fifteen minutes to write! I haven't worked out the most comfortable way of holding it yet, and the manufacturers reckon it takes about sixty hours of use to get up to speed. Time will tell if I have the patience to learn to use it properly. (Total typing time nearly thirty minutes.)