Saturday, April 24, 2010

a two year anniversary

the tango community in taiwan is a very collegial group.  it's relatively small enough that everyone knows almost everyone else.  additionally, people socialize with each other outside of milongas quite a bit.  not that it doesn't happen elsewhere, but the taiwan group seems to do so a lot more than other places.

saturday was the 2 year anniversary of the tango studio. as a result, people were excited about the milonga. i got invited to one of their pre-milonga dinners by two different people. and i decided to go. it was a huge group-- more than 20. then came the milonga. everyone showed up on time. that never happens elsewhere. the floor was super crowded-- if you took away the fact that everyone was ethnically chinese, you could almost imagine yourself in buenos aires. afterwards, another large group went out for a midnight snack at the hk dim sum place right down the street. this time it was a group of 14.

i don't usually go out with large groups of people, nor do i usually socialize with the tango community, but it was nice. i think it helped that the tango group in taiwan is not quite like the group in other places. and by that i mean that they have lives outside of tango. each one of them have their own careers, interests, are not living day to day on very little (if any) income, and can hold conversation about a plethora of topics (albeit in chinese). in short, i am intellectually engaged when interacting with them.

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