Blogging during a (finally) lazy weekend.

This has been a pretty lazy weekend, and I guess I'm just glad to actually have full weekends to myself lately. Last year, I never had much of my weekends due to rehearsals and stuff, and even until this summer, I never had a free Saturday because my classes were from Mondays until Saturdays.

My schedule had abruptly changed this 2nd season. During the summer, I was taking classes 6 days a week. When the new season began, it got reduced to 3 days a week. The schedule kept changing, and now, I'm only taking classes 2 days a week (one in the evening, and another day in the afternoon). Kinda disappointed about the new schedule, but I do understand why the studio had to do so.

Because I'm not tied up with any projects this season, I managed to watch all 5 sets of Virgin Labfest 8 during its first week. I preferred to watch during the 1st week because there would be a lot more people watching on its 2nd week, and of course, I always have a preferred place to sit inside the Batute Theater. Thanks to the Labfest's festival pass, I somewhat saved on money spending on tickets. What I'm just annoyed at during half the time I go there were the looks common friends give along with harmless teasing due to certain given circumstances. I mean, I don't mind, really. But my goodness, it's already over, so please get over it and move on. I know we already did. Plus there's another story about that, and maybe I'll write about it another time.

Anyway, I'm so glad I got to watch all the Labfest sets again. The last time I managed to do so was when I was still working as a stage manager for one of the plays, which was 4 years ago. After that, I never found the time and only got to watch selected sets. There were some plays there were pretty good, and some that weren't all that as I had expected. But that's the fun part of the Labfest. It's the risk of watching these plays, to see how well they'd fare with the local audience for the first time.

With that, I can't wait to do the same thing again for Cinemalaya next month.

I somewhat needed something to do last week after finding out that I won't be coming to Big Shift as often as I had expected, so I had invited Sam to join me for one of the Zumba classes this past Thursday. I had met Fiona, one of the Zumba instructors, a couple of Fridays ago, while Ian was cleaning up one of my steps before our respective classes, until we found out that both our classes were cancelled due to a last-minute scheduled event. Anyway, I offered Sam one of my gift certificates (as I still had a whole bunch of them) because she kept mentioning that she always wanted to try Zumba.

Fiona's class was pretty fun. It was fast-paced, and I haven't had any cardio workout since I stopped going to that aerodance/belly dancing class in CCP on Saturday mornings was back in early April. Because Zumba also included a bunch of Latin dances, I was familiar with most of them, yet I had to make an extra effort to keep up with the pacing. But it was still super fun, nonetheless. Plus Fiona seemed amused with how I add a little extra hip movement to some of her moves that were similar to ballroom, hahaha.

I can't wait to go back to class again, though. Ian had now moved me from the rumba to the cha cha cha, and he was right about certain things. Once you learn the basics of the rumba, doing the other Latin dances wouldn't be so hard because the rumba has the foundation of all footwork and hip movements.

While I was checking my gift certificates the other day, and checked my class schedule, I realized that I still had enough gift certificates to last me until the end of this season if schedules will stay the same, haha. I guess I don't have to renew my class passport until next season. Maybe that's why Ian's classes got reduced, because I won't be paying for any of his classes until August. Oh well.

One more thing. Ian had mentioned that he wants me to compete soon. Probably October at the soonest, but the one in March will be a sure thing. My oh my. I've looked up dancesport events online, and I found out that in these competitions, couples have to perform at least 3 dances (the most common for Latin are the chachacha, the rumba and the jive). I have to master all these in at least 3 months? Hope I can do this.

Speaking of dancesport, I'll be watching the DSCPI (Dance Sport Council of the Philippines, Inc.) Midyear Ranking event this coming Saturday. Ian and Ate Helen are in it, and it would be a good opportunity to see what these competitions are like.