Salsa 2A - Class one!

In an effort to link all my online sites, I'm importing posts from some other places. I took Salsa 2 a year ago.

So finally i'm writing my salsa steps one more time. Yesterday i attended Salsa 2A class at Century and it was amazing! I figured out the mistake i was doing in cross body lead, basically i was trying to cross over my left foot, move right foot towards the follower and then move left foot. This would get me in an akward position so actually the steps were to cross left foot , shift weight in it(1) , shift weight on right foot in place (2) and then uncross the left foot and shift weight on it(3)!

We learned quite a few interesting moves.

Move 1: Cross-body lead (1-3), make sure you hold her hand and move her ahead , one-and-half-inside-turn (5-7)

Move 2: Spin the left arm anti-clockwise, change hands (1-3), do an outside turn (5-7)

Move 3: You are right-to-right, take a back step on left foot pull her towards you and be in go-to-movies-pose (1-3), take a back step and send her out (5-7)

Move 4: You are in cross hands situation, with left hand over right, do a cross body lead and at the same time ask her right hand on top and leave her left hand (1-3), send out and do an inside turn (5-7)!

I have a full 30 second salsa clip with move 1-4 now!!!!

Naked Ape!

In an effort to link all my online sites, I'm importing posts from some other places. Naked Ape is a book i read a couple of years.

The Naked Ape, by Desmond Morris gives a perpective of an ape to human. We are not these super-species just an ape!! It touches the raw emotions and its at times very controversial but non the less a good read. It borrow it and read this as a recommendation by Ruchi.

The Art Of Start

The Art Of Start - the classical Guy Kawasaki work outline the five basic Entrepreneurial principals - Make meaning, Make Mantra, Get going , Define your business model and Weave a MAT (Milestones, Assumption and Tasks). That a very expressive list of getting going but above all i love his statement that Entrepreneurship is all about doing!

I have put that as my litmus test for picking up partners - if you want to do lets get going !! :), What else should one look in a partner? Ofcourse few things which come to my mind are - complementary skill sets, tenacity ....

How To Start Climbing 5.12...

There are a lot of people aspiring to climb 5.12, well for me 5.12 is the ceiling ! Last year i could lead 5.8, atmost 5.9 trad and 5.9 (consistently) and atmost 5.10 sports. Well thats all numbers and very geeky rock rat talk! What i really aim to achieve is getting more comfortable on the rock. When i first started rock climbing two years ago I feared heights :), well the reason i climbed was just to get over my fear! Now i have come along long ways :).

Last season I started leading trad, I learned a lot of composure and mind tricks! Almost everyone can climb 5.8/5.9 but when it comes to leading it all in the mind! While doing a leading harder stuff i learnt from a friend and colleague (Damon) a very cool trick of extending your arms and using your legs. Damon is an awesome climber and when he climbs it almost looks out of a video, also note that most rock climbing books and websites stress on the fact of using your legs and not relying on hands. It was sort of 'AHA' moment when Damon showed me how to hang on hands and move your legs up and then stand on a good hold, and keep repeating the same tactic. I wish i had a picture or a video to illustrate. This has helped me a lot, many time i'm just able to cruise up on the juggy 5.10's without any problem using this technique. Well, no only if I had a cool technigue to negiotiate the tiny handholds i would be a 5.10 champ :).

Anyways, to the point this season i'm planning to use this book to first get the 5.10's and then move on the oh well.. lets see :). But from what my friends (Wayne) have told me about the book, it seems to lay out a great process of trying to make training pyramid of grades you can climb to grade you want to achieve, end of the day its all about miles and constant tiny improvements with 'AHA' moments inter-spread.. sounds familiar ??

Salsa fun!!

Back to Salsa! Its great to realize that almost after a six month break i havent lost that much of touch, but really i would love to be able to do the spins and flaps like the video above - Maris agrees too :) I should step it up !

To be or not to be..

Interesting points - why this guy left Microsoft to join Redfin, why this guy left to join Ontela and why this guy loves startups and what reason this guy has for you to leave the Empire and try something different.

I would summarize a little and add that its not just about finding a new culture and also a new way of life! In the above links i liked the idea of creating a forcing function to move on!

Whats your take on the big empire?

Ideation~!

Ideation if done structurally really helps us to think outside the box. It a fairly organic process but in order for one to be successful wrt the out of the box solution one has to understand the properties and limitations of the box fairly concretely. One way to think outside it is churn and innovative on one of the limiting factors of the box picking proven solutions for the same problem in totally new areas.

e.g Using cool icebreaker from party scenarios in to business meetings -

• Split folks in groups - share 2 unique things about everyone, test on the same.