Salsa Sam’s Rantings

PART 2 - DECISIONS

I forget what day of the week that was. Classes were tough. I was taking Graduate level classes at Sloan with Middle Executives from Crysler, IBM, Sun Microsystems, Nortel, and super-technies from the Media Lab. I had a Problem Set due in the Fourier Series, and work piled up my ass. But I couldn’t really keep my mind on it the whole day.

It was dinner time with Sally. We were telling each other about our day, and then she stopped for a while, looked at me with concern, and suddenly made me all edgy with her motherly-ness. Man, not now. I told her that I think it’s classwork that’s really bothering me. She paused for a moment and then we talked about her classes and my research work. It was about 7:30pm when I said, "Hey we’re going to be late for Samba," and she said, "but it’s only at 8:30"… "yeah, I know, I’m usually there warming up an hour before, remember?"… so we finished dinner and made our way to the dance halls.

Dancing took me to another world. And it was no worries and a great new additions to the routine we learned last week. It was 11pm, when I packed up my stuff. Everyone had gone off an hour ago, so I turned off the lights, and before closing the door, I stood there in the stillness of the dance halls. I’m really gonna miss this a whole damn much. I went into the doors of the Number Six Club, my frat house and as I walked into the dining hall there was Jason Pinto, Trinidadian with the gift of the gab, telling another hilarious joke. Melanie had a Cartier in her hand and a glass of wine in her other. And there were other Freshmen and Sophomores with their glasses on, hair tied up, all hanging out, laughing, flirting. How these girls look so different during RUSH week when they were trying to get into the House. It was a bloddy week night and these guys live life to the max. I couldn’t hang around chilling out ‘cos there were just so many things going through my head. I walked straight past them into the Annex stairway and headed straight into my room.

I kept all the lights off, went to my desk, switched the halogen desk lamp on and lit a cigarette. I had about 2-3 hours before my body gave way, and a whole lot of work to do before my 8am with Professor Gupta at the Sloan the next morning. But I spent the next few hours just reminiscing my time with the Ballroom Dance Team this past year and a half, pictures of friends and Sally.

She had asked me about Islam a year ago, and lately she’s been very receptive to talk about converting. She was a christian, but willing. At some point, I actually contemplated co-existing without conversion. After all, religion was more about healthy living and doing good, wasn’t it?

TO BE CONTINUED

PART 1 - THE PHONE CALL

There was a time when I couldn’t stand the incessant requests from my parents to come back during summer and winter holidays. There was just so much to do in between semester breaks. And all my plans had to be on hold just ‘cos dad bought a plane ticket back for me. In retrospect, I was indeed a spoilt and ungrateful young adult, always thinking about myself. At that point in time, there were just things I needed to do on my own.

In 1999, my life was all set. I had a American-Chinese girlfriend full of character, cultured, family-centric, with corporate ambitions, and a great companion. Who also shared my love of dance, albiet not as intense of ambitious as mine, but great when it came to the occasional social dancing she came along.

I was working on my MBA at Sloan, unbeknownst to a lot of my friends in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department. I had a Research Project with the Artificial Intelligence group at Sloan, which paid enough for me to up-keep my rent, occasional clubbing, my dance expenses, and my Dodge Neon. It was a very cool, 4-door, black far-from-sports-but-looks-cool car. I had wheels, I had enough dough to keep my life good, and had everything taken care of with tuition.

My dance life was still full, with 6-8 classes a week, in 1 or 2 levels above my peers who started dancing the same time as I was. All I was aspiring to do was earn some extra cash for Private Lessons, which cost about 3-5 times as much as group classes. I noticed that I needed that extra bit of cash to really get ahead of the other dancers in Silver and Gold. I was targeting to hit Open in 2.5-3 years.

And then there came a phone call. It was my two brothers, who were in LA! I was thrilled, before they told me that they will be visiting me on an agenda. They had with them a one-way ticket from LAX to KUL are were not going to leave until all my stuff were packed and I promised to get on a plane back home.

I put down the phone and just sat there thinking…. should I keep to my father’s intentions of uniting our family again…

TO BE CONTINUED

Life’s been hectic. Dad got admitted into hospital on the 25th of July. So, almost every night from midnight to 8 or 9am, have been on stand-by, just seeing to his needs. A very humbling state of being, I now appreciate all that is good that’s happening to me. I try and give a call to old friends, I spend more time taking care of my family, I take more preparation before teaching each class, I spend more time thinking about my students. Hmmm, with all this, I still spend less time on my own dancing - something to work on…

So, it’s usually back at 9-10am, sleep for about 4 hours, get to studio at 3pm, prepare for classes, and then it’s midnight hour again. So tired. Last weekend, I totally crashed and thank god Aisha took care of my 2 classes on the weekend. I was so bloody exhausted, I slept through the alarm and found my Nokia under the bed, like years later…

This weekend’s got a lot of fun-filled stuff and thank god, dad got discharged yesterday noon. He’s a lot better now, can walk but with assistance, his resistance level’s up to normal, and he’s O2 absorption is back to 95-96% without aparatus. Oh crap I have to been in the Studio in an hour..

ADDITIONS…

Dad got admitted again into DSH on 19/8. Just discharged a few days ago. The month is almost over. Gotta spend more time with him…