The Wandering Monkey

For three years, I have been in China teaching Swing Dancing. Now I'm wandering yet again...

2005-10-23

New beginning, perhaps

She said yes.

2005-10-19

The Next Phase

So, after careful consideriation and measurement of my bank accounts, I have decided to get a regular job. I'm not sure exactly what to pursue, but my most likely choice will be in the computer field, like before. It's been a hard decision, one which really has been taking me many months to come to terms with. As it stands, the main reason I will be changing my focus is that the money is not enough in it to keep doing it full time. I've burned through a good amount of my savings. And even if the dance classes reached full attendance and party attendance grew and movie appearances increased, it still will come to a salary that measures to a very small amount of US dollars.

My strategy now is to either take on a full time salary position, or resume project consulting like I had in the States. If at all possible I will continue to do the swing dancing thing as a side-line. There's no telling exactly what the job requirements will be, however, so I'm going to have to hope that I've injected enough life into the swing dancing scene that it will be able to survive my departure, if need be.

I would say I've got two big questions for the future. #1 is, what type of work will I do? #2 is, where will I live?

I don't know exactly what type of work. Having taught and organized a dancing club for two years, and worked in movies, TV, and so forth, I've certainly changed my resume. I re-created that resume recently, and here's how it reads:

1995-2003: Ecommerce, with this list of clients, working with these companies, with proficiencies in such-and-such software...

2003-2005: Teaching swing dancing, TV commercials and show apperances, and dancing in three movies.

How would you feel about this resume passing over your desk?

It certainly is a unique situation. I'm sure that from a purely technical point of view, the two year diversion will put me behind a guy who's been doing computer work straight throughout. But I also bet there's a few job positions which would really take to a person who can show diverse abilities. Those are probably the jobs most worth having, as far as I see.

One of my friends out here recommended I go into some sort of 'foreigner talent agency'. I've also met with a guy who's trying to start a computer game company out here (however, he has no business license, no office, and no funding so that's pretty much not going to happen). My thinking now is that I would be happy with a regular job and a side-line of keeping swing dancing going. To do this, I'll need something that would keep me in Shanghai. I am at the moment considering moving out of Shanghai for the right job opportunity. But the more I think of it, the more likely it is that the right opportunity for me will be here in this city and not somewhere else.

On a personal front, I've become close to someone out here. Today I asked her to be my girlfriend; that we date each other exclusively. I asked her to think about it for a while, and tell me tomorrow (which is coming soon, now...) I have been seeing this person periodically for many months now, but we had never discussed exactly the terms of our relationship, leaving each open to dating. Just within the last month I've come to realize my level of affection for her, and after several days of trying to figure out my emotions I decided I should have a more serious talk with her. For a while, I was wrestling with jealousy and possesiveness. I began to feel threatened when another male came onto the scene and started talking with her. I'd wondered why I was feeling this so strongly, and why I felt threatened at all. I considered several options, including breaking things off. Strangely enough, I helped come to a decision while I was having a beer one night on the town. I'd noticed that as of the last couple of months, I'd lost interest in pursuing other girls I'd seen. It's a lot of things, including having lived here for two years and experienced a lot of the dating culture. But also I'd become intrigued with this one girl's personality and way of doing things in life. I came to realize that spending time with her was one of the few things which at the moment make me truly happy. But the 'moment of realization' came while I was listening to a song playing in the bar. It was "Hey Jude" by John Lennon. Everyone present had tipped back a few, and we were all more-or-less doing a sing-along thing. The line which I heard most strongly was "And don't forget that it's a fool; who plays it cool; by making his world a little colder."

Silly enough, but it made me realize that I was on to something pretty good, and I ought not to let it slip away without doing something about it. I just said that it had come to the point where I felt very strongly about her. And it had come to the point where we had ought to make a decision about what to do. I'd wanted to know how she felt, and I said we had either decide to get together, or if that did not work out, it would probably be better to cool things off completely. Emotions can be a tricky thing, and I think it's better to either definitely go one way or the other. Of course, I'd prefer for us to stay together. Should it not work out that way, I could live with this, too. If that's the way it is, I'm sure I'll be upset for a time, but then I could go back to feeling more like a single person.

So anyhow, that's the situation.

Movie Update: The White Countess U.S. release date: Dec 15, 2005.

Last note: I am planning a party called Casablanca. It's a swing dance party, with a big band (17 members) in a large dance venue. I'm shooting for over 300 in attandance. I think there's good reason to believe we can get this. The party will probably be my last big contribution before taking on a full time job. It should be no trouble to do the job search at the same time as running dance classes and getting prepared for the party.

Peace,

-J

Posted by: Jimbo / 6:13 AM

2005-10-11

New party

We have an opportunity to hold a new, large party. A big new venue has opened up which can hold 300-400 people. I'm going to submit a proposal for it tomorrow. I'm thinking about the plan today and making items that we'll need, and I'm also trying to think of the 'goal' of the event; what's most important.

Done correctly, this could be a great boost for swing dancing.

A friend of mine out here teaches ballroom dancing. He's also a foreigner, white male, and as far as I know the only other person like myself doing this in Shanghai. He's a good friend of mine, and we've worked together on several movies, and he helps in many ways to make the swing dance scene stronger. His own efforts to get a ballroom thing going have been hitting hard times lately. I tell him, everything runs in cycles. You'll have periods of high activity, followed by low activity, and sometimes there's no reason for it. But lately he's not been doing well, and his student attendance has been faltering.

By comparison, my own group has been doing well. We get about 20 regulars and and equal amount of drop ins each Sunday. That's still awfully small considering. There's several factors to getting a group like this going, which are:

* Getting people to come to the dances

* Getting them to join the dance classes

* Having them continue to remain in the group for a long time.

On the first and second items we've been strong enough. We are having a decent problem with retention, the third item. Everything goes well for a while, then at about two months most people lose interest and drop out. It's OK if they don't re-enroll in class; but they also drop out of the social scene. Some do not, but over half do, and this is a problem. If we could only retain 10% of the people who have ever joined a class, we'd have several hundred people.

Which gets me to thinking (as always). The weakest part of the long-term plan right now is retention. That means the focus should go towards intermediate and advanced classes, as well as social functions to make the group work as a community. This I'll admit has not taken up too much of my efforts recently. Perhaps time to focus more upon it.

Lots on the party. More to come if the pitch goes well tomorrow.

On the personal side, I took a small vacation about a week ago. I feel better since then. While I was still in China, I got out of Shanghai for a while and did some good things over my break, also spending very little money in the process (a great plus!).

Ooops, almost forgot to mention: I've filmed dancing in three movies. Two are still in production, but one of them has gone to theatres. It's called "Everlasting Regret". (www.everlasting-regret.com). I did some tango dancing in it. This is the movie we shot for 26 hours. In the end, you can see me as a blur in the dance scene. However, you can only see this blur if you get the DVD and press frame-by-frame advance during the dance scenes. Furthermore, you can only see my left ear and profile in one blurry moment, then a moment later, you can see the blurry image of my right ear and profile. You can't see my eyes or nose, so if you are very familiar with my ears then please do look out for them.

I'm also present as 'blurry white man laughing while sitting at table while stars walk by." No, don't scan the credits for it; you won't find them. But it was a cool experience.

I should not have done it, but I did an internet search on my old girlfriend you-know-who. She's married now and apparently working on some consulting group. Looks good. This lookup stirred up a few old memories in me. If you feel stongly about a person at one time, you may hold a portion of this with you forever. I do, I must admit. However it's manageble now. She looked good in the photos, and although there's not much information to go by, she seems to be doing alright. We're not in touch. I think it's best that way. Each contact would just stir up the old memories, and why do that any more than you have to.

So, I'm procrastinating on putting this dance party proposal together. I don't know why, exactly. I suppose there's a few very, very large variables which are up to me to define. And should I approach the project in the wrong way (such as setting the entrance fee too high), it will fail to achieve its maximum result. I guess that's what I'm looking for; maximum result. So, if I'm to get that, how would I define it? How about another list:

A) Maximum total attendance

B) Maximum swing dancer attendance

C) Highest quality of swing dancing

D) Highest quality impression of people watching event

E) Greatest possible publicity for swing dancing

F) Greatest possible monetary gain on the day

G) Greatest possble recruitment of new dancers

The theme and feeling and decor of the party have already been established, as has most of the entertainment and the swing dancing ideas throughout. For the moment, I'm not worried about developing these. What I need to do now is to develop the business plan for how to handle this event. I suppose I'd have to take each of these items A-G and rank them in terms of importance. Some items (such as maximum attendance) will obviously have an effect on other items, so this must be taken into account on the ranking. So, then I'd say:

#1) A #2) B #3) F #4) G #5) D #6) C #7) E

Ok, so that has surprised me a little. I figured publicity would have been ranked higher, but I think I've realized something about publicity. It doesn't matter unless it translates into something else. Also, I put recruitment higher than I'd have thought if you asked me. Usually recruitment has not been a high priority at our events. But I think we need to do it this time as one of the main focuses. Of course, monetary gain is important. Vital, really. Got to get in the black or this project will fizzle out.

So, with that in mind, I'll hammer out a little plan.

More to come

-J

Posted by: Jimbo / 12:44 AM