Today I attended a private white-tie dinner-dance called "The Waltz Series". This event was founded more than 50 years ago in New York City by a group of friends who liked three things:

Dress up Have a conversation over dinner Viennese waltzing

The event now takes place 4 times a year starting in the Fall and ending in the Spring, which is the same time period as the Society Ball season in New York. Today's venue was the Manhattan Penthouse which amazingly is located just one block away from my new office. (Funny how my new office is mentioned in 3 most recent posts so far!) The evening started with cocktail hour in the foyer of the ballroom. Then everyone proceeded to dinner tables to the sounds of the live string orchestra. The dinner consisted of a seafood soup, followed by stake and vegetables for the main course and followed by dessert. In the middle of dinner the orchestra kept playing Viennese Waltzes and people were dancing half way through finishing their meals. The music consisted solely from Viennese Waltz with exception of one Tango and one Polka. At one point there was also a mixer dance where the women got into an inner circle and the men got into an outer circle and both proceeded holding hands going in opposite directions until the music stopped at which point people were supposed to waltz with whoever is in front of them. In under a minute everyone got into the circles again. This repeated 3 times and gave a chance for people to introduce themselves and have a quick chat during the brief waltz.

To attend this event you must be referred by a member of the group. I was referred by a Quadrille Ball alumni Hannah pictured here. I also met several other Quadrille alumni there. Several familiar faces from the Society Ball crowd were there too.

This past weekend my company moved into a new office several blocks away from Union Square. Today, on our first day in the new office, we could hear the voices of the massive crowd of people who gathered at Union Square to protest against immigration laws. However the only people in my company who could actually see the crowd from within the building were men, since the only accessible room on the floor where the windows were facing the square was the men's bathroom. I took this shot to share with my female co-workers who were curious about where all these voices were coming from but, in spite of my persuasion, refused to step into the men's room to see the spectacle.

Every Spring Brooklyn Botanical Gardens hosts a festival of Japanese culture called Sakura Matsuri (Cherry Blossom Festival). For the entire weekend (both Saturday and Sunday) the gardens featured shows of Japanese dance, martial arts, and music as well as exhibits of Japanese arts, crafts and food. The festival takes place during the peak blooming of the flowering cherry trees. The trees are covered with small flowers which one can use to simulate snow: The weather did not have any precipitation though. Both days were totally sunny without a patch of clouds and the weather was just right - upper 60's. There were many beautiful flowers in the gardens, but some sections of it were still closed since it was still early in the season. Click on the photo to see all photos. You may find some nice wallpapers for your desktop.

The TV and movie actress Arden Myrin that I happen to personally know since she is a sister of my co-worker Alarik is visiting from LA. Tonight Alarik, Christine and I went to see her perform a stand up comedy act at Rififi. The act was called "Fart 69". Here is the video: This was Arden's first time doing standup comedy. She came up with the script and the words of the song just a few days before the show. It's amazing how fast she and her partner could put the routine together and perform it as smoothly and funny as they did! Arden is currently a member of the cast in MadTV.

A few photos of the event are here.

This is my second time at Rififi. The first time was the after-party celebrating Regina's Birthday when we went there on the TRASH night. The photos of taken there on that day start with this one.

Arden Myrin on Mad TV Cast Discussion
Arden and I:

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Links
Reuter's Photo of Kerrie and I
The Melting Pot - The photo of our group is #8
Photos from Sun-Sentinel.com
Flickr Photos
More Flickr Photos

Past Easter Parades
Easter Parade 2005
Easter Parade 2004

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Videos:

	Another angle of the birthday cake:
Bringing The House Down:

Today Christine and I went to the Monday Night Magic show. This is my second time going there and I enjoyed it again. Just like as last time, they had 3 magicians plus another one who was the MC. The first two magicians performed in the first act of the show. They were Danny Alan and Francis Menotti. Then there was a 15-minute intermission during which several other magicians scattered throughout the theatre and showed close-up magic tricks. Then the third magician, Jamy Ian Swiss, took the entire third act. The first act consisted of the visual tricks, but in the last one the magician was performing the mind tricks. He was basically "reading peoples minds". He was able to guess someone's favorite book, guess the words that people found on random pages of a book, etc... Everything went pretty smoothly until Jamy Ian Swiss got to the trick where he has a member of the audience pick a two-digit number and then fills in a 8X8 grid such that the number in every row and column add up to that number, and the numbers in each 2X2 grid ad up to that number as well and the numbers in diagonals ad up to that number as well. On two tries he could not do it. He promised to get it right next time...

The annual Quadrille Ball Junior Committee Appreciation Party took place today. Every year this party is organized by the dancers to thank the Junior Committee members (and I am one of them) for their efforts throughout the rehearsals and the ball itself. This year the party was held at the old fashioned Soldiers' Sailors' Marines' and Airmen's Club and the theme was "Roaring 20s". Everyone was supposed to dress in costume. The accessories from my last year's halloween costumes came in handy.

It is a tradition every year for the dancers to give out awards to the Junior Committee members. Finally this year they really figured out who I am:

The room was filled with "Wanted" signs for all JC members and here is mine.

In my opinion this year was the best JC appreciation party since I was involved in the Ball. The venue and the theme were great. We took lots of photos and here is a video taken at the tail end of the party:

Later we adjourned to an apartment of once of the dancers for the afterparty.

Ok, today has been a quite a bad day at work! First our entire office lost internet connection due to some problems with Verizon in our office building. We could not get any work done because we could not access QuickBase via the internet. So everyone decided to go home and continue work from there. So I zipped the source code and some documentation on my flash card and went home to my apartment with my co-worker Christine who is working on the same project as me. So we come to my apartment to my much-surprised house guest Marianne. So we go on line on my computer and the first thing we see is that QuickBase is also down! The entire reason why we came to my apartment was to access QuickBase! Oh well, then I copied all the source code to my hard drive and tried to open my copy of IntelliJ IDEA which I have not used for a while. And guess what... Norton did not like that! Gee, looks like today was not supposed to be a working day!

Finally QuickBase went back on line and I had to disable Norton Antivirus to launch IntelliJ. But still we've wasted quite a bit of time!

My friend Marianne is visiting from Norway!

Can you find the birthday girl?

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Tonight we wished our fellow quadriller Shawn a fairwell on his leave of absence. The gathering was at the Player's Club in Gramercy Park. The private club is for theatrical professionals as well as other artists and dignitaries. It is located in an antique building which was renovated in 1888. The club interior was full of old fashioned furniture and paintings of various club members dating back more than a hundred years ago.

During the party Shawn presented his skit "Is God A Lousy Landlord?" played by 4 people who attended the party.

My good old time friend Ismerie is visiting from France this week. We got together with some old friends at my apartment for dinner and looked over many old photographs of us hanging out together in the old days.

Today I went to my first ever Oscar Party. It was held at an upstairs private party room in the Blondie Sports Bar on the upper east side. The room looked like the TV department of Best Buy. There were more than 30 TVs all around the room and two projectors. There were complimentary appetizers but unfortunately I arrived too late and only had one chicken wing that was left. A bunch of Quadrillers came to the party and we had a good time guessing the winners of various categories on the supplied ballots. The top three people who got the most right got a free beverage from the bar. It turnes out that I only watched two movies of all the movies nominated for Oscars this year - King Kong and War Of The Worlds. OK, now I have some choices to replentish my Netflix queue with!

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Today the waltz performers of the 2006 Viennese Opera Ball gathered at my apartment to bond together reminiscing about the ball by watching the DVD that the videographer of the ball made. After watching the DVD, Kerrie - our choreographer - presented awards to each person. Here is the list:

• Amy - "Babydoll Award" - for the cutest look in the waltz costume.
• Andrew - "Worst Attendance Award" - he is not even here to pick up his award!
• Charlie - "Best Connections Award" - for hooking us up with all these outside performance opportunities.
• Chris - "Sweep Her Off Her Feet Award" - for most dashing entrance.
• Jia - "Coquette Award" - for best fluttering of eyelashes.
• Heikki - "Never Lose Your Cool Award" - for always maintaining his composure.
• Jamal - "Good Son Award" - for bringing mom as his date to the ball.
• Joanne - "Gold Medalist In Curling Award" - for tirelessly curling hair all evening.
• Joey - "Rico Suave Award" - for the most debonair use of arms.
• Maggie - "Miss Congeniality Award" - for always having a ready smile and agreeable attitude.
• Mika - "Scarlett O'Hara 18" Waist Award" - for the most slender figure on the dancefloor.
• Nao - "Ballerina Award" - for best demonstrations of the balletic aspects of the choreography.
• Naomi - "Best Attendance Award" - for attending all of her rehearsals, plus other performers' rehearsals as well.
• Raphael - "Best Demonstration of Waltz Choreography Award" - for always being ready and willing to meet with the choreographer before each rehearsal so he could help demonstrate the choreography for the others.
• Uli & Joergen - "Siamese Twins Award" - for the waltz couple most joined at the hip.

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Click on the photo to see more. Description and videos coming soon...

The ball was featured in the Styles Section of the Sunday New York Times on page 12. Click here.

Links:

Quadrille Ball 2005 Quadrille Ball 2004

Today I hosted a double birthday party for Renata and Kerrie. Although there was no formal dress code that I knew about, apparently Kerrie told all girls to wear "party dress" which is knee length, with fluffy bottom, often in the 1950's style. Men were supposed to come in velvet jackets. Moreover she bought an ascot for me and MC to match our jackets. So everyone looked very nice and festive.

Just like last year, Kerrie handed out a quiz on how well you know her. The questions where different this year though. Last year I won and this year I did not even get a passing grade. If you know Kerrie, feel free to take the quiz yourself.

Quiz scores out of 10 points: Margaret     9 MC     9 Jennifer     7 Joanna     7 Raphael     6 James     6 Clayton     5* Yan     4 Renata     3 Joey     3 Judith     2 Take The Quiz * technically Clayton's score was zero, but K awarded him 5 brownie points for providing his own creative flattering answers. Photos Click Here

Videos:

Here I am with the hostess of the "Martini Bowl Party" which was the first Superbowl party I have ever attended. I hope that I did not get too spoiled being there!