AlmaTanguera

Never has bidding-farewell been so light-hearted!!! For I've been telling all my friends that I'm coming back soon! It's a great trick! First tell the tale. Then let your mind buy into it. Then you are really coming back in no time! Why didn't I use it before? The power of make-belief!

It's been such an inspiring fulfilling six months. I want to extend it into indefinite future!

Chau, mis amigos! Chau, Pipi! Un beso grande y un fuerte abrazo! Nos vemos pronto!!!

You must meet Carlos Puente if you're in Buenos Aires and are mad about tango music from the Golden Age (late 1920s to 50s).

Professor of the history of tango both at the Academia del Tango and the University of Tango Buenos Aires, Carlos also hosts a bi-weekly AM radio programme on tango and sells a huge collection of tango CDs at Buenos Aires Tango club.

He is a walking encyclopedia of Golden Age tango! Whatever you say, for example, 'it's a lie', he would pick it up and a tango with a guy who lies through his teeth would come singing out from his throat.

He can site endlessly the titles of tangos from every single composer, singer, orchestra, the time of the recording, etc, etc. So much so that you would start to wander whether he is human or not. As, believe you me, there are thousands around. My trick is to make him talk next to a CD player so that I can listen to his collection of magical melodies at the same time and it always feels like a treat! No one knows tango better than he does. From an academic point of view that is. Though his only and very reason for disliking contemporary tango is that they all sound too academic, too studied, less spontaneous, less gente de barrio (people from the neighbourhood). To cut it short, he calls them 'todos ruidos!' All noises. And he has a point.

The other day, during one of my final visits to pick up those albums I'm still missing, it suddenly occurred to me to ask him about Piazzolla. Maybe he does give some concessions to modern noises. Carlos looked at me without blinking his eyes behind his beer-bottle-bottom spectacles, 'Piazzolla is a bad vocabulary for me!' But then he went to his shelf and picked up an early album of Piazzolla from the 30s and said 'This is the only good one from him! Look at the photo of him! There he looks normal!' Piazzolla was 25 at the time. A clean-cut, nice looking young man in a sharp suit, like every other nice looking young man at the time I guess. He was smiling nicely in the shot and holding his bandoneon neatly on his knees. Then Carlos picked up another album from the shelf with Piazzola in the 80s. 'Look at him now! Doesn't he look like a mad man!' Hmmm...he does! In his mid-70s, Piazzollo looks scruffy with a head of messy thinning hair, in a shapeless shirt baring his upper chest. Furiously, he was in the midst of playing one of his modern compositions.

'But doesn't madness often make genius?' I probed.

'In this case, no!' Carlos snapped back.

By then I was too hungry for food to question the authority any further. But how about Amelita Baltar, whose Balada Para un Loco has tightened my breathes so many times?

'Ah, this woman doesn't exist for me!!!'

Later on back at home, when I told my landlady Margarita Carlos' views on contemporary tango, she laughed, 'It's amazing how some people can be frozen in time like an ice-cream!'

I know what I'm going to miss very much when I leave Argentina. Tango and ice-cream, to name just two!

A reminder to myself, a self-confessed perfectionist:

The more I take technique classes, the more I resist techniques. I know I'm on the last leg of rehabilitation from a broken leg, from loss of balance and muscular strength. But ultimately, do I really want to dance so impeccably? With neat footwork, the utter most body control and steps as precise as the Swiss clockwork? If so, what is dance really about? And art?

It's a relief to know that dance still remains out of the Olympics Games and dancers a different crowd from those of acrobats and gymnasts. Having said that, the boundaries seem to blur more often than not these days.

How many times have I watched a video clip or live performance of yet another speedy and technically flawless tango couple without having my blood gushing up in my veins and heart beating faster? Like what the Argentines say 'Bailan bien pero no me llevo nada.'

So what makes it to reach one's heart?

In the excellent tango documentary Si Sos Brujo, the old master Emilio Balcare commented on a tango played by a group of highly accomplished young musicians in Buenos Aires that it was very good, however, what was it the Fat Man (most likely the tango genius Anibal Troilo) said? To express tango you need to muddy it up...

When I first started to dance, the young Geraldine Rojas was the IT girl of tango. She was truly special! What made her dance so unique and captivating was her raw passion, her lack of pretense and her overflowing sensuality. She was then widely regarded as the true embodiment of Argentine tango! Una tanguera to boot! I found out later that she didn't have any formal academic training in dance. Today, more and more young dancers shoot to success and fame. Many remain competent academic dancers. However, I have yet to see the sparks that can set a forest on fire the young Geraldine once did.

There is something to be said about aiming for perfection. It's part of the learning process. It takes a hell lot of training. And the mastery of the techniques, superb control of our body movements is not to be sneered at. It sets us free. However, it's only half of the journey. The rest is to drop it all and starts to play. It takes guts to play, to be dirty, ugly, real, to slow down, to stop, all in order to be one's true humble self! It delights me to know that I'm on the path of such a journey!

Every time I cook, it's a one-off feast. People ask me what I'm cooking. I say I don't know as I'm making it up along the way. Just like the way I live.

The thing is I'm in Argentina, a bit far from China where I'm from, a bit far from Europe where I've spent half of my life. So what to do without all those things I'm missing? Luckily, improvisation is my strength. Such as right now when I've just made up the most delicious rice dish I've ever tasted, lubricated by a beautiful red wine called La Linda from Mendoza Argentina. It's Good Friday, not that it means much to an atheist me from afar. Still it's a holiday when food matters, especially when one is alone!

The recipe goes with garlic and spring onions, finely chopped up and shallow fried, with a baby green pumpkin (no such a thing in China) and dried shiitakes (imported from the northern forests of my country), both chopped up into little chunks. Then comes the chicken potato curry saucy (Chinese curry that is) with decent chunks of curry potatoes and steamed jasmine rice. Stir fry. Stir fry. Until everything blends well in. Finally, add in finely chopped up juicy organic tomato bits and boiled beetroot chunks (common roots where I am but exotic produce where I'm from). They are refreshers to that intense curry flavor. That's it. A photo taken before I wolfed it down like a hurricane.

Pipi left the other day. His mum Cristina came and picked him up, now that he is a healthy little puppie bursting with energies and her back is hurting her less.

He is now 3 months old and no longer the same poorly little thing lying helplessly in my arms only a short while ago but time seems to have lapsed and his sickness a distant memory. Life has been galloping fast fast forward.

I held him as much as I could the night he was leaving while him trying to bite my fingers, wrists, arms...He is so much bigger now. His limbs slender, body heavier, tail thinner and longer, paws fleshier. His ears are half way to the floor and his face... My God, I can no longer hold him still for a second! What has happened to that tender little thing who slept like an angel in my arms!

Still it's better this way. He looks like a proper dog now. A juvenile. He eats like a vacuum cleaner. He pees and shits wherever he pleases. He bites relentlessly on everything anything. He has no fear. He is a pain in the arse. He is a puppie bursting with life, a life he nearly nearly lost only a very short while ago.

He was the star of the evening. Everybody adored him, marveling at his cute puppiness, his liveliness, his innocence. Everybody tried to hold him in his/her arms for as long as they managed. Of course, he was completely unaware of what was going on. He kept on biting on everything anything, trying to pinch Jazmina's bones and chasing anything on the move. Then the adults took more photos with him, packed his stuff...toys, food, bedding and off he went, without knowing where on earth he was off to. However, he did stay still in my arms, nicely still, while I was taking him out of the house, no tossing turning, no biting like a maniac, just nice quite for a change. God knows what was going on in his little doggie mind.

After infinite kisses and hugs, he left in his mum and dad's car to his new house. Oh Pipi, all is going to be well for you! I know, I just know.

Os is heart-broken. He loves his dogs more than any humans and Pipi was no exception. Two months of single dad. Intensive care, sleepless nights, close to death devastation, relentless cleaning of pees, vomits, diarrheas and turds everywhere in the house all day for 2 months, tons of bounding, playing, sweet talks with this cutest little thing on earth, joy while watching him recovering, eating like a hurricane, growing like a miracle. But all of a sudden, he's gone like a dream! What remains is some newspapers on the floor, torn and stained. Pipi's toilette training. And a little note lovingly taped on the door. 'Please open the door very slowly! Puppie inside!' I took it off quietly. Suddenly I had an urge to cry.

And so I did the next day. A tearful day. Gloom.

Cristina rang to tell that Pipi arrived safely to his new house. He carried on to play straight away. Only that he cried a bit when they turned the lights out to sleep. But her husband stayed with him on the floor till he fell asleep.

The life of a dog! Sometimes I wish I was one of them. It doesn't seem to be too bad to have such little consciousness, unlike us humans, me in particular, who are utterly liable of being stirred up by memories like now, and that grey sentiment called melancholia. The memory of that impossible tenderness of a fury little life in my arms! The memory of being so overpowered by his utter powerlessness.

Pipi's departure reminds that of mine, very soon, from Buenos Aires.