Off the eight-count The rest of it
Most of this site is about one bachata choreography I'm learning city by city. This page is everything around it — the cameras, the flights, the machines I build things with, and the reason a man who spent decades at a desk is now counting to eight in a studio in Saigon.
Not a bucket list. These are the things that actually take up the week.
I danced salsa and hip hop a long time ago, then spent decades in tech and didn't dance a step. Now I'm learning one choreography — Elwin y Gaby's “Barcelona” — with a different teacher and partner in every city I pass through. Da Nang took ten lessons before I trusted the basic step. Jakarta was where the counts finally made sense. It ends, eventually, in Barcelona.
Stops so far · Da Nang · Jakarta · Saigon next · follow the tour
Years behind the camera before the dance shoes. City light after dark, and the slow work of getting skin tones right in an edit at two in the morning.
Kit · Sony A7R V · Dubai, 2022
Not sightseeing. Staying until I have a coffee place, a studio, a class and three phone numbers — in cities where I don't speak the language and get by on gesture, patience and a translation app.
This year · Vietnam · Indonesia · UK company, Asian hours
My day job is a UK IT consultancy, and most of what I build now is software that does the boring half of a working day. The promise I hold myself to is stay human in a digital world: the machines take the admin, people keep the interesting part.
Company · NSM Technologies Ltd, UK
A health scare made me rethink what I wanted my days to look like. Zumba classes in Da Nang were step one — that is also where my first dance partner came from.
Started · after the scare, not before
There is a reason for the second half of the name. Sitting quietly, and the older habit of shutting up and paying attention, is what keeps the travelling from turning into running.
Practice · quiet, daily, unglamorous
Teachers, dancers, photographers, language-exchange tables, the advanced student in Jakarta who danced the partner's side so I could learn mine. Every good thing on this project arrived through someone I hadn't met yet.
Rule · say yes to the coffee
When a city is finished — the counts learned, the take filmed — I write it up and send it. That is the whole schedule. No weekly newsletter, no drip sequence, no course at the end of it.
Your address goes nowhere else and I don't sell lists. One link at the bottom of every letter takes you off it for good.
The next letter goes out when the Saigon take is filmed.
Nothing until then. That's the deal.