iTopSpin
Current Posts => Latest Spin => Topic started by: ta0 on September 01, 2019, 07:05:53 PM
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ITSA ambassador to India, Sandeep Kate (drsandeep), has invited me to demonstrate tops at one of the festivals he organizes in the city of Satara in the state of Maharashtra (about 5 hours drive from Mumbai). I also had a pending invitation, more than 15 years old, from a friend to visit him in Bengaluru (Bangalore), so I'm combining both and leaving tomorrow for Mumbai :)
This festival was originally scheduled for August 11th but it was postponed because of heavy rains and will now take place next Sunday (8th.) It will probably still rain some that day but the Monsoon is about over, so it should not be too bad. They are called Games of the Soil, and mud is expected :P I guess humidity will be a challenge for string regeneration! ::) There should be many people, including media coverage.
Sandeep has also become a serious collector of contemporary tops from around the world and has one of the giant Daxi tops. So I'll get the chance to run with the rope on the shoulder and try to spin it. :)
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Wonderful opportunity! Sandeep posted a Games of the Soil video a while back. Everyone seemed to be having a great time.
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Wow!!! Safe travels and good luck!
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Figaro has a much more impressive passport than mine. Safe travels, Jorge.
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have a fun time in India !
don't forget Ludo's contacts there, Mumbaï has a strong connection with Marines(...°)
say hello to Sandeep from the board
cheers and namaskar!
jim
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The poster:
(https://i.ibb.co/sjkjQpg/IMG-20190903-WA0000.jpg) (https://ibb.co/sjkjQpg)
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Good photos of you. Interesting that so much of the poster is in English.
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YESS HAVE GOOD TRIP IN INDIA WITH LATOO BYE LUDO
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Have a safe trip.
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Have fun!
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Good photos of you. Interesting that so much of the poster is in English.
I suspect there is another poster in Marathi language.
Around de corner from the hotel in Mumbai:
(https://i.ibb.co/vc4XxC1/20190904-195659.jpg) (https://ibb.co/vc4XxC1)
Familiar words in very unfamiliar surrounding.
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Great start!!
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Great start!!
It has been an interesting start. The first day there was an almost record single day monsoon rainfall in Mumbai:
(https://i.ibb.co/CH9bbbn/20190905-185128.jpg) (https://ibb.co/CH9bbbn)
Fortunately, my hotel is in the peninsula where it rained much less than the suburbs. But the second day I went to some budhist caves (in a train, an experience in itself). It didn"t start raining until I was up in the mountain. Coming down I slipped and badly hurt my left forearm! It immediately became very swollen. Fearing that it could be broken I went to a clinic to get X-rays but luckily nothing is broken, so my participation in the games is still on. 🙂
Beside these problems, everything has been fantastic.
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:o :o :-[ :-\ really sorry about your bruised forearm, and about 206 mm of rain in Mumbai! That's a lot of rain. I've never been to Mumbai but I have seen it on a map, yes it seems like the city spans across a peninsula with an inlet bay that I imagine can have low grounds.
Icing usually helps my bruises a lot.
Take it easy Jorge, the updates are appreciated.
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OH NO!!! A bruised forearm? That does not sound good. Glad you got an x-ray and it is not broken. Good luck on your recovery......and the rest of your travels.
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oh la la Jorge ! take it easy ! i hope this incident won't be too painful and that you will recover soon!
come on , you're an International Toy Boy !you have SUPER POWERS!
namaste !
jim
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Demonstration is tomorrow morning.
This is from the newspaper interview:
(https://i.ibb.co/1fpJ8w7/IMG-20190907-WA0002.jpg) (https://ibb.co/1fpJ8w7)
(https://i.ibb.co/DVzssRj/IMG-20190907-WA0009.jpg) (https://ibb.co/DVzssRj)
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Felicidades Jorge eso me da una alegría ver logo de ITSA e AMT particularmente me gusta llevar siempre a donde voy mis camisas de lo que represento y ahora verlo en ti me da una felicidad bárbara gracias .
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Taking the large Daxi top to the event:
(https://i.ibb.co/8jk23L3/20190908-061411.jpg) (https://ibb.co/8jk23L3)
Going down the stairs we needed 4 people.
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What a great event! I performed on a stage inside a very large gym with the city mayor and other politicians present. I did some basic stuff with bearing, then some freestyle, then called a girl and a boy on stage for a couple of tricks plus a long wire walker and finished with Figaro. Dropped a little more than I wished but people must have liked it becausethey took hundreds of selfies with me! ;D I felt like a Hollywood celebrity! Every kid wanted me to spine the top on their hand or head (popular with boys only) and also wanted me to sign a little paper or the palm of their hands. It was crazy!
(https://i.ibb.co/njnWK7t/20190908-072916.jpg) (https://ibb.co/njnWK7t)
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Spin top super star!!! So cool. Glad to hear the arm held out.
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This is all in slow motion, so you may want to watch it at 2X:
https://youtu.be/t0K_gmwGkwU
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great performance! i enjoyed the slow motion very much: super cool pirouette !
BRAVO ! :)
jim
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Nice video - Thank’s for sharing. You should make a tip for one of your Roto tops with a 1/2 inch neck - and go for the 150 foot wire walker. The top is big and light - it should be perfect. Or maybe apply some JB weld to the neck and file it down?
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I made it to the front page of the Satara newspaper (together with the failed landing on the moon of the Indian craft)
(https://i.ibb.co/23n9PGM/20190909-225616.jpg) (https://ibb.co/23n9PGM)
Figaro appeared in at least 5 TV stations, including regional ones. I'm now in a large city 2 hours away (Pune) and somebody told me that he saw me on TV!
All the credit really goes to Sandeep who has lots of credibility with the media after founding the Satara half-marathon, which is now the 8th largest in the world (8,000 runners).
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Sounds like you need an agent.
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This video is the best!!
Pretty gutsy to swing Figaro around like that :o
So awesome. I'd be asking for your signature too, World Champ.
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I know this guy!!!!
;D ;D ;D
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ah! in India!!
Congratulations my friend.
By the way, the indian subcontinent has the shape of a spinning top.
Some day I wiil be there also. I´ve practicing many fakir acts and also I ´ve studyng hard hindi. In latin alphabet, but I know a lot of phonetic expressions, thanks to Ludo who gave me a good present, a handbook of hindi.
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By the way, the indian subcontinent has the shape of a spinning top.
;D ;D ;D
Some day I wiil be there also. I´ve practicing many fakir acts and also I ´ve studyng hard hindi. In latin alphabet, but I know a lot of phonetic expressions, thanks to Ludo who gave me a good present, a handbook of hindi.
Before my show there was a young troupe that did fakir acts. It didn't look very good for the health! ::)
In this state, Maharashtra, that includes Mumbai, they speak Marathi. But it uses the same script (Devanagari) that Hindi and many other laguages of India (including Sanskrit). But in a few hours I'm flying to Bangalore (Bengaluru) where the official language, Kannada, uses a different (but related) script. The number of different cultures that coexist in this county is overwhelming.
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This is all in slow motion, so you may want to watch it at 2X...
Looks like they invited the right guy. And all the better in slo mo.
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Yesterday I did a demo for the company that my host in Bagalore manages and I was offered to do another one for the neighborhood tomorrow.
Although India feels surprisingly safe (except for the traffic), even walking beside slums, I generally didn't carry a top with me, so I have few photos with one. But after finding some rope walkers in the streets of Pune I went back to see if I could get a photo with a top on the head. I had my missgivings, as this is child labor, but at least they seemed to be working for their families (at least I hope). The highlight of the routine is swinging side to side very fast with the vase on the head, while walking on the inner part of a wheel rim. I asked two different performers (actually the person on the ground), suggesting that there would be a good tip, but they declined, so I didn't insist. I imagine they were doing a killing anyway, as it was the middle of the Ganesh(a) festival.
(https://i.ibb.co/0McK1Hr/20190911-094945.jpg) (https://ibb.co/0McK1Hr)
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I think this "top restaurant" sees more monkeys than tops ;D
(https://i.ibb.co/CHr3FyJ/20190913-125015.jpg) (https://ibb.co/CHr3FyJ)
The monkeys come from an adjacent 1000 year-old temple dedicated to Nandi, the bull that serves as messenger of Lord Shiva. In Satara I had attended a Hindu ceremony in a temple dedicated to the dancing Shiva, Nataraja. It has carvings for the 108 dancing poses. But it occurs to me that with 4 arms, Shiva would be very good at tops too.
In Pune I found the last day a Muslim Sufi meditation center where, for a fee, I could have become for a day a Dervish: a human spinning top! A missed opportunity!
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Shiva lives the dream of every person who is intersted in multiple spinners. Shiva might also give Mark Hayward a run for his money on the "most tops spun at one time" record.
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Here is my spinning of Sandeep's Daxi giant top, the "easy" way:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKr5dB5HJSw
I tried once to do a lift-and-drop start, but I ended up rolling on the ground and feeling pain in the arm I had injured a few days before, so I didn't try again.
One thing that I lament is that I didn't have the opportunity of playing tops with the kids and adults during the festival. Before my show they were playing in the rain, and after my show it was all selfies and placing tops in the fingers and head. But a man who waited patiently could finally show me his snap start. When I asked to film it, everybody paid attention, that's why the applause:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZCIPvY863U
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Good job with that big top. I have yet to try one of those.
Two hand snap start! Very nice.
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Sandeep with Figaro in his man-cave:
(http://ta0.com/photos/images/contests/India2019/Sandeep-n-Figaro.jpg)
The entrance to the lot in front of his house and clinic, where he is trying to develop a "soil games" park:
(http://ta0.com/photos/images/contests/India2019/Sandeep_soil-games-park.jpg)
There are several murals in the park with traditional games, including one for tops, of course:
(http://ta0.com/photos/images/contests/India2019/mural_soil-games-park.jpg)