Down Under - Melbourne, Australia

During Thanksgiving weekend I got the call from my boss to get ready to go to Melbourne, Australia to take care of a major project gone south. It was like a blur, in a very short period of time I had to scramble to make all of the preparations to go to the other side of the world with such short notice. Before I knew it I was on the 14 hour flight to the beautiful land down under. Every time we see pictures of Australia it's usually of Sydney or the outback, specially of the wild animals like crocodiles, kangaroos, and koala bears. However, somehow I missed the coverage of the beautiful city of Melbourne (as you can see in this picture). I was pleasantly surprised on how beautiful the city is - very clean, great food, interesting architecture, and very friendly people. One of my old good friends (Dr. Eugene Dozortsev) invited us to have a very special meal at, what he considers, the best steak house in the world - Vlados. Here you see Vlado, an 80 year old Hungarian that hand picks his cows, cuts the steaks, and personally cooks it to your order. This place is an incredible institution - even the royal family of Japan come and eat here. There's no menu (just meat), you don't have choices (just meat), great wine, sausage, and yes . . .more meat. It was incredible! We worked for two solid weeks until 11:00 p.m every night, sometimes passed midnight. So, we didn't get to see much of the city, only during the taxi cab rides back and forth to the hotel, and the occasional dinner at some of the wonderful international restaurants in the world. Finally, the second Saturday we decided to rent a car and go to a wild life reserve to see the famous animals of Australia. The place was very green and beautiful, just like you would picture it in your mind - full of animals everywhere. The smells, sounds and sights were very interesting. I wanted to pet a kangaroo, but for some reason they stayed away from me - perhaps it had something to do with me wanting to put my hand in their pouch. It's almost like a zoo, but you can definitely get much closer to the animals than in a regular zoo, sometimes you can even pet them. Even the cute Koala bear was oblivious to our presence, just taking the afternoon nap. Although some of these animals appear to be cute, they can be very dangerous, as I found out while being attacked by a huge, man-eating pelican. After the half day at the wild animal park, we went to the small town just outside the gates to walk around, shop and have lunch. It was a very nice and friendly old style community, with old school style values and friendly service attitudes. We then started to head back to the city, but first we decided to stop at a couple of wineries along the way to taste some excellent wines, and buy a couple of bottles to bring home. As you can see in the picture, the backdrop is the vines of grapes. Although I didn't get the feeling of an old winery, it was still a great experience. Out resident wine expert (Kevin Murphy) gave us the tour and helped us his recommendations for which wine to buy. My biggest regret is not to have purchased more. Here are the wine testers (from left-to-right) Kevin Murphy (my Samurai in training), My boss Greg Shanton, my old Samurai Mark Wettlaufer, and my new apprentice from Hong Kong Rex Wong. These are a bunch of great guys, very smart, and good people - it's an honor to be working with such talented individuals, they made this trip as enjoyable as could be under the circumstances. During my two weeks in Melbourne I notice a Wing Chung School across the street from the Marriott hotel where I was staying. After some digging around I found out that it was the World Headquarters of Wing Chung, under the direction of the very famous GrandMaster William Cheung, successor to Yip Man (Bruce Lee's teacher). I was so excited to realize this that I quickly e-mail the academy to see if they could arrange a meeting with Grandmaster Cheung. After a few days, they got back to me and told me that he was out of the country, but would return before my departure. I finally got a hold of him and we decided to meet for breakfast on the last day I was in Melbourne before I flew out. It was really amazing to me that I was sitting in front of this living legend sharing a cup of coffee and tea with him. There was so much I wanted to ask him, but so little time. He was very gracious with his time and I did not want to take advantage of it. He did tell me a lot about his project, present and future, as he is constantly flying all over the world teaching seminars, and practicing his Chinese medicine (he is also a Doctor of Chinese medicine, very famous throughout the world). He's planning on coming to Los Angeles in the near future to work on a project with local healers. Of course, I asked him to look me up when he gets here so I can spend some more time with him. I also told him that if this project I'm working on brings me back to Melbourne soon, I will look him up again to have some good Chinese food. Even though, all I really wanted to ask him since I shook his hand is "will you teach me Wing Chung". Well, my trip to Australia was full of hard work, but I met some new friends and my soul captured an incredible, magical place.