While wandering around Paris last Saturday, I heard the refrain of Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise” on the air. Played by trumpets! It turned out to be a bunch of brass players and a drummer rocking out on the street. Too be honest, they’re weren’t that good. Wrong notes, tone not that great, beats a little off. But they were having so much fun that a huge crowd gathered to watch and dance and cheer. Find what you love, do it 100%, and everything else will work out.
Ate dinner at Bui (formerly Saigon City) restaurant in Berkeley tonight. The food is delicious, particularly the banana flower salad, but the best part of the meal was chatting with the chef and owner, Patrick Bui, afterwards. He was a mechanical engineer for Bechtel and at age 34 left to follow his lifelong dream of being a chef. He said the first few years were the hardest, going from a six-figure salary to making about $8 an hour. But, he says, those years are like a test. If you make it through, you can be successful doing something you’re passionate about. Those are the stories I love hearing because they reassure me that I’m going to be ok.
I love Paris, but it’s tough traveling three weeks of every month. It’s good to be coming back, there’s no place like home.
With yet another amazing London weekend seminar out of the way, I’m off to Toulouse, France in a few hours. I’ll be staying with a previous student from an earlier seminar until I head to Paris on a high speed train (200 mph!) to mooch off another friend. Then it’s back to San Francisco for one more big seminar and company reunion. It’s going to be amazing.
Not to get ahead of myself, though. I’ve got ten days in France to enjoy first…
I’m off to London again for another round of seminars. Daniel Johnson is coming with me to head one seminar, and I’ll be heading a second the following weekend. Daniel and I had an awesome time together running a first-ever Australian seminar, and I’m looking forward to exploring yet another country with him. We’ll be joined by a bunch of our rockstar students from previous seminars and I can’t wait to hear what they’ve been up to since I’ve been gone.
In between seminars another instructor and I will be headed to Ibiza to participate in the biggest club scene in the world. The clubs of the beaches of Ibiza hold up to 10,000 people. Crazy.
And when the seminars are over… It’s vacation time again! I’ve been practicing my French because I think I’m feeling Toulouse and Paris this time. Maybe a bit of Amsterdam… We’ll see.
