It was my 1st time following Sensei Philip Lee for an oversea Aikido Seminar. Is the 2nd time Sensei Philip asks me to follow him for an oversea trip, finally after all the arrangement of the dojos I manage to take some off days and fly over together with Sensei.
During the seminar I met Haris Sensei Chief Instructor of Aikido Shinkenryukai Indonesia and also one of my old aikido friends Agus Chief Instructor of Batam Aikido Club. Together with Sensei Philip Lee and me it seen to be like a small gathering of oversea affiliated Chief Instructor gathering together to train and learn from our mother dojo Aikido Shinju-kai Singapore.
It was my 1st time been involved in oversea grading and to be part of the grading panel over there. Many things to be learn from the oversea grading and seminar. The culture, the training style, grading style and etc. is different from each of our country. Is my 1st time seeing so many students going for grading at one time, imagine 40 plus student going for 6th and 5th kyu. It might be normal for our Mother Dojo Aikido Shinju-kai, but is a big number for us here in Malaysia.
The weather was wonderful at Bandung, so cooling and nice. It was only 28 degree Celsius in the day time. The students are very friendly and they share with me about the places of interest over there and where we should visit if we are to come over for holiday. The local food was good just a bit sweet to me, but overall is nice. Never forget about the traffic jam, Bandung will have heavy traffic jam during the weekend and Jarkata will have heavy traffic jam during weekday.
The students are very friendly to us, sometime we have small gathering with them after dinner for a cup of coffee to talk and Sensei Philip Lee share his Aikido knowledge to them, I’m happy to be around to hear the knowledge he share with us. The students even visit us during our last day of trip when we are preparing to head for our way home; they met us at the café for breakfast during their working hour.
Some of the night I went out with Haris Sensei and Instructor Agus to have our small talk at 7/11, we talk about how we manage our Aikido school, what are the best ways to attract students, and what are the problems we faced in our country when we set up a dojo, how we manage it and how we hope to be like Sensei Philip Lee been a full time involved in doing Aikido one day.
During our last day we had a morning class at 7:00am for this company call Indika, 90% of the students are from the body guard department. Training with body guard is a totally different class like what we use to have for our training, most of them are trained under other martial art back ground so their way of catching and ukemi might be a bit different and a bit hard to control, lucky I manage to handle my uke well. Of cause everyone was impress by how Sensei Philip Lee present aikido to the management and I’m very lucky and proud to be his uke for most of the class during this trip.
It was a wonderful learning trip for me; really need to thank Sensei Philip Lee for asking me over for this seminar, I manage to make new friends and open my mind bigger and see the world of Aikido in another view.
Best regard,
Bryan Loi (Hibana Bushidoo Chief Instructor)
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