Well, we were very fortunate this weekend and escaped the full-force effects of a hurricane here in the islands.  Hurricane watching is one of those activities that really makes one aware of how relatively helpless we are, when pitted against the full force of severe weather.  The hurricane (typhoon, cyclone) pretty much goes wherever it will go, and all we can do is hope and pray.  Last time, we’re told that the high volcanic mountains on the island of Hawaii helped break up Hurricane Iselle.  This go-around, we were apparently protected by a ridge of high pressure just north of the island.  The impact we were left with has been a steady fall of rain over the past couple of days.   These weather events tend to bring back memories of similar times in one’s life.  My earliest attempt at humor that I can recall (I was three or four) was  while being carried by my dad to the car for a dental appointment.  It was lightly drizzling and I kept on telling him, “Hey dad, it’s grizzling!”.  I had recently learned about grizzly bears in association with Davy Crockett – and thought I was making a good joke by [...]

I’ve often said that our time in the training dojo is finite; and whether we like it or not, we will all experience that one last opportunity to practice the art of Karate-Do. For some, it’ll be a declining level of interest, or perhaps replacement by a new hobby, while others will simply become too busy with conflicting activities. Even for those whose love of the art never wanes, however, the onset of health issues and very mortality of life will some day culminate in a final training session. This is why our (ahem) older members relish suiting up for practice and savoring the stretching/exertion/sweat that really benefits their minds and bodies. It speaks to their self-motivation, but also means that they’re still healthy enough to attend class. I hope that we never take our training time together for granted. Speaking of time, when we hear the term, The Relativity of Time, we usually think about the legendary Albert Einstein. It was he who formulated the theories describing the relationship between the universe’s constant – the speed of light – and time itself. That, as one’s speed approaches that of light (186,300 miles per second), one’s time relative to the [...]

Things are not always what they seem. Sometimes, the lessons we learn as the gospel truth, later turn out to be true, but only within a certain context. For example, a simple word will usually have more than one meaning. One of the earliest instances of multiple meanings I can recall is the number 2, which we learn is, “two”, but also sounds like “to”, and “too” too (haha). But that is not not what I meant by the title “one plus one doesn’t always equal two”. Waaay back, about 50 years ago, we seventh graders were all surprised when they started teaching us the “New Math” (precursor to higher mathematics back in the sixties) and first heard about the binary system (so important to computer language today). On the first day, our teacher stated that in some instances, 1 plus 1 didn’t equal 2! We all wondered how could that be? As most adults know, the rules for the binary system are not necessarily the same as the conventional decimal system that kids are familiar with (kids, the binary system only contains 0’s and 1’s, haha). And that was just the first of so many revelations in our later [...]