Showing posts with label karate. Show all posts
Showing posts with label karate. Show all posts

Saturday, August 5, 2017

Different Types of Genius

This picture comes from the article Six Interesting Musical Facts About Albert Einstein. Seeing this article modified what I was going to write about.

Albert Einstein nicknamed his violin Lina. “As a little girl,” Einstein’s second wife Elsa once remarked, “I fell in love with Albert because he played Mozart so beautifully on the violin. He also plays the piano. Music helps him when he is thinking about his theories. He goes to his study, comes back, strikes a few chords on the piano, jots something down, returns to his study.”

The article above tells about how the musician in his family was his mother. The mother of Alexis has a PhD in music (among other things) and taught her and her twin brother to play piano. As talked about in previous posts, Alexis is a super genius. She could have gone to college at age 12, but her parents did want her going at such a young age.

She did skip some grades and is in her fourth and last year of medical school at age 22. Most people go to medical school at the ages of 23 to 27. Also Alexis is very proficient at playing the piano, organ, violin and other musical instruments. Her father is a medical doctor.

This is going to have a link to an article by Alexis about children playing with dangerous toys and the part that schools should take in controlling them. Also it will have a link to a story of when Alexis was a little girl and did a cartwheel on the roof of her house because her twin brother asked her to.

Here are some coincidences of Sheldon Cooper of The Big Bang Theory and Alexis. Sheldon Cooper also has an opposite sex twin. I saw the one introducing her. She mentioned how she had her legs wrapped around Sheldon's neck for 9 months. In September they will have a TV show with Sheldon growing up in Texas as a young boy. Also Sheldon does not drink coffee and neither does Alexis.

So while Albert Einstein was growing up and going to school he seemed just like an average student. Before I forget, here is a link to a recent article by Alexis about kids playing with recent toys. Fidget Spinners Maybe Dangerous. Also her most recent posts are about bullying so they are a must read. Here is the other article, Rooftop Gymnastics. This is great blog post. It is so real.

Now it is my turn. I, like Einstein, showed nothing spectacular in school. After my mother gave birth to me, 2 years later she gave birth to my brother. Her mother was with her every step of the way. So she asked her mother why my brother had so many problems as a baby. She said my brother was a perfectly normal baby.

She said that I was not a normal baby. I apparently skipped over some things that normal babies go threw. When I was in my crib, there was a sign on it that said "Keep me off of my stomach." When I was on my stomach, I would try to crawl and I was too young for my knees to tolerate that. Also I was born in a busy NYC hospital but was the only baby boy.

My mother would take my brother and I to the library every 3 weeks so it was entirely free. We would each leave with about 10 books. My brother and mother read only fiction. I read only non-fiction because I wanted to know things. My uncle was a PhD in chemistry so I wanted to be a chemist also. So I read the simpler books on chemistry until I got up to this current one. I was nine years old and in fourth grade.

So I was reading it outside in front of my house. My college neighbor got home and wanted to know what I was doing with his book. I told him that I borrowed it from the library and showed him the card holder in the back. He told me that he had the same book for college chemistry and many people find it challenging. He learned that I was reading it for the fun of it.

So then he asked me where I was in reading it. I showed him. He asked me some questions to see if I understood what I read. He asked to speak to my mother so I got her. He said that he was freaked out since college students struggle to understand this and I am reading it for entertainment. His world was turned upside down. Now my mother told our relatives about it. She wondered what it all meant with being such an unusual baby and also my Hebrew name that I got from my great grandfather being Tsadik which means saint or righteous one.

Wikipedia says:
Since the late 17th Century, in Hasidic Judaism, the institution of the mystical tzadik as a Divine channel assumed central importance, combining popularization of (hands-on) Jewish mysticism with social movement for the first time.[1] Adapting former Kabbalistic theosophical terminology, Hasidic thought internalised mystical experience, emphasising deveikut attachment to its Rebbe leadership, who embody and channel the Divine flow of blessing to the world.[2]
Kabbalah describes an extension of Moses in each generation, alternately identified with the Tzadik of the generation, and the potential Messiah of the generation. In Hasidism, each person's soul essence relates to the level of Moses.
I was not bullied since people knew that I was a pugilist. Now there was a guy who was bullied terribly. He did not kill himself. He is the most famous living person in the world today. He is the only person that is CEO of 2 billion dollar companies. Full time he is a rocket scientist and in his spare time he has a company that people invested $50 billion into making it bigger than GM or Ford. That is Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX.

As far as being a pugilist or fighter see How a 6 Year-Old Girl Saves Mother's Life. It tells about how Alexis saved her mother's life and it also tells how at age 16 I fought in the junior division of the Northeast United States Regional Karate Championship and won second place.

Tuesday, May 9, 2017

How a 6 Year-Old Girl Saves Mother's Life

This is not Alexis but she picked this photo of someone who looks like her

This is one of my favorite stories ever! Alexis was 6 years old and her mother had leukemia. The mother had been given the best chemotherapy available. Her husband is an M.D. But like many times, the cancer came back worse than ever. The mother needed a bone marrow transplant.

Alexis has a twin brother Matthew. She was born a minute earlier than him so she likes to refer to herself as the older sister since that really bothers her brother. She is now 22 years old and is in her third year of medical school. Most people go to medical school at ages 23 to 27 like the wife of the founder of Facebook. She graduated from Harvard University.

Also she could have skipped 3 more years of high school but her parents did not want her going to college at age 12. So make no mistake about it-- she is a super genius. Also by hanging back for years, she was able to do things with her brother and he is a third year medical student at age 22.

When the tests were done Alexis was the closest match. But the mother forbid her and her twin brother from giving bone marrow because of their young age. But the husband decided that it was worse the risk given that it would mean the twins growing up without a mother that would be a terrible hardship for them.

So now a game of subterfuge had to be created that would fool the mother that is very smart. You can read the rest of the story in the author's own words. But there is a last minute change of climax that I feel makes the story at least twice as good as it should have been. Read:


Also as an extra bonus I was going to email this story to Alexis but I decided to add it to this post so others can also enjoy it. It is about the time when I was 16 and I competed in a karate tournament. There is a junior division where everyone competes that is under the age of 18 regardless of height, weight, color of belt or gender.

It was called the Northeast United States Regional Karate Championship. My grandfather drove a couple of hours to get me there. He was like a father to me. He paid for the lessons of kenpo karate and tai chi for my brother and I.

Now the first hurdle was to get Joe (my gradfather) to sign the forms to get in. They said that no one would be held responsible if I should be injured or killed. So Joe did not want to sign them. So I told him that it was a legal formality and no one is killed at these tournaments. So he signed it.

I could have competed under the kata which is displaying your skills by yourself but I had great form and my mother taught ballet at Jouliard's. So I competed under kumite (fighting) that would be a greater challenge since I was only 5'5" tall.

At first they matched people in our division up for the first fight. There were 2 girls in our division so there were matched up with each other. If you win all 5 fights then you fight in the finals that are done on the stage in the evening. All I cared about was getting into the finals since that meant I was better than all the others.

For the first fight, they messed up the pairing of applications so I had to fight one of the girls. So at first I only blocked and people were yelling at me. Then the girl got a point on me and I realized that I could lose to a girl. So then I fought back and won. Then in the second fight, the guy lost his temper and I won the fight. Anger dulls the intelligence and the mind is the greatest weapon.

Also a weapon in the hands of a fool is a toy and a toy in the hands of a master is a weapon. A coward dies a thousand deaths but the courageous man dies only once. So I fought in the third fight and it was tougher but I won. I was shorter than the other fighters but I have very fast reflexes.

Then I fought in the fourth fight and won. Now the fifth fight was very tough. I think I had more luck than the other guy and barely won. In the finals I lost to someone that was much taller but the match was close.

My grandfather was glad that I was not killed or injured. My karate teacher was there and he was proud that I got into the finals and got a big trophy. So if you are in a fight, keeping calm and remaining alert gives you the best chance for success. Thank you for reading this. Make sure that you read the story by Alexis. She is a better writer then me but she is also a super genius. She is very proficient in playing several musical instruments. She also sings and dances in plays.

Don't mess with this 9 year old girl.



Katy Perry - Roar : Part 2 (Official Cover by 10 year-old Mariangeli from HitStreak).