Mr. Miagi's Wisdom

Have you seen The Karate Kid movie. If you haven't , well.. you should watch it. Because if you haven't, you are missing out on one of best characters onscreen "Mr. Miagi".

The character is played by Noriyuki "Pat" Morita in the karate kid series. Very few sentences are spoken by the character but they carry maximum weight, in fact you will find yourselves waiting for Mr. Miagi to say something during the movie. Although these quotes are contextual to the movie situations,  I personally think many of these gems apply to our life.  Some are old sayings from Okinawa, but mostly pure gold from Mr. Miagi.

Here is Mr.Miagi's wisdom from the movie Karate kid in no particular order.

- For person with no forgiveness in heart, living even worse punishment than death.

- Answer live inside you.

- Everything can heal, Daniel-san. Take time, patience.

- Inside you have strong root, No need nothing except what you have inside to grow.

  - Sometime animal have more sense than human.

- Anything try first time impossible, but must try.

- You know you good, that important thing.

- Never trust spiritual leader who cannot dance.

- Sometime when living caged too long, whole world seem like a very big place.

- It is stupid when neighbourhood gangs kill each other. It is stupid when countries fight war. Not stupid to respect all living things.

- Ambition without knowledge is like boat on dry land.

- Just remember. True strength come from inside.

-  Julie-san, fighting not good. But if must fight, win.

- Basic of life, Breathing. No breathe, No life.

- Never put passion before principle. Even if win, You lose.

- Someone always know more

- First learn stand, then learn fly.

- Must practise

- No such thing, Bad student. Only bad teacher.

- No call no one nothing.

- Win , lose. No matter. You make good fight, respect , then nobody bother.

- Daniel-san, nobody perfect.

- Sometime, what heart know, head forget.

- Fighting always last answer to problem

- Never stop war by taking part in one.

- Not matter who stronger. Matter who smarter.

- Best way to avoid punch, No be there.

- Daniel-san, lie become truth only when person wanna believe.

- Fighting not good, somebody always get hurt.

-  if today, Julie-san get angry. Just repeat these words. Sun is warm. Grass is green. Everything workout.

- Never keep lady waiting.

If you follow these. Miagi have hope for you

Before i go , two more dialouges  for you from the movies. There is meaning in them too. Enjoy.

1) Walk on road. Walk right side safe. Walk left side safe, walk middle "squish" . Sooner or later , you get squished like grape.  Karate do yes ok. Karate do no ok. You karate do guess so. "squish".

2) Miagi raise in small village in okinawa. At that time very bad temper bull live in pasture near village. Oh ! Bull very bad. He chase children women going shopping, farmer, everybody. Then one day big festival. Everybody happy.

Person : What the hell is that supposed to mean ?

That day bad bull become good soup.

Smart Watches. All Wrong.

The first electronic gadget that I fell in love with was a watch. I still remember it like yesterday the moment the watch, a gift from my Uncle, was given to me.It was a basic CASIO watch. Waterproof, with an alarm , stopwatch and countdown timer. It was the best thing ever. I couldn't take it off and couldn't help hoping that some one would notice and ask about the hourly beep that went off on the watch.  

Nowadays watches have become just jewelry . With so many multi-function devices around us , All of which guarantees the feature of being able to show the time, we have no need for a watch. Who needs a single function device to tell us the time when so many devices already do that for us. Right ? But I think we need the watch.   

Why ? Well I am not talking about the device that needs 21 crystals ( jewels ) to tell me what is happening right now. But the future of such watches. 

We have seen some smart watches introduced recently. My favorite being the pebble. Well, it is not what I term smart, but it definitely an improvement over the basic watch we are used to. The others such as Sony have  smart watches that can play music, allow you to read messages and email and answer calls. Neat huh !! Well it depends. 

 I call such watches dumb terminals, because that's what they are. They are terminals to access your smart phone. It is no different than your hands free that takes voice commands. This is just another way to interact with your smart phone , through a smaller screen and lesser touch area. In other words the smart watch is just a digital watch without an accompanying smart phone. 

What I look forward to is a true smart watch. Some where along the way we lost it. Lets go back in time. Does any one remember Giant robot ? Johnny Sokko could say commands into his phone and Voila we have a robot shooting missiles out of its fingertips. OK, I know a robot minion is too much to ask for, but still totally awesome.  

The point is a watch was a effective communication device . A handy device ( pun intended ). The concept of a watch or watch like device that is used a communicator has been a well established one in science fiction. Damn it, even power rangers have one. The alien in predators was envisioned to be advanced enough to control space ships, vision sensors ( way more advanced than google glass) , gun turrets and packs a punch with a self destruct bomb. Although the interface seems to be a version of alien Symbian OS, it definitely was envisioned as  a device to do many things. But still all we see is dumb watches called smart watches. Why can't we take cue from science fiction for ideas on this. 

The small screen is practically useless for touch screen usage and to display anything worthwhile. They are useless with out the accompanying smartphone since they don’t have connectivity of their own. How difficult would it be to put a SIM on one of those watches ? Of course the problems such as device heating up, and radiation  would have to addressed since the device would always in touch with the body.  

Why haven't we seen a true smart watch yet ? The voice commands technology and the Artificial Intelligence behind it has improved so much that we could forego touch or use it as a secondary way to provide input. Imagine Google glass like device sans the squint eye possibility, that you can speak to instead of fiddle around. When you are using the Smart watch, it should feel as capable as your smart phone just that your palms are facing the other way. May be a smart glass makes more sense than a watch since Voice over and Voice out is also taken care.  

There are rumors about Google, Apple and Microsoft working on a smart watch. What would you expect out of a smart watch. Can it be a efficient device now that hand held devices can do so much more? If it is just another extension to your smart phones then I would be very disappointed. We will have to wait and "watch".