Constantly Examined

Heyo everyone, this weeks blog is about how things won't always go the way we want, and sometimes we have to compromise where we can, other times we just gotta keep out heads high and do what's more mandatory over what we would rather do.

Now, I've mentioned this several times in my previous blogs, but for anyone who hasn't read them, my course load this semester contains four core subjects (yes, another post about Simons school work.) So far, 2 months into the sem, I'm doing rather well, all things considered. I'm sitting at about a 90 in my social, marine bio and chem, and my English is, uh, slightly lower then a 90 (cough 70 cough). But with that aside, I'm happy with where I'm at so far. Theres only one thing I don't quite like. The frequency of homework and tests.

With the four cores comes a steady flow of homework, and a test every few days. Even though I'm doing well, one of my personal requirements is to improve my study habits, so I have been commiting time into reviewing and gaining a stronger understanding of my material. However, as a result of this, my time to train in Kung Fu has been getting cut short to make up for the extra studying and homework. I've chosen to stay home and study over attending Monday/Wednesday advanced adult classes several times, a class I had decided that I would keep attending even after my promotion to Sihing.

Now, you can ask me under any circumstance. My answer will always be the same. If I had to choose between the mats and the books, I would take the mats. Every time. However, one thing that gets emphasized at the Kwoon is that the necessities to life (family, education, etc) should take priority. I value my education, and therefore I continue with my studying. Yet having a test everyday or two, it starts to become an irritating reason that seems to be consciously holding me back from attending classes. On Wednesday, I was going to sit down and study for a unit test in Marine Biology and an evaluation on the first two acts of Macbeth, yet I had already missed Monday's class and the whole week before, so I decided to put the studying aside and go to class instead. The result? Paranoid me was studying till past midnight, but I still felt better after going to class.

It's hard to admit sometimes, but every once in a while we have to acknowledge that we're going to have to sacrifice the much more preferred option for the much more mandatory option. However, we can't get carried away, and proceed to neglect either. It's a fine balance between necessary and preferred, and about compromising to keep the balance

Sorry this weeks blog was so messy everyone, I couldn't quite figure out how to say what I was trying to. I think everyone gets the general gist though.

The Science of a Dragon

Heyo everyone, this weeks blog is about how sometimes all of the answers aren't  in the same place or where we expect them to be, and we have to go outside the box to find what we are looking for.

As I've mentioned in previous blogs, one of my classes this semester is Marine Biology. Now, despite popular belief, Marine Bio isn't all about dolphins and whales and turtles. Its mostly about the classification of animals (specifically marine animals) and the evolutionary developments each animal has experienced to evolve into what it is today. Our teacher gave us a project last Thursday to help strengthen our understanding of these concepts, and its quite an interesting one. We get to create or reuse a non-existent, mythical creature, and from there, classify it based on its structures, and explain the evolutionary reasons for each of the said structures. While several groups came up with their own species, my group went with a less original but equally awesome pick, a dragon.

Now, explaing all of the features of the dragon wasn't toooo difficult. A lot of them were rather basic features that could be explained through other species. A dragon would be categorized under the phylum Chordata, and then the class Reptilia. Most people are familiar with the base classes (Reptilia, Mammalia, Aves (birds), Insecta and Amphibia). Based on this, it was easy to explain features like wings, where species from Mammalia, Aves and Insecta were all capable of growing wings, so why couldn't something from the Reptilia? They would be useful for diving into water, looking for large fish, in which the gills of the dragon played part, and the sensitivity of the eye was developed so it could see its prey from a distance. All of these were rather easy to explain. Then we reached the difficult part. The fire breath.

We haven't worked out the evolutionary aspect of the fire breath yet, mostly as we are still trying to figure out the function part of it yet. How could we secrete an extremely combustable and oxidizing chemical inside a 10ft, half ton flying reptile? Well, turns out if you search that on Google, you don't get a lot of answers. So we went to our teacher about it, who had no idea. In a place where answers exist everywhere, we were running out of places to look. After several Google searches and even looking through a book (yes, a book) of biologically produced chemicals, we nearly decided to scrap the fire breath. Then it donned on me that the answer wasn't in the biology classroom, but next door, in the chemistry classroom (hm. Who would have guessed.) Next block, I consulted my chemistry teacher about the matter and turns out there was several possibilities, and boom. We were smooth sailing again.

Looking at Kung Fu, no one person does it exactly the same. We all have different styles and methods, different ways of moving and different ways thinking. We know the Kwoon is a school, but from the outside it resembles more of one of those old one roomed schools from way back when. What someone from the outside doesn't see is that the Kwoon is actually like  a several roomed facility, with everyone in it having a different lesson to share, a different thing we can teach. The best way to learn is to learn from different people, to receive a variety of knowledge. This is a big thing to remember when making a form, or even learning a form. Next time you reach a block in the road, remember, ask around. Sometimes the most valuable knowledge can be found in the most unexpected place.

Blind Super-Vision

Heyo everyone, this weeks blog is about time and progress, and how we can use the past to help the future.

Time. Its a funny thing that has sparked several conspiracies and arguments throughout its existance, but thats not what I'm here to talk about. Time is what marks our journey, and not just Kung Fu. It can be a milestone, a marker, a due date, every little thing in our life revolves around time. Yet we can only experience so little of it at a time. I'm on the younger end of the stick of the IHC team, and yet I've still lived over 16 full years. In each of those 16 years, 51 weeks. In each of those 51 weeks, 7 days. 24 hours in a day. 60 minutes in an hour. 60 seconds in a minute. That calculates (look at me go, doing math two blogs in a row) to approximately 493,516,800 seconds that I have experienced, existed in, used up. I can look back on all of them, through recordings and photos and memories, and learn from them. Use them to improve. I can see 493,516,800 seconds into the past. But I can't even begin to comprehend 1 second into the future.

Thats just it. Time is blind super-vision. We all walk the same time based journey. We can take a few seconds to turn around and look at this vast road that winds and turns and dips and rises, that crosses oceans and climbs over mountains, that travels through canyons and trails between forests. A vast journey in which we have already walked. And after those few seconds of looking so far back, youre already a few steps farther down the trail. When you look ahead, its fog, right in front of you. No way you can see past it. And with every step you take, it inches back, and so our journey continues. Now, if I gave you the opportunity to walk blindly into a dangerous world where anything can happen, not knowing what lies right in front of you, you may think it seems ridiculous and crazy. But thats what life is. We can't anticipate a car accident that claims the life of a loved one, or tripping over a rock and breaking an ankle, or a surprise visit from a friend you havent seen since highschool, or winning the lottery. What comes out of that fog is uncertain. It can be good or it can be bad. Some of it we're just going to shrug off. Some of it will shape who we are for the rest of our lives.  So we gotta be ready for anything.

We can take this concept, and use it to look at our Kung Fu. When my martial arts journey began about 7/8 years ago, I was in a large class. My physique was small, I was much different. When we look at that, no one put any thought into where we would be in 8 years. We were a class full of small kids, sparking with energy, happy to do Kung Fu, raring to go. And I was the new guy at the back. The person who looked around and thought "wow. Look at all these kids, all with the same interest as me." And us as small children would talk about everyone getting their black belts and being cool and great. That was our expectation. But when I peer back now, I don't recall anybody from that are class still attending the Kwoon. I didn't anticipate being the only person to keep going. But here I am. All the way down the path. Where my fellow kids class companions went, I couldnt tell you. Our paths split long ago. But with that, my path joined with others. And so it will continue. The everlasting path, where it will take us, who knows? As the band AJR states in one of their songs; "Who are we to wonder where we're going?"

All the little things

Heyo everyone, this weeks blog is about the little things in life, and how they build up if we dont pay attention to them

About five years ago (ish) I developed a sensitivity to gluten. If I consume too much of it within a few days, I tend to get sick. However, I'm not completely allergic to it. I can still eat it in small quantities and its like nothing ever happened. Knowing this, I can actively avoid large amounts of gluten, and hence avoid getting sick. I know not to eat a box of doughnuts or a pizza or a bun or some cake, because of how much gluten is in it. Its things like crackers that get me. Ill have one cracker because "its not too bad" and that goes to "another one won't hurt" to eating a whole box. And then I go on to get sick, I regret eating a box of crackers, about a month later I go and do it again, etc etc.

This concept of the little things slipping under us and slowly building can be seen in our numbers for the IHC team. We go from doing, say, 180 push ups a day, then one day we say "maybe 170 won't hurt". We do our 170 day, then continue to do 180. Then we go "that 10 I didnt do didnt really matter much, did it." So now you only do 170 a day. Well, by the end of the week, your numbers are short 60 pushups then what they would have been. Still not too bad. After a month, thats 300 less then what it could have been. Not too horrible, but I mean, Id rather have that 300. Then, after a year of doing 170 instead of 180, youre out 3600 pushups, which is only 7.2% of your pushups in a year. It doesnt seem like too much, but that 7.2% could really come handy if you get sick for a week and are stuck in bed. That 7.2% is more then you think.

So why wouldn't we do just 10 more pushups every night right before bed? 10 pushups seems doesn't seem like a lot, so why wouldn't we just do the 10? Well, it's the same reason I eat that one cracker. It seems like it doesn't really do much. It doesn't really matter. But little things start piling and then you have a mountain of little things and it looks a wee bit more menacing.

So next time you go ahead to think "a little bit doesn't hurt" step back and try to picture what 50 of those little bits look like, because its better to plan ahead then to be realizing it too late. Thats all for this weeks post, see ya next time