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.
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