Bucky Group - Shock Incarceration

25th September 2010

This Saturday, we started our session with a Skype connection with Dr Cherie Clark from Albany, New York State. In true blue Bucky Group impromptu style, with some of us still munching our breakfast and others probably didn't know what was going on in the beginning when we were merely exchanging pleasantries.

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However, it didn't take long before we learn of Dr Clarke's impressive programme called "Doing Life", which she taught to inmates of several Correctional Institutions in the US, to help rehab them. Dr Cherie has adapted Bucky's Synergetics: the 12 degrees of Freedom, which are 6 positives and 6 negatives into the programme. To date, 42,000 inmates have graduated from her programme with a very high success rate, since 1987. This programme has since spread to five states in the US.

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The programme is tough. It is 16 hours a day, 7 days a week for 6 full months! Not for the feeble minded! The inmates though have the motivation to complete it and do well because they will get their sentence reduced from 3 years to 6 months. This saves the prisons a lot of money every year and transform the inmates back to useful citizens in the mainstream of society.

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For the video about the "Doing Life", click here.

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More about 12° Of Freedom: Synergetics and the 12 Steps to Recovery, click here.

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Bucky said, "Everyone is born a genius, but the process of living de-geniuses them."

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AND

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"... reform the environment instead of trying to reform human."

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So, by accepting that the inmates too are geniuses, the programme seeks to re-genius them. This has been well demonstrated and 42,000 graduates from the programme can attest to that.

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The Golden Palm Tree

An Extract from "The Making of the Golden Palm Tree", author Michael Chua

The world population has risen steeply, since the Second World War, due to the conquest of many diseases, increased food production and improved sanitation and hygiene. Alongside this population boom, came the impetus to develop houses, hospitals, schools, factories, etc to serve the increased population. This rapid urbanization in the last century has burned a trail of damages to the environment which we now see is causing climate change and mayhem in some nations.

While we need to continue to develop life supporting wealth to humankind, it is timely that development has to be done in tandem with nature and perpetually balanced with nature to achieve continued harmony and prosperity.

Harmony with nature is of paramount importance as humankind is part of nature and therefore ought to flow with the pace and rhythm of nature. It is amid the natural rhythm and balance that we find bliss.

The Golden Palm Tree has funded the Sepang Gold Coast Environmental Interpretive Centre for the protection of wild life around Sepang. Even before the construction of the resort, it has already contributed to the cleaning up and replanting programme of mangrove samplings along the (river) Sungai Sepang. These mangrove plants have been around for thousands of years. Mangrove swamps protect our coastal line at Sepang Gold Coast and also forms an important habitat for biodiversity.

The rivers at Sepang are now clean from debris and flotsams, thanks to the hard work of the boatman, our guide and the hired cleaners. It is through involving the common people in the cleaning process that the environment can be protected.

I asked the guide at the mangrove river boat ride how he would urge people to protect the environment and he said that he would ask people to treat the environment as their home. “How would you like it if other people come to your home and destroy your home? You wouldn’t like that, so do the same for the wild life at Sepang. As the environment is beautiful, it will attract more tourists to the place and bring prosperity to your business…”

It is through young men like this guide that more will step forward to protect these mangrove swamps and coast lines, which are the habitat of many creatures like the otters, sea eagles, kingfishers, egrets, mud skippers and the ubiquitous colourful blue swimmer crabs. You can see these wonderful creatures and more when you hop on the mangrove river ride. Then, you will also have the chance to plant a mangrove sapling by the river bed and do your part in protecting the environment.

The Golden Palm Tree is designed as an ecologically friendly resort with energy saving insulation building materials, water treatment plants and building the sea villas on raised stilt platforms with minimum disturbance to marine life. The raised platforms have become an artificial reef offering shelter to the marine life beneath. Fishermen at Sepang Gold Coast have said that there are now more fishes in the sea since the resort is constructed.

All these environmentally friendly installations added significant costs to the resort and savings can only be realised after many years. This means that ecologically sustainable development essentially requires long term commitment.

Besides the infrastructure, the other half of ecological sustainability is the service and training to hire locally and scout for local farms as their food suppliers.

As a result, the local cottage industries are now bracing themselves to get ready for more tourists. The local famous Seafood Bak-Kut-Teh (seafood pork rib soup) is already serving two bus loads of tourists every other day. Others like a local bird nest farm has decided to set up a showroom and visitor centre for tourists to understand and appreciate the process of harvesting bird nests and the health benefits of consuming them. They are also clearing parking lots for anticipated tour coaches coming to their showroom. Local fruit farms, fish, prawn and crab farms that are already suppliers to the resort’s restaurants will also see increased demands when Sepang Gold Coast ‘food paradise’ is completed. This will bring you the best chefs and restaurants in the region, so that you can wine and dine in the idyllic settings of the sea.

In the world of large corporations and institutional finance, cottage industries offer us a softer and gentler side of commerce in a more human scale, where products can be designed and packaged closer to the customers’ tastes and lifestyles.

Together with the resort, the restored environment and these cottage industries, the heritage of the people in the Klang Valley can be conserved for the many generations to come and enjoy.

For other articles of the Golden Palm Tree, click here.

Coffeeshop Talk - Jailhouse Rock

My regular coffeeshop is in a dilapidated state. The collective owners are not refurbishing their properties because they were trying to get it sold en-bloc. In Singapore, you may get a rich developer offering you a sum of money you cannot refuse. It happens, but sometimes it happens not.

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As I was at the back of the shop, I struck up a conversation with a young chap smartly dressed in long sleeves and a tie (that is an effort amid the tropical heat and humidity), about the state of the shop. We spoke about the previous attempt for the estate to go 'en-bloc'.

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Young Chap: They are en-bloc-ed right?

Me: No. The last attempt failed. There is height restrictions here, so it is not very attractive for the developer. They were trying to make a holiday resort here, when there is a popular one, run by the unions (NTUC) called Downtown East, barely a few kilometres away. Besides, you don't build a resort literally opposite a prison.

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Young Chap: Yes agree, the prisoners won't be coming out to visit the resort.

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I almost burst out laughing, but realised he was stuck in his rigid left-brain logic and sombre about his remark. *LOL*

Bucky Group - Herbal Garden Tour

I love Bucky Group outings and this is one of the best so far. This week, we visited Mr Tan's Herbal Garden by Block 938, Jurong West Street 91.

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It looks like any ubiquitous HDB (public housing) cluster of apartment blocks in Singapore - neat, dense and colorful with activities on the front green.

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Sandwiched between two apartment block is Mr Tan's tiny plot of herbal garden, remarkable in land scarce and straitjacket Singapore. This herbal garden is a project of the Resident Committee (RC). I heard that there are other such gardens in Singapore, also similarly projects of RCs.

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The one standing with the blue shirt is Mr Tan. He is here busy explaining to the Bucky Group the virtues of various plants and how we can use them to heal rheumatism, cardio-vascular problems and even cancer. He has asked me not to blog about specific herbs and their usages, as he does not want people following them blindly to get sick and getting him into trouble. If you want any specific advice, you can go to the garden itself to meet him. All herbs are free for your collection.

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Here, we were under the shed, just like in a kampung (village) amid high rise urban dwellings. The green canopy are passion fruit vines.

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The garden is grown in permaculture style - the crops mixed randomly. This way, the soil nutrients get naturally recycled and the menace of pests minimised. Pests get confused when they smell varied kinds of crops coming from different directions and eventually die out.

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Many of the herbs are common plants, many looking like weeds. In fact, some of them are commonly considered as weeds! Perhaps we haven't been giving enough respect to 'weeds'! More appropriately, I would now consider a 'weed' as a plant whose virtues are yet to be discovered. You may like to say the same of human beings in the same demeanor or predicament. :)

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Can you spot any plant you know? Among the common ones, you can see papaya, guava and 'wild yam'.

The Herbal Garden is tilled entirely by volunteers. This must be uniquely Singaporean, having a tiny plot in the midst of urban dwelling, tended by volunteers and the crops given away for free! What is more surprising is that generally hardly anything else in this crass materialistic country comes free!

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One of the Bucky Group member told me after visiting the garden that he now feels there is still some hope for Singapore. I guess he meant hope of having caring and compassionate people around. I think there is always hope. Even the cut-and-thrusts of a staunch market economy such as ours, has its precessionary effects.

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Bees go around sucking nectar out of flowers, but in the process they pollinate plants. This is a 'precessionary effect'.

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Bucky said that no matter what, we are at least in a sub-conscious evolution and that the intention should be to move from that to a conscious evolution of the human consciousness. The latter being faster to save humankind from degradation.

These fruits are called "mountain grapes" in Chinese. This is one herb that the consumer must consume with correct advice and caution as it may not be suitable for some, like pregnant ladies.

I don't know the name of this plant. It must have a scientific Latin name. In fact, all the herbs in this garden have scientific names and therefore are nothing new. What is new to the layman are their usage as medicinal herbs. This blue flower in the pix, by the way, is less than 1 cm in diameter.

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It's beautiful isn't it, what nature brings? Those fine filaments are less than a millimetre thick.

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This tiny leaf tastes sweet when you chew on it and even leaves a sweet after taste.

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Some of the herbs are dried out before consumption.

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Hereon, the pixs are eye candy for this post. I do not know their names and their uses. Even if I do know their usage I still would not leave any advice here. However, if you know the common names or the scientific names of the plants, please leave a comment below.

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Before we left the garden, one of the volunteers came with a plant uprooted from another sister garden in another estate, to be planted in Mr Tan's garden. For this plant it is the roots that are medicinal.

We are now finished with this garden and are heading for the garden at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) nearby.

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If you are coming to Mr Tan's garden and don't know the way, just navigate from this church. Home for the sexy singing pastor Ho Yeow Sun aka "China Wine" - Jurong West's other famous product! :)

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This is the start of the NTU garden.

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Beside it is a map with the various crops labeled in Chinese.

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Though within the perimeters of a public tertiary institution, the volunteers here are very traditionally Chinese in their practice. Their first ritual is to pray to the Toa Pei Kong deity before they start work. Kind of a respect to the land.

It is a scenic lovely plot of land on a hillock.

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You can see the Bucky Groupies engulfed by the serenity of the countryside.

Here, unlike Mr Tan's plot, the crops are neatly planted in their own beds. This is so that they can easily be identified and harvested for systematic clinical studies by the university academic staff.

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It is indeed a lovely Saturday morning. Time well spent. The knowledge gained was overwhelming. It is enlightening to know that illnesses can simply be healed through traditional herbs without surgery and the chemical side effects of drugs. Western developed countries are learning a lot about these herbs and are now making capsules out of them. It'll take a long time for me to learn more about these plants. Some of the Bucky Group members come here more frequently and understands more. Some got their ailments healed taking the herbs. I was told that one of the volunteers here had a brain tumour and got healed taking these herbs. He was there tilling the earth when we arrived.

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What is most amazing is the dedication of the volunteers and their big heart of giving away everything free. I feel honoured just being associated with these kind souls.

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For more of the Bucky Group, click here.

Coffeeshop Talk - The Simple Things in Life

Today at my local coffeeshop, I saw the aunty preparing empty condensed milk cans for customers to take-away coffee or tea in. This was popular in the old days in Singapore up till the late 70s. After that, coffee stalls prefer to use plastic bags or polystyrene foam cups. The prepared cans certainly look quaint and nostalgic and so I took some photos of them. The aunty was surprised and remarked that only rich people can be fascinated by things like that.

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"Why is that so?" I asked.

"It is only when you are rich, stomach full and have nothing to worry about that you appreciate such simple things," she replied.

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"But one does not need to be rich to appreciate the simple things in life," I said.

"Yes, but people are not like that nowadays," she retorted.

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Then, she told me that her neighbours' children on their first salary (of mere SGD3,000/month) went off to buy a car, spend all their salary away every month, then ask their parents for money. How times have changed! In my time, with whatever little we have, we still give monthly allowance to our parents. Then, these neighbour's children gone on to have extravagant weddings in 5-star hotels, expensive photo shoots, honeymoon, luxury apartment, and got divorced after their second kid. Isn't it akin to running on treadmills?

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One doesn't need to be rich to appreciate the little simple things in life. Just looking at the tin cans reminded me of my childhood and the lifestyle of that time. It is a beautiful feeling, and hence the photos. Besides, I am not anywhere as rich as they think I am. So one can be financially poor to appreciate the simple things in life!

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Perhaps parents in Singapore are too busy working and making money instead of imparting values to their children. As a result, children grow up adoring money and material wealth. After some time, they think that material wealth is all that matters. It is said in jest that when a man is poor, he longs to find a wife and when he becomes rich, he divorces his wife!

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I told the coffeeshop aunty that my nieces and nephews are lucky as their mother stayed at home to bring them up and so they are inculcated with moral values from young. They love the family and gravitate towards home to be with everyone. If home is where love is, kids will gravitate towards it to find their serenity. Such serenity secures them and cushions them against the onslaught of the daily harsh materialism we commonly find in our societies.

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Then just before I left the coffeeshop, she marveled that I am well educated and therefore need not take into buying 4D (the weekly lottery). I couldn't believe what I heard at that instance, so I merely shook my head in reflection and left.

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The Power of Numbers - The Secret Letter Box

Straits Times article 7 September 2010.

A peddlar of illegal contraband (un-taxed and smuggled) cigarettes was caught hiding his merchandise in a public housing (HDB) flat letter box. Notice that the letter box number is "10-5111".

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According to numerology...

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10-51-11 breaks down to:

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1 = Lone initiative

51= Obstacle alone (meaning he gets through his obstacle alone).

11= Alone alone (meaning that it is a lone operation).

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10-51-11 adds to

1-62

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62 = "money talks", well why else would he be up to no-good?

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1-62 further adds to

1-8

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8= Stress

1-8= Alone Stressed!

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1-8 finally adds to

9 = Business

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In summary, this is a lone operation where he had an obstacle of hiding his merchandise for the sake of making money. This stressed him and he runs it as a business.

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Mere coincidence?