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?

Coffeeshop Talk

Today at the coffeeshop, I asked the auntie why she is glum and she retorted that she didn't strike 4D (lottery) and therefore there is no cause to smile. I asked if she had noticed if the people queuing up at 4D shops smile, but she didn't reply.

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It is common to see people looking glum in Singapore because they have not struck lottery. Compulsive gamblers become perpetually glum.

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I have two lady friends who have divorced their husband because of the latter's addiction to gambling. And these are educated men in respectable professions, one a teacher and the other a policeman, both fallen to the devil of greed.

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Recently, there is a rich man who lost 26 million dollars within 3 days in a casino in Singapore. It must have been a great pain and suffering for his family and him. It hurts me just thinking of it. More so in this case, as he is someone I know and went to the same kindergarten class in our early years.

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Gambling is a social ill. For one to win, many have to lose. Stay away from it.

High Spirits

When I came home a few days ago, a bottle of freshly harvested papaya wine exploded, splattering the wine and shattered glass all over the place. After cleaning them up, I opened the other bottles to release the pressure to avert another explosion and the first bottle popped like a high pressure jet splashing its contents all over my face, shooting up to the ceiling and messing the place all over again!

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Then as I thought the worst was over, a bottle slipped off the fridge and smashed itself into bits, as I was trying to make space there. What a mess!

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What went 'wrong' was that I had followed the recipe without understanding the reasons behind each step properly. Stirring the ferment every morning is to allow the resulting carbon dioxide to escape and not form pressure in the fluid. What I didn't understand was that besides tasting the fermenting wine, I should also be checking the effervescence in the fluid, to judge if they are ready to be bottled. And so, I had foolishly loaded the fluid together with the residual sugar waiting to convert to alcohol and carbon-dioxide that was to blow up its vessel.

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The second lesson I learned from the incident is that no matter what, I should not to be stressed up. If I had been more relaxed and mindful, I wouldn't have let the bottle slipped from the fridge and smashed up on the floor. If I had been cool about it, I could have even taken some pixs for this blog post before cleaning the mess up. It was quite a scene and would have made fascinating photographic material. :)

Side notes:

Brewing wine is fun! Witnessing, tasting and understanding the fermentation process first hand is fun!

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Like human beings, different types of fruits have different nature and therefore behaves differently though put through the same process. Some become explosive faster while others have gentler ways of dissipating pressure.

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In other words, be mindful and know what you are brewing everyday and remember to stay cool so that you can enjoy the fruits of your harvest. It applies not only to making wine!

Technology - The Straggling Bus and a Non-stop Express Train

Innovative proposals from China...
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No time is wasted. The bullet train is moving all the time.

If there are 30 stations between Beijing and Guangzhou, just stopping and accelerating again at each station

will waste both energy and time.A mere 5 min stop per station (elderly passengers cannot be hurried) will result in a total loss of 5 min x 30 stations or 2.5 hours of train journey time!

The Chinese are innovative enough to come up with a non-stopping train concept. When the train arrives at a station, it will not stop at all.

The passenger at a station embarked onto to a connector cabin way before the train even arrive at the station.

When the train arrives, it will not stop at all. It just slows down to pick up the connector cabin which will move with the train on the roof of the train.

While the train is still travelling away from the station, those passengers will board the train from the connector cabin mounted on the train's roof.

After fully unloading all its passengers, the cabin connector cabin will be moved to the back of the train so that the next batch of outgoing passengers who want to alight at the next station will board the connector cabin at the rear of the train roof.

When the train arrives at the next station, it simply drops the whole connector cabin at the station itself and leaves it behind at the station.

The outgoing passengers can take their own time to disembark at the station while the train had already left.

At the same time, the train will pick up the incoming embarking passengers on another connector cabin in the front part of the train's roof.

So the train will always drop one connector cabin at the rear of its roof and pick up a new connector cabin in the front part of the train's roof at each station.

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Read also PRT