Bucky Group - Changing Education Paradigms

23rd October 2010

This Saturday, we listened to a speech given at the RSA by Sir Ken Robinson, world-renowned education expert and recipient of the RSA Benjamin Franklin award.

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A lot of what he says resonates with what Bucky said, that "Everyone is born a genius, but the process of living de-geniuses them." Evidently, as in Ken's speech, toddler kids score 98% in the genius test and got worse as they grew older.

As an exercise for 'divergent thinking', Joo Hock gave us each an A4 size paper and asked if we could make a loop out of it that is big enough to go around our body. That is, without the aid of sticky tape and staples. I told Joo Hock that I have already done this before and he asked me to think of another way of doing it.

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We come back to the results later...

The famous author and futurist Alvin Toffler mentioned about the factory style production of education in his book "The Third Wave" in the 1970s and in "Revolutionary Wealth" in the 2000s. In the factory system, everyone starts at the same age, do the same curriculum and take the same tests. This was to turn farm hands to factory hands in the face of the industrial revolution. More about "Revolutionary Wealth", click here.

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This system also assumes that everyone is destined to be an intellectual with the ultimate achievement of becoming a university professor. In other words, some will be called 'smart' and some 'stupid'.

Bucky mentioned in the 1970s that universities of the future would be production studios for educational documentaries. Today, we find lots of these educational documentaries in Youtube and other video hosting portals. MIT and some other Ivy League universities have also uploaded their lectures and lecture notes to the Internet for anyone to download for free!

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Then you have oddball groups, like the Bucky Group, going on an informal lifelong learning journey, by gathering in a hair salon every week to learn something from books, videos and each other.

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Now, here comes the contentious part about ADHD...

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Reflections-on-Ken-Robinson’s-talk
By K E Pang

Registered Educaion Therapist, Assoc Fellow, DAS RETA;

MSc, PGDipEd, BSocSc(Hons), BA.

I agree with his point that we need to reform education due to economic and cultural reasons. I also agree that we need to relook the way we classify human capacity into “academic vs non-academic” and the myth of the “abstract – theoretical – vocational” conception.

Definitely, education should cater to different individuals. But this is not new. About 2,500 years ago, Confucius in China already propounded to “teach according to the material/talent (witty pun too).”
It is true that current public education marginalizes millions of children. While he seem to suggest that all those millions are children with ADHD conditions, I’d like to add that those labeled ADHD are just some of those marginalized, but not the only one. There are others like those with conditions of Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, Autistic spectrum, etc.

There may be some cases of ADHD where drugs may not be the best solution, and may be overused. However, in extreme cases, it is necessary for the safety of others. In have come across several children with severe ADHD coupled with violent tendencies that they actually posed a safety hazard to people around them (children and adults alike) on a daily basis. It was only on days they were sedated that the other children felt safe from harm. Fortunately, most cases of ADHD were not like that.
In his presentation, Ken Robinson appear to tacitly privilege divergent thinking and creativity over other capacities. Divergent thinking and creativity per se, without balance from other capacities may not be very helpful. There are also other capacities like the ability to focus, and act, that are also important for work to get done. Thus the value of convergent thinking and deductive reasoning still have their places for survival and daily living.
In the experiment he quoted on the genius in divergent thinking, he noted that divergent thinking seem to deteriorate with age. He attributed the deterioration to education. However, without proof cited, that is just a speculation.

We know from research that influences on the individual from the mass media and peers are just as strong, if not much stronger, than education institutions. Moreover, brain studies show that there are developmental phases in our physiology that our brain cells and their connections go through pruning – a process of cutting down the very connections that is linked to divergent thinking. Perhaps the causes of deterioration in divergent thinking lay elsewhere?
Ken Robinson seemed to contradict himself towards the end. e.g. he mentioned some individuals study best in solitude, some in small groups, some etc... yet, in his closing remark he mentioned that most learning happen in groups.

This may or may not be the case, for we know some of the most important and profound insights were done in solitude. Especially knowledge of intellect and of emotions. wisdom...which is more than both. Jesus spent years in the wilderness. Buddha attained his enlightenment in solitude meditation under the Bodhi tree.
Moreover, learning in groups may be heaven for some of the ADHDs, but it would be a torture chamber for those on the autistic spectrum, or other individuals who just learn best in solitude.

In that case, was he not just imposing another set of ideas onto what is?

Discussion:

About Answers

Monica: Teachers in schools tend to have a 'correct' answer for every question they ask. This does not allow the students to think that there are more than one answer to a question.

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My Experiment as a Teacher

That is why when I was a lecturer in a local Polytechnic, I refused to have multiple-choice questions as it gives the impression that one of the four suggested answers is absolutely right and the other three are entirely wrong. This does not closely reflect reality. Usually, there are more than four alternative answers and sometimes, all of them are 'wrong' or not ideal.

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The other category I took out from the exams the privilege to choose the questions the student would like to answer. Again, we often do not have the privilege to ignore questions that we face in real life. So I insisted on all questions to be answered.

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As I was teaching a security course, all questions were scenario based. That meant that a scenario was given and the student had to assess what to do given the scenario and to state all assumptions if required.

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For some questions, I went a step further to ask the student to identify the question (or problem) in the scenario, and that marks will be awarded to the explanation of why the student think that was the question given the scenario. Isn't this a common situation where observations are made, and yet the real question is elusive?

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Naturally, I was not popular, as the students were all working adults from 35 to 45 years old, holding responsible positions and educated in the traditional route learning system. I realised that when they interrupted my lesson to tell me that what I spoke of at that moment and what was displayed on the slides were not identical. They also asked which page of the notes I was referring to. They had expected speech, slides and notes to be all perfectly synchronised. I told them not to worry about the slides and only to refer to the notes when they get home, but right at the moment, they were supposed to listen, understand or ask questions. That didn't quite work out.

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More challenges arose in the assignments, one of them which was supposed to build a data centre on the crest of a hillock. As they were used to accept knowledge from books wholesale without questioning, some of them mentioned in their assignments that "precautions must be taken to make sure that the data centre site is not flooded during a rain..."; another mentioned that "precautions have to be taken against pipes freezing and bursting...", even given that the site is in sunny tropical Singapore!

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At this point, Joo Hwa said that the student was 'correct' about the flood, as we learned that in our nursery rhyme, that "Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water...". "Aren't they supposed to go DOWN the hill to fetch a pail of water?" Come to think of it, yeah, nobody questioned, myself included!!!

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In another assignment, I asked the students to pick up any two brands of a security device, then evaluate and compare their usefulness and explain why they choose one over the other. Many of them couldn't do that. They are used to receiving information and treating them as gospel truth. Now with the democratisation of information, they were unable to discern and discriminate. A skill that urgently need to be taught in school - this is suggested by Alvin Toffler in his book "Revolutionary Wealth", as in the Internet age, students no longer learn only from teachers. The result of the assignment was that I got many assignments that merely cut and pasted a table of data of product A, and another table of data of product B, without commentary.

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However, there were two activities that worked quite well, so not all was futile. One was the role play exercise, where I simulated a scenario of a security intrusion and that they were to react to the incident. The other successful activity was the one-to-one interview where they felt they really learned a lot from, though the interviews for each of them was only 5-10 minutes. I supposed these two activities worked better because they were interactive and there was more fun!

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How to Get the Most out of the Present System

Lily related her experience of her grand-daughter in kindergarten where she coloured the face of a girl blue and the teacher told the little girl that it was the wrong colour, and what the right colour was supposed to be. In another case, her grand-daughter drew lines across a triangle, as instructed, and the teacher commented that the lines were out of the sides of the triangle and that they were crooked, so she should use a ruler to draw them.

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Lily said that that was disheartening, but she tries to go along with the system, by telling her grand daughter that for the exams, she must do it in a certain way, but in life, the rules are to be broken.

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June then quickly interjected that it must be emphasized that it should be told that the rules can be broken but only if integrity is maintained.

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How do you feel if you have made a discovery?

At this point, Joo Hock took out his poster used during his book launch of a quotation by Isaac Asimov, it has some blanks for us to fill in and it goes like this:

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"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds a discovery is not 'e_____', but 'that's f____.'"

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Can you guess the two words in the phrase? The first one is 'eureka', the second is 'funny'.

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Results of Cutting the A4 paper into a Loop:

These are the results from a group of senior citizens trying to cut loops out of A4 size paper that is big enough to go through Joo Hocks body. Well, did Ken say genius thinking deteriorates with age? :)

Try it yourself. Cut a loop big enough to loop around your body from an A4 size paper without sticky tape and staplers. I'll show you one of the solutions next week!


Postscript:
Monica mentioned about the 12 senses in Wardolf Education. I have checked on the Net and found these:

1. Touch
2. Life
3. Movement
4. Equilibrium
5. Smell
6. Taste
7. Vision
8. Warmth
9. Listening/Hearing
10. Word/Language
11. Thought
12. Ego

For more details of the 12 senses, click here.
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What I Feel Like Saying...

17th October 2010

It had been a special Bucky session with the agenda under wraps for many weeks. It was also the first and probably only Bucky event that Joo Hock had to turn attendees away. Finally, when the day came, it was revealed that it would be a launch of his book of poems entitled, "What I Feel Like Saying".

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"What I Feel Like Saying", is a collection of the inner thoughts of Joo Hock, much of them inspired by the philosophy and thoughts of Buckminster Fuller. particularly the one called "The Trim Tab Man".

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A trim tab is a smaller control device to release pressure prior to making major navigational changes on an aircraft or boat, to change direction. Bucky likened himself to be a trim tab. That is, just an individual that discovers new things to prepare humankind for the major changes ahead.

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"What I Feel Like Saying" is also how every Bucky session in the Salon starts off with, to allow participants to say anything they have in their mind. Absolutely anything with no judgment of what is 'right' or 'wrong'.

Here is the opening poem:

Opposite every printed poem, is a blank page for the user to pen his poems, perhaps inspired by the author's.

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We were also served to a game of filling in the blanks of famous quotes, like those pasted on the wall:

Did you manage to fill in any of the blanks?

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There were also famous poems, whom we have to identify who the authors are.

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Somebody then asked Joo Hock why he likes poems so much. He says that they are inspirational and he tries to commit to memory many of the poems he encountered, especially those penned by Bucky. He finds writing poems therapeutic. Perhaps they are all these thoughts bottled inside that needs to find their way out in a gentler kinder manner such that they can be inspirational to others.

Finally, the book launch...

... and the autographing...

I got mine inked by the author too...

Bucky Group - Making Enzymes

9th October 2010

Siew Kiang, a Bucky Group member briefed and guided us into the process of making enzymes from fruits. We made one from fruit peels and wastes for cleaning, aka "Rubbish Enzymes" and another for drinking.

We used big fat plastic bottles. 'Fat' for the volume and 'plastic' so it won't explode during fermentation. The yeast in the fruit consume sugar producing alcohol and carbon dioxide. Initially, the carbon dioxide will carbonate the water and subsequently build pressure that can pop the bottle or break it.

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The proportion of sugar:fruit:water is 1:3:10.

That means if you use 900g of fruit, then it would be 300g sugar: 900g fruit: 3000 cc of water.

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The brown sugar is added, then the fruit peels and remains (only for the Rubbish Enzyme). Have a good mix of different fruit peels, like lemon, apple, bananas...etc, so that we can get the different properties of the different fruits.

After that, add clean water, leaving some space in the bottle, cap it tight and shake the bottle thoroughly to mix. Open the bottle cap once a day during the first two weeks to release the built up pressure during the fermentation.

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At the end of 3 months, filter the enzyme solution for use. Enzyme solution is like wine as the potency increases with time. There is no expiry date.

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The residue may be reused for the next batch by adding more fresh ingredients or you may dry the residue, blend and bury them in the ground to fertilize the soil. Use this carefully as it is a very strong fertilizer. Alternatively, pour into your toilet bowl / kitchen sink to clean and remove blockages in the pipes.

Do the same for enzymes for drinking, but use raw honey in place of sugar, as sugar produces more alcohol, and in excess, is bad for the liver.

Enzymes are effective as:

• Fertilizer (replace or reduce use of chemicals), diluted 1:100/500/1000 ratio.
• Insecticide, diluted 1:1000 ratio.
• Pesticide, diluted 1:100 ratio.
• Plant hormone (for fruits and flowers – use on roots, soil), diluted 500 times.
• Anti-odour / air freshener ( pets, laundry, toilets, closets, shoe box, refrigerator), diluted 200 times.
• Shampoo, Washing liquids, Detergents (to reduce chemical side-effects, grime, mould/fungus), 1 teaspoon per 500cc.
• Veggie and Fruit wash – soak fruit and vegetables for 45 minutes to remove harmful pesticide residues, 1 tablespoon per 1000 cc.
• Soothe Insect bites / itch / eczema / scalding - applying on affected areas immediately.

Notes courtesy of Dr. (H) Joean Onn of Naturopathic, Family Care Centre in Penang.

At the time of writing, we are 9 days into the enzyme fermentation process. You can drop in Hair Affair Salon to see what the bottles have turned into. In another 81 days, the enzymes will be ready for use, saving the environment from harmful toxic chemicals, giving you good health and hygiene and saving you some money.

Finally, see how easy it is to keep a group of senior citizens happy by just giving them each a bottle to shake with.

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Read about my explosive experience making wine in High Spirits.

Adaptive Imperative

Date: 5 Oct 2010

Venue: NUS Bukit Timah Campus

Speaker: Jeff Chua, Boston Consulting Group

I have attended a talk recently about developing business strategies in turbulent times when it is difficult to see trends beyond two or three years. The speaker mentioned the following observations:

The context of strategy has changed since changes happen frequently.

1. Market leadership does not necessarily imply the same extent in profitability.
2. It is harder to define industry boundaries.
3. It is harder to predict the future.
4. Market position is unstable. Those on top do not stay on top for very long.

Example of a Market Leader losing out to latecomer:

Blockbuster vs Netflix

Blockbuster was a market leader in video rental. But on 23 Sep 2010, it filed for Chapter 11 of the US Bankruptcy Code or protection against creditors.

Netflix is also in the video rental business and started in 1997. It deployed no strategy other than encouraging compulsive dissent and experiments. They tried sending out DVDs on envelopes, posting them and pricing them on a flat fee for as many DVDs customers care to watch. Then they continued to stream videos across different channels. By 2007, they passed the billionth DVD delivered.

This, the speaker claimed is evidence of increased unpredictability and turbulence.

Businesses would need to have:

- Responsiveness (agility)

- Resilience (robustness)

- Readiness (anticipation)

- Recursion (experimentation)

Example of two market leaders deploying very different strategies:

Google – using open systems

Apple – using closed proprietary systems.

The speaker continue to suggest that businesses should adapt using their:

1. Signal Advantage
2. System Advantage
3. People Advantage
4. Simulation Advantage
5. Social Advantage.

My opinion:

I think the speaker had focused too much on the form and not enough on the essence of the apparent ‘changes’.

The underlying common denominator of the current observations is merely the advent of technology and its easy and cheap availability. For instance:

- Netflix triumph over Blockbuster because of the former’s clever use of technologies.

- Large companies no longer make the proportional scale of profits as they used to because clever technologies are no longer just affordable by big companies, but they are affordable to small ones too. It is now possible even to become a one-man multi-national company.

So things aren’t that unpredictable or turbulent if we focus on the common denominator of ‘technology’.

Also, while Google appears to be ‘open’ and Apple being ‘closed’ using propriety systems, the commonality is that both makes money through their own propriety ‘orifice’. Google’s orifice is their search engine, while Apple’s is iTunes. And we have another major orifice called Microsoft Windows. Businesses love orifices. So in this respect, they are the same. So there isn’t the unpredictability or turbulence.

In summary, observations may appear different in form, but in essence there are usually common causes. The trick is look beyond the raw data to derive meaningful meta-information. The luminary Buckminster Fuller (Bucky) believed that the universe is one system obeying a set of generalized principles, and that in the early days when equipment are limited in ability and accuracy, different phenomena appeared to behaved differently. That resulted in the formation of different disciplines. So some scientific observations became ‘physics’, some became ‘chemistry’, some became ‘biology’,…etc, but in truth, they all belong to one system in the universe.

By those measures, it doesn't matter if Apple is a computer company, a mobile phone company or a lifestyle company. The fact that businesses have be categorized wrongly as stoke pipe industries with clear boundaries, doesn't mean that they need to continue to be so. A fresh look at them as eco-systems in one universe with their outreach enabled by technology would be closer to the reality.

Once the causes are identified it’ll be easier to help companies to cope up. So now you cure the causes, not the symptom. That means a simpler remedy, but usually that means you cannot sell expensive ‘medicine’ and make a lot of money. Bucky said, “You either make sense or make money, they are both mutually exclusive.” To date, I am still pondering over this question, "Can we make both money and sense?"

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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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.