What do system administrators do all day?

This article is originally posted on SimplerCloud's blog here.


Today (25 July 2014) is System Administrator Appreciation Day, which is an event to show appreciation for the work of system administrators (or sysadmins) and other IT workers. It is celebrated on the last Friday of July every year, since the year 2000.

As a hardened, 15-year veteran system and network administrator, I know first hand about the many tasks a system administrator needs to do, the skill sets and knowledge he needs to learn, and with the daunting tasks and long hours he has to keep. Yet sometimes, normal users would not know their system administrators as well as the system administrators know their users. And that is why System Administrator Day is an awesome day that everyone should celebrate.

Treat your system administrator today, because 25 July is World System Administrator Appreciation Day

What do system administrators do, and why do we need to appreciate their work? According to Wikipedia‘s definition, a system administrator is a person who is responsible for the upkeep, configuration, and reliable operation of computer systems; especially multi-user computers, such as servers.

In layman’s terms, system administrators manage all the servers, network equipment and any other IT infrastructure for an organisation. In many companies, those system administrators are part of the organisation’s IT team or department. They are the one who setup the network within the organisation, installing mail servers, file servers and many other servers required by the organisation, installing all the required applications to support the organisation’s business, applying operating system updates, patches and configuration changes, among others. They are responsible to ensure that all the services are running.

For example, system administrators are responsible to ensure that Internet connection in the office is working, the mail server is running and processing emails tht are sent and received by all staff within the organisation. Without these basic operations, you will not be able to do anything which requires Internet connection, such as surfing the web or checking your emails. And even if your Internet connection is working, you won’t be able to send/receive emails if your organisation’s mail server is down.

Sysadmins make managers look good, but managers often misunderstand them (Source: Dilbert.com)

There are different types of system administrators based on their roles and responsibilities. A bigger company might have different system administrators having different roles, but for smaller company, most of the different roles might be shared by just a few system administrators, or even one single person. Some of the different types of system administrators are:

• Server administrator – maintains the operating system of the servers, and to some extent, the applications as well, such as the mail services, the web services, etc. He is also in-charge of troubleshooting any hardware, operating system or application related problems.
• Network administrator – maintains the network infrastructure, such as the routers and switches, and troubleshoot network-related problems.
• Database administrator (DBA) – maintains the database system used by organisation. In bigger organisation which uses bigger and more complex databases, there is a DBA which specifically responsible for this role. In smaller organisation, this role would normally be shared by the server administrator.

Unlike many other professions like pilots, medical doctors, etc, there is no single path of training to become a system administrator. While most system administrators have a degree in computer science, information technology or any other similar fields, anyone can actually become a system administrator by self learning and, in most cases, on-the-job training. There are some training and certifications intended to specific IT fields such as Microsoft training and certification for Microsoft-based systems and applications such as Microsoft Windows and SQL, Cisco training and certification for Cisco network, etc.

Most system administrators are always on-call, since they have system and network infrastructure which needs to run 24×7. That said, a system administrator can get paged or called at 3am in the morning when a mail server goes down, or when the Internet connection suddenly stops working. But the most important thing is that they are the one who ensure that all servers are functioning, the network is running and healthy, all the time.

That’s why good system administrators are often overworked and very much in demand, and, nowadays, crucial to the success of Internet app, web application and cloud-based companies.

“It’s not magic, it’s talent and sweat.”

That’s why, way back in the year 2000, a system administrator named Ted Kekatos suggested a yearly day event when everyone can appreciate the work of system administrators by – for example – giving them cake and ice cream and throwing a small party or celebration. This has become an annual event, celebrated every year on the last Friday of July. Today marks the 14th year we are celebrating System Administrator Appreciation Day.

Good system administrators never stop learning, and combine multiple skillsets to perform many different and unending tasks.   I wish all system administrators everywhere a very happy System Administrator’s Day.

SimplerCloud's New Feature: we now have free CloudFlare CDN on all Servelets

This article is originally posted on SimplerCloud's blog here.

Yes, you heard right.  CloudFlare’s CDN (Content Delivery Network) services are now available for all customers in their Servelet control panel.  There are no installation fees, and with this new feature, you can create, enable and manage your CloudFlare CDN directly through your Servelet panel so that everything is conveniently centralized.

What is CloudFlare?

CloudFlare is a multi-award winning CDN (Content Delivery Network) service which helps to accelerate and secure your websites hosted on your servelets by providing caching and proxying service for your websites. CloudFlare can help you to protect your websites from malicious visitors, save your servelet’s bandwidth and reduce the loading time of your websites.

CloudFlare also has multiple CDN nodes all around the globe, and the nodes will keep a copy of your website’s cache. All your websites’ visitors will be redirected and served by the nearest CDN node, thus increasing the speed and reducing the users’ website load time.

Read more about CloudFlare on their web site

How does CloudFlare CDN work?

Once you have activated the CloudFlare CDN service for any of your domains hosted in our name servers, our name servers will then make the necessary changes to point your website’s domain (normally http://www.YOUR-DOMAIN) to CloudFlare CDN network. At the same time, our control panel will connect to CloudFlare CDN network’s API to register your account and domain into the CDN network.

This allows CloudFlare to accelerate your website traffic, since all requests to your website will be routed through CloudFlare CDN network. CloudFlare’s advanced CDN technology will help to screen your website’s traffic from malicious visitors, cache static content of your website and optimise your web content.

What are the advantages of using CloudFlare CDN?

The advantages of using CloudFlare CDN:

1. Improve the overall performance of your website.
2. Protect your website from malicious threats.
3. Computer infection alert to visitors of your website.
4. Offline browsing mode of your website when your servelet is down.
5. Overall lower CPU usage of your servelet.

What are the caveats of CloudFlare CDN I need to take note of?

Some caveats and limitation of enabling CloudFlare CDN service for your website:

1. Your web statistics might not reflect the actual number of visitors to your site, because some of the requests are handled by CloudFlare CDN nodes and not handled by your web server directly.
2. Because CloudFlare CDN nodes cache static contents from your website, any changes to your content might not be reflected immediately when your visitors visit your page.
3. CloudFlare CDN service will only handle requests going to http://www.YOUR-DOMAIN, while requests going to [YOUR-DOMAIN] would normally still be handled by your web server.
4. CloudFlare CDN service (the free plan) doesn’t support SSL.

OK, I am very interested in trying the service.  How do I sign up?

The CloudFlare CDN service works together with DNS Hosting service, so you will need to use our DNS Hosting service (which is also free) for the CloudFlare CDN service to work.

To order the CloudFlare CDN service, login to the customer portal > Order > CDN Services. Choose “CloudFlare CDN” and then click “Order Now!”

How do I configure the CloudFlare CDN service?

To manage the CloudFlare CDN service, login to the customer portal and then go to Services > CDN Services > CloudFlare CDN. You will see the CloudFlare CDN console panel.

Click on “Managed Websites”. You will see the list of domains which are hosted in SimplerCloud’s name servers under “DNS Hosting service”. If you do not subscribe to DNS Hosting service or you haven’t add any domains under DNS hosting service, you will not see any domains listed here.

To enable CloudFlare CDN service for a particular domain, just click the grey cloud next to the domain name. Once the service is activated, the cloud’s colour will change to orange.

What will happen to my domain once the CloudFlare CDN service is activated?

Once the CloudFlare CDN service is activated for your domain, the DNS records for your domain will automatically be changed to point to the CloudFlare CDN service’s IP address rather than the actual IP address of your servelet.

Your website (e.g. http://www.YOUR-DOMAIN) will be served by CloudFlare CDN service rather than by your servelet directly.

Summary

Our control panel is now integrating our name servers (through our DNS Hosting service) and CloudFlare CDN services (through CloudFlare API), allowing you to enable CloudFlare CDN services for your websites hosted on your servelets with just a click of a button (a cloud image, to be exact). All the required processes: the creation of CloudFlare account, registering of your domain names into your CloudFlare account and enabling your domain name to use CloudFlare CDN services (by changing the DNS records of the domain hosted in our name servers to CloudFlare node IP addresses) are being done automatically in the back-end. And furthermore, the service is provided for free to all our customers.

So, what are you waiting for? Host your domain names in our name servers and try the CloudFlare CDN services for your website, for free.

Servelet Templates for cPanel and Plesk

This article is originally posted on SimplerCloud's blog here.

Good news for web-hosters!  We have released servelet templates for cPanel and Plesk. You can find them on the list of templates for plan M and above. With these templates, you will not need to install cPanel or Plesk manually yourselves. You can just select the templates (either CentOS+cPanel or Ubuntu+Plesk) and the control panel applications will be pre-installed for you, upon the provisioning of your servelets. You will just have to do the initial configuration, by accessing to the web interface of the control panels, for you to start using them, almost immediately! The templates are provided for free, for the convenience of all our customers. Take note that the templates come without licenses.

On top of that, you can also buy cPanel licenses from us. The price starts from $15.95 for cPanel/WHM VPS Optimized License, which is the most suitable license for your servelets. You will just need to provide the IP address and hostname of your cPanel servelet, and the license will be active immediately after you made your payment. It’s just that simple! 

We are also currently in the midst of talking to Parallels for us to start providing Plesk licenses for you, for the convenience of all our customers.

More information about how to install cPanel and Plesk on our servelets, and also on how to purchase cPanel license through our customer portal, can be found in our knowledge base.

Introducing SimplerCloud!

This article is originally posted here.

It has been very exciting days (and nights) for all of us here at SimplerCloud in the past month. Building a top-notch and world-class, built-from-the-ground cloud infrastructure is not easy, but we are very happy that we are now coming to this stage that we are ready to roll-out our services. We built SimplerCloud after realizing that there are no Asian cloud computing providers who can provide a true automated and 100% self-manageable cloud servers with high-performing, fast SSD servers and painless, instant deployment and on-the-fly scaling.

The main features of our services are our virtual machines (VM), which we call Servelets. They are on-demand, scalable virtualized servers accessible over the Internet. They are set up instantly, very easy to manage, and extremely reliable. Those Servelets are deployed in real-time and will be ready for use just minutes upon confirmation of the order. The most important thing is that they are more affordable than anything found in the market today.

And when we say it’s affordable, we really mean it. Our smallest XS Servelet plan only costs US$10 a month, without any contract commitments. This comes with 1 GB RAM, 20 GB blazing-fast SSD storage, 1 vCPU core and 1 TB of data transfer. It will be very difficult to get that kind of price for a cloud server, not only here in Singapore, but also in Asia.

Of course, our ability to bring the price down doesn’t sacrifice on quality. We want to provide cloud services which are easy, instant and reliable. All our servelets sit on very fast systems powered by SSD (solid-state) drives in a distributed and scalable storage system on high performance 10Gbps links. SSD uses integrated circuit assemblies as memory to store data persistently, without any moving mechanical components, unlike traditional hard drives. The result is a blazing fast I/O performance for your servelets, 3-10 times normal hard drives.

In addition to our Servelets, we also provide additional services such as domain registrations and SSL certificate. For domain registrations, we are currently providing TLD (top level domain) registrations for .com, .org, .net, .biz, .info and .name, starting from US$ 14.95 per month! More TLDs will be added soon, including country-level ccTLDs such as .SG and .ID. We also provides free DNS hosting for our customers. As for SSL certificate, we provide basic and wildcard SSL certificates starting from just US$ 29.90 per year.

All the above services can be ordered and managed through our simple and easy-to-use, multi-lingual control panel. At the moment both our website and our control panel are in English and Bahasa Indonesia, and more languages will be added soon. You can browse all the services that we provide, order any of the services instantly and start using those services almost immediately! Payment can be made using Paypal or credit card. You can also manage all the services that you have with us, console in to your Servelets, manage your domains and more.

So, what are you waiting for? Please visit our website, create yourself an account on our customer portal (it’s free) and start jumping into the real cloud bandwagon.

APRICOT 2013 and Traceroute Party

Last month, I attended APRICOT 2013 in Singapore. It has been a long time since I attended APRICOT or any other APNIC events. The last time I attended APRICOT was in 2010 when it was held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Therefore, it was nice to meet some old and new friends during the event.

As usual, I attended only the conference and not the workshop. Some of the interesting topics discussed during the conference were:

1. Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI), which is designed for Internet routing security to prevent route hijacking or blackholing;
2. Software-Defined Networking (SDN), which is an approach to provision network connections on-the-fly, normally within cloud computing and virtualisation environment;
3. DNSSEC, in a bid to secure the DNS (Domain Name System); and
4. Last but not least, IPv4 exhaustion and the (very slow) deployment of IPv6.

This weekend, I will be going to Jakarta, Indonesia to attend Traceroute Party. This is one of the biggest gathering events related to the (very big) Indonesian Internet community, with telcos, NAPs, ISPs, content providers, game providers, Internet communities, bloggers and the Internet users in general, are expected to attend. There will be 300 exhibitors, talk-shows, workshops and last but not least, many indie bands performing live. This even is hosted by IDC Indonesia.

I will make use of the opportunity to hang around and get together with some old friends, and make some new friends as well. Some of my friends from the Indonesian ISP and Internet industry are expected to be there. I hope to meet some of my old friends during the RADNET era. Most of my friends in BemoNet community will also be there, since BemoNet has 3 booths at the event, and we don’t have any idea on how to make use of the booths. ;P  I will also make the opportunity to meet some friends from the RKTI and BlogFam communities as well.

See you in JCC this weekend. :)

Koprol Team Disbanded By Yahoo!, Will Koprol Follow Kronologger’s Fate?

Just after I read Aulia Masna’s article on Daily Social about the plan to relaunch Yahoo! Koprol in May, I was surprised to see Satya Witoelar’s tweet stating that he would post the CVs of “talented experienced ex-Yahoo_ID/Koprol ‘s developers” soon. The list was eventually posted on Satya’s blog, confirming that the whole Koprol’s developers team has been disbanded by Yahoo.

From what I understand, Yahoo! is a sinking ship, and as part of the new CEO Scott Thompson’s strategy to keep the ship afloat, Yahoo! is axing about 2,000 of its staff globally. Yahoo! Indonesia is no exception, and unfortunately Koprol’s development team has been included on the list. It beats me though, on why the whole team had to be disbanded ahead of its planned launch of the supposedly new Koprol 2.0 engine in May.

The big question now is what will be Koprol’s fate. Will the social media platform be closed? As Aulia of Daily Social has pointed out, Koprol has a strong users base in Indonesia, and when the news of possible imminent shutdown has spread out, many of its users voiced out (with special hashtag: #saveKoprol) that the platform should not be closed.

I have to admit that I have not been using Koprol for quite some time. As a location-based social media platform, it is losing out to Foursquare especially for my case here in Singapore. However, Koprol is purely made in Indonesia and by Indonesians, therefore as fellow Indonesians, we should be proud of Koprol.

I met some friends, such as Ryan, Nunil and Ari, through Koprol. I met Leo and Smitty, in person, through a Koprol gathering here in Singapore. KCR, Koprol’s community radio, inspired me to setup Radio Komunitas Twitter Indonesia (RKTI). Therefore, like it or not, I have some fond memories in Koprol.



Let’s ask Yahoo! not to close down Koprol. If Yahoo! doesn’t want to run Koprol anymore, then may be Koprol founders can request to take over back Koprol and keep on running the social media platform outside Yahoo? I’m not too sure on whether it’s possible, since I understand that Yahoo! has spent quite a lot of money to acquire Koprol way back in May 2010.

Please, do not let Koprol follow the fate of Kronologger, another Indonesian-made microblogging platform in the past, which was closed down after being acquired by now-defunct Asia Blogging Network. 

PS. Images courtesy of @candoddi and @chocoz

Happy New Year 2012

I spent the New Year’s eve in Bintan, Nirwana Garden Resorts in Bintan Resorts, Lagoi, to be exact, and spending the last day of 2011 shuttling (islands hopping, to be exact) between Bintan and Batam. Going through the change of year with mixed feelings, here’s the story.

Towards the end of 2011, I was informed that my brother’s family would be spending New Year’s eve in Bintan Resorts, and that my parents are going with them. And my mother specifically requested me to join them to celebrate the new year there. I then decided to go with my son Irza, while my wife and my daughter Inka are staying in Singapore.

My brother and his family and my parents arrived in Bintan on Friday (30/12). They took a flight from Jakarta to Batam, and then caught the speedboat from Telaga Punggur in Batam to Tanjung Uban in Bintan. There used to be a direct ferry from Telaga Punggur to Bandar Bentan Telani (BBT) ferry terminal in Bintan Resorts, but for some reason, the ferry service was not operational.

I and Irza left Singapore for Bintan on Saturday morning (31/12). We took the 9am ferry from Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal (TMFT) in Singapore, and arrived in Bandar Bentan Telani ferry terminal at 9am Bintan (WIB) time. This was when the bad news came in.

When we boarded the shuttle bus which would bring us from the ferry terminal to the resort, my brother called. He said that my mother fell off the electric bicycle she was riding, and she fractured her arm. When I and Irza arrived in the Nirwana Resort Hotel where we are staying, we immediately went to the hotel’s clinic to check my mother’s condition.

Going back to the hotel’s clinic reminded me of another unpleasant experience I had couple of years back there. When I was swimming on the sea with the kids, my foot was bitten by some kind of a poisonous fish, and I needed to spend couple of hours in the clinic to get the venom taken off my foot.

While the hotel doctor has tried her best to put a bandage for my mother’s arm, it’s not sufficient. The hotel clinic doesn’t have X-ray equipment, so my mother needs to go to the nearest hospital which has the equipment, as well as the specialized doctor who can further check her condition. Luckily, she has a friend in Batam who can arrange for an orthopaedic doctor to check my mother’s condition in Awal Bros hospital in Batam.

I then accompanied my mother and my father to go to Batam, after leaving Irza in Bintan under my brother’s care. We took a pre-arranged taxi to Tanjung Uban, from where we took a chartered speedboat to Telaga Punggur in Batam. From Telaga Punggur, we took another pre-arranged taxi to go directly to Awal Bros hospital’s emergency department.

My mother had her arm being X-rayed and the result was not good. She had three bones fractured on her left arm, and most probably would need to undergo operation. I was prepared to spend the new year in Batam when my father decided that he is bringing my mother back to Jakarta so that she can have better treatment (including operation, if necessary) there.

My parents’ Lion Air tickets to Jakarta was for the next day (1/1)’s flight, and I tried calling Lion Air hotline in Batam in a hope to change the tickets to the current day (31/12), but there was nobody picking up the phone. So we decided to go to Garuda Indonesia office located in i Hotel Batam, located near Nagoya Hill, to purchase new airline tickets to Jakarta so that my parents can fly to Jakarta on the same day.

Since my parents decide to go back to Jakarta on that day, I then had to go back to Bintan, and I needed to go back fast since the speedboats from Telaga Punggur to Tanjung Uban only operate during daylight. After sending off my parents at Hang Nadim airport in Batam and had a quick (very late) lunch at Singgalang Jaya padang restaurant there, I took a taxi to Telaga Punggur (Rp 65k). Finally I managed to secure a seat on a 4:30pm speedboat to Tanjung Uban (Rp 30k + Rp 7k tax). It was a bumpy ride to Tanjung Uban with choppy waters and a full-house boat with standing passengers.

My brother had arranged for a taxi to pick me up at Tanjung Uban jetty back to Nirwana Gardens, although I needed to wait for around 30 minutes until the taxi arrived. We had a brief stop in a sate Madura stall in front of the At-Taqwa grand mosque in Tanjung Uban, before arriving in Nirwana Resort Hotel, in time for the gala dinner and the new year’s countdown party.

It was one of the great countdown parties ever. Great gala dinner, and we also won one of the lucky prizes. Awesome live band, and great fireworks over the sea off Bintan during the countdown. But still, we celebrated the new year with mixed feelings, since at the same time, my mother arrived in Jakarta and directly checked-in to Fatmawati hospital.

The next day (1/1), I and Irza took the 2:35pm ferry back to Singapore, while uncle Arief , auntie Via, Alif and Kayla went back to Jakarta via Batam using the same route: taxi to Tanjung Uban, speedboat to Telaga Punggur, taxi to Hang Nadim airport and then the Lion Air plane back to Jakarta.

At the moment, my mother is still warded in Fatmawati hospital, and currently is undergoing pre-op examination. She might be undergoing operation on her left arm in 3-4 days.

Mohon doa dari rekan-rekan sekalian untuk kesembuhan beliau.

Happy New Year to everyone!

F*cking Bad Service from Swensen’s Jurong Point

Last Wednesday, I went to Swensen’s in Jurong Point (located in the B1 floor of the new Jurong Point 2 shopping mall) to have dinner with my wife and daughter. As usual, the queue is long, which is the norm since Jurong Point is one of the busiest shopping malls in west Singapore. I ordered an Arabiatta Penne while my wife and daughter ordered other dishes in the menu.

I noticed that the restaurant was understaffed, it was full house but only a handful of staff were servicing the customers. My problem started when my Arabiatta Penne never reached our table, even after my wife and daughter have already finished their meals! And it was very difficult to call the staff, we had to raise our hands several times just to get their attention.

Finally I managed to get a staff to attend to us, and I informed her that my Arabiatta Penne was not served yet. She then went back to the kitchen to check, and after another 10-15 minutes of wait, then my Arabiatta Penne arrived.

Another problem surfaced when we wanted to pay for the bill. Again, it was very difficult to get the staff’s attention for us to request for the bill. After more than 5 minutes without avail to get their attention, then I took the initiative to go to the cashier directly to settle the bill. When I arrived at the cashier, the lady was attending to another customer so I waited patiently until my turn to be served.

Another customer, a lady, came to the cashier, stood right next to me and immediately told the cashier her table number, and the cashier processed her bill and served her first. I was very irritated but still waiting patiently, presuming that the cashier would processed my bill after processing the lady’s bill.

And, guess what, the cashier simply ignored me and attended another lady, who stood on my left. I was angry so I decided to walk back to my table. The cashier seemed to notice my anger and she informed her manager, who then came to the table. I simply informed the manager that I wanted the bill, and then she processed the bill and I left the restaurant.

That’s it? No. Several steps after leaving the restaurant, I examined the bill and noticed that they have double-charged the Arabiatta Penne, it was listed as two instead of one. What the f*ck??? It seems that when I informed the staff that my Arabiatta Penne was not yet arrived, the staff thought that I wanted to order another Arabiatta Penne!

I went back to the cashier and asked them to fix this. At the same time, the manager and the cashier were both there so I informed the manager about the earlier incident. And the cashier still wanted to defend herself, saying that the lady on my left was actually coming first, so she had to attend her first. Then what about the lady on my right, which definitely arrived in the cashier later than me? Why the cashier attended to her first?

I didn’t want to argue further, so I just tried to keep myself calm and let them process the refund. They said they can only refund by cash, which is OK with me. After getting the money, then I just left.

And I will never visit this Swensen’s outlet again. At least, until they fix the queue management issue on their cashier, and until they hire more staff for the outlet.

Eid Mubarak

It’s been a long time since I updated my blogs. :)

I would like to take this opportunity to wish all my Muslim friends a very happy Hari Raya Idul Fitri 1432H. Taqabalallahu mina waminkum, shiyamana wa shiyamakum. May everyone has a blessed Eid festival.

This year, I am celebrating Hari Raya Idul Fitri in Singapore. Actually, I wanted to go back to Jakarta for this year’s Hari Raya, especially since the Hari Raya gathering for my extended family and relatives in Indonesia was conducted in my parent’s house in Cinere, just south of Jakarta. Unfortunately, Inka had an examination last Wednesday, 31 August 2011, exactly one day after Hari Raya, so it was not possible to excuse her from attending school during the day. Especially, since she is now preparing for the PSLE examination for her to leave primary school by end of this year.

For the first time, during this year’s Hari Raya, we celebrated Hari Raya Idul Fitri one day earlier than my extended family and relatives in Indonesia. The Singapore government and MUIS (the Islamic council of Singapore), which is using hisab (wujudul hilal) calculation to determine the first day of the Islamic lunar calendar month, decided that this year’s Hari Raya Idul Fitri falls on Tuesday, 30 August 2011, while the Indonesian government, which is using rukyah (rukyatul hilal) system (by sighting the moon), decided that this year’s Hari Raya Idul Fitri falls on Wednesday, 31 August 2011.

We always follow (local) government’s decision in deciding which day for us to celebrate Hari Raya. Therefore, I and my family in Singapore celebrated Hari Raya on Tuesday, together with other Muslims in Singapore, while my extended family and relatives in Indonesia celebrated Hari Raya on Wednesday. I felt very awkward when I couldn’t call my parents and relatives in Indonesia after Eid prayer on Tuesday, because they haven’t celebrated Hari Raya on that day. I called my parents only on the next day, Wednesday, from the office, while my wife was at home and the kids were already going to school (and Inka was having her exam).

Fortunately, we have friends here in Singapore, mostly Indonesians living in Singapore, who celebrate Hari Raya together with us, so we don’t feel much the loneliness in celebrating Hari Raya Idul Fitri in Singapore. After performing the Eid prayer in Ar-Raudhah mosque, which is located just next to our apartment’s complex, I and family attended a Hari Raya gathering for Indonesians staying in Bukit Batok and surroundings, which was conducted in Parkview Apartments, Bukit Batok. We also attended a Hari Raya open-house event conducted by one of our friends in The Trevose, Dunearn. Actually, there was another Hari Raya gathering for Indonesians in Singapore, which was conducted in Woodlands, however we couldn’t attend the gathering due to time constraint.

The pictures during the Hari Raya gathering event in Bukit Batok can be found here, while the pictures during the Hari Raya open-house event in The Trevose can be found here.

An Indonesian Minister’s Analysis on Singapore

Indonesia’s Communication and Information Technology Minister, Tifatul Sembiring, shared his analysis on Singapore and its relationship with Indonesia, through his Twitter account.

According to Tifatul, Singapore’s history is inseparably related to a figure of Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s first prime minister and current minister mentor. On year 1959, while Singapore’s gross national product (GNP) was US$400, Lee had a vision of the GNP to have a 60-fold increase to US$24,000 by 1990. And in 1995, Singapore’s GNP was US$20,000, nearly reaching the target.

Tifatul said that he had the opportunity to have a direct discussion with Lee twice, and at the age of nearly 90 years old, Lee is described by Tifatul as “still smart”. Tifatul asked Lee on how he built Singapore, how is Indonesia’s future competitiveness, the role of China, India, Japan and South Korea, and Lee answered his questions with excitement.

Singapore is like a mini-Indonesia, multi-ethnic with Chinese majority, and Lee said, they are being “engineered” to interact with each other. As a small nation without natural resources, they have to invite people to do business in Singapore. That’s why they must have an airline with the best service, referring to Singapore Airlines (SQ).

According to Lee as quoted by Tifatul, the society have to be disciplined, there have to be certainty on law, which is enforced strictly. No smoking by law, a ban on spitting, and death penalty for drug traffickers are just the examples. There’s no democracy in Singapore, opposition is just a complement. As what Lee said, they don’t want to take the risk of political turmoil, they have to be stable. As a result, investors are streaming in.

Tifatul asked Edward Lee, a former Singapore’s ambassador for Indonesia, on what is Singapore’s modern vision. Edward replied: “Vision Hub”. Tifatul asked what does that mean, and it was explained to him that Singapore has to become the central (hub) of businesses. We (Indonesia) might be rich in oil, gas etc, but they have to be sold via Singapore, resulting in the price to follow MOPS (Mean of Platts Singapore). We might have Bali, Lake Toba, Singkarak, Maninjau, Bunaken, Senggigi, Bromo, Sentani, but visitors will have to go through Singapore, using Singapore’s travel agents.

With main businesses on finance, banking, insurance, telecommunications and trade services, and with a population of 4.5 million people, Singapore’s foreign reserves reaches US$ 120 billion. In 2005, Singapore is Indonesia’s biggest foreign investors. They are now harvesting the result of their expansion strategy (Tifatul used the term “tebar jala” in bahasa Indonesia) to neighbouring countries.

Therefore, Tifatul concluded that we have to learn from history. A crisis will not be resolved by simple amok and flag burning. There have to be “smart moves”. He’s referring to the current crisis between Indonesia and Malaysia, pertaining to the arrests of Indonesian maritime officers by Malaysia’s police.

Xperia X1’s Sliding Keyboard: Design Flaw

Photo: My Sony Ericsson Xperia X1

After almost a year using my Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 mobile phone, I have come to a conclusion that its sliding keyboard is a design flaw. If you really a heavy user of the keyboard, I would not recommend the phone at all. On the other hand, people normally choose Xperia X1 because of the keyboard, otherwise they would opt for other cheaper phones such as HTC Diamond or Samsung Omnia. Therefore, it’s not worth spending your money for that expensive phone. For Xperia X1 wanna-be user, I would suggest you buy another phone instead.

Lousy Phone

I bought the phone on November last year, and after becoming a happy user of the phone for just several weeks, I have started to experience the problem on its sliding keyboard some time on late February or early March 2009, which was just several months after it was bought. I will not go into details on the problem, you can just click the above-mentioned hyperlinks for more info about the problem. In short, the problem was fixed after I sent the phone for repair some time on July 2009. Basically, they changed the keyboard with a new one to fix the problem, although since they confirmed that it was a hardware issue, I had concerns that the new keyboard would eventually have the same problem when the time comes.

And… guess what? My concerns came true. Since last month, again I started to experience similar problem with the keyboard. And yes, it *is* the new keyboard which is having the same problem. And I am not alone, many other Xperia X1 users experience the same problem after several weeks or months using the phone. With even new keyboard experiencing the same problem, I conclude that the problem is due to a design flaw which will cause the keyboard to have the problem after several weeks or month of usage, depends on how often the user uses the sliding keyboard.

Lousy Service

I brought the phone to the Sony Ericsson Service Centre at Wisma Atria again last Sunday (1/11). Since the warranty period is nearing the end, the customer service officer said that the service will be chargeable, even though I brought the warranty card, because I was unable to provide her with the receipt as proof of purchase. She said that she was not able to determine the exact date of purchase because it was not on Sony Ericsson’s database.

She advised that I can try calling SingTel Mobile’s customer service and get them to fax the copy of my mobile contract to Sony Ericsson. When I called them, they said that they can provide the service, however it would take 5-7 working days and it costs me $30. The SingTel’s service officer advised that I might be able to get the copy of the mobile contract from the shop I purchased the Xperia X1 from. Sigh, I ditched the idea and decided to search for the contract on my pile of files at home on Sunday night. Alhamdulillah, thank God, I found it after almost two hours combing my files, and I have faxed it over to Sony Ericsson earlier this morning to ensure that I don’t get charged for this service.

No More Sony Ericsson Phones For Me

With such an experience with a lousy phone with a lousy service from the service centre, I have promised myself that I will never buy another Sony Ericsson phone. Well, some might said that since Xperia X1 was built by HTC for Sony Ericsson, that means the design flaw might be HTC’s fault, but I have friends who have HTC Touch Pro and the newer HTC Touch Pro 2, and they are happy users of the phones. My friend Arga suggested me to upgrade to the upcoming Xperia X2 phone which will be released this month, or even the future Android-based Xperia X3, but how can I ensure that similar design flaw will not apply to the newer phones as well?

 
Photo: HTC Touch Pro 2 (courtesy of gsmarena.com)

  
Photo: Samsung B7610 OmniaPRO (courtesy of gsmarena.com)

 
Photo: Sony Ericsson Xperia X2 (courtesy of gsmarena.com)

Photo: Nokia N97 (courtesy of gsmarena.com)

Yes, I intend to replace my Xperia X1 soon, if the problem still happens again after this second round of servicing. But I’m still not too sure which phone I should buy. It has to has a sliding keyboard, and it cannot be another Sony Ericsson phone. :P So, Xperia X2 is definitely out of question. I was considering Nokia N97 before my friends advised me that it’s not really a good phone, since it hangs quite frequently. I am currently considering either HTC Touch Pro 2 or the new Samsung B7610 OmniaPRO (the sliding keyboard type-one, not the Blackberry-alike OmniaPRO B7320). Do you have any other phones I should consider? :)

Kudos to An-Nahdhah Mosque's Management

I was attending a friend's wedding event at An-Nahdhah Mosque, Bishan on Sunday, 11 October 2009 and when I went back, I inadvertently and carelessly left my bag, containing my HP Mini netbook, at the basement carpark, before I went into my car. It seems that I might have left the bag when I needed to put on my shoes, and I only realised it after I reached my home at Bukit Batok.

I immediately called the mosque's management after getting the number from SingTel's directory service (100). While driving back from Bukit Batok to Bishan (which seemed like forever), I had Mr. Jamal on the other line, who patiently listened to my panic voice explaining that I had left my bag in the basement carpark. I even wrongly informed him that it was a blue bag, while it is actually a purple backpack. Mr. Jamal said he would check and advised me to call him back in 15 minutes.

Fifteen minutes later, I was already exiting PIE onto Lornie Road when I tried to call the mosque again, and was nervous when nobody picked up the call. I kept on calling using my handsfree but unable to reach anyone in the mosque, until I reached the mosque itself and went into the basement carpark. I was even more nervous when I couldn't find the bag at the place where I might have left it, and immediately took the lift upstairs to the first floor to go to the management office.

I met the mosque's staff at the office (I'm not too sure whether he's Mr. Jamal or another staff) and, alhamdulillah, thank God, the bag was there and he gave it to me. He mentioned that upon receiving my call, he immediately went to the basement carpark and found the bag near the carpark's lobby entrance. There were some other people around when he found the bag so he asked them whether the bag belongs to them, and they said no, so he brought the bag to the management office and kept it there. Thank God!

I also met some of my friends from the wedding event there, and shared my experience with them. Because of that, I didn't manage to thank the mosque staff properly. Thank you, Mr. Jamal and An-Nahdhah mosque's staff, for helping me to locate and keep the bag for me.

Indonesia AirAsia’s Change of Flight Timing

On Friday (16/10) morning, I received both SMS and e-mail from AirAsia, to inform me that my and my family’s upcoming Indonesia AirAsia’s QZ 7785 flights (same flight on different dates) from Singapore to Jakarta on December 2009 are being rescheduled from 12:40pm to 5:45pm. There seems to be a re-timing exercise affecting this specific flight number and all QZ 7785 flights after 25 October 2009 are affected.

I immediately logged in to AirAsia’s website and tried to change my itinerary to an earlier flight for the day using its “Manage my Booking” function, however I would have to pay S$40 “change fee”. Luckily, there were some other Indonesians in Singapore who had also purchased tickets for some future QZ 7785 flights and were affected by the same problem, and they were kindly enough to share their experience in Indo-Sing mailing list. They mentioned that if we call their call centre to request for a change to an earlier flight due to this re-timing, they will process it without charging the $40 change fee.

That’s good news! The only problem is that it was very difficult to call AirAsia’s call centre number in Singapore on that day. I tried calling the number (630 77688) since 10:30am in the morning and I kept on getting busy tones. I eventually managed to get in touch with them at around 3pm in the afternoon, and I immediately lodged my complaint about the change of schedule and requested for a change to an earlier flight, free of charge. He requested for the booking codes and I gave him.

The call centre staff then gave me a Service Request Number (SRN) and was transferred to their support staff. They put me on hold for quite some time (I think close to 5 minutes) before a support staff then took my call and request for the SRN. After I gave him the SRN, he then processed the flight change (for both myself and my family, who are on the same flight but different date) and informed me that I will receive an e-mail containing the new itinerary within 15 minutes. Yay! :)

Less than 5 minutes, I received the email with the new itineraries, and immediately print them. Just to make sure, I went back into the “Manage my Booking” function on AirAsia’s website to check the booking, and it’s confirmed that the flight has been changed to an earlier flight (10:30am) for the day, for both booking. I am a very happy AirAsia customer now.

Thank you, AirAsia. :)

Padi - Live in Singapore!

Green Media, a Singapore-based concerts and event management company, is bringing Padi, an Indonesian rock band, for a one-day only live concert here in Singapore. The concert is scheduled to be on Sunday, 1 November 2009 at 3pm, located at Dragonfly, a live music room within St James Power Station, Singapore’s first coal-fired power station built in 1927, which has since been converted into one of the Singapore’s leading music and nightlife venues located just next to VivoCity, in Harbourfront area.

According to Green Media, they currently have a special project which aims to bring together the various groups of Indonesian community already existing in Singapore and to help them co-exist with the Singapore community. PADI Live in Singapore! is a first in a series of events and concerts to be organised by Green Media which promotes peaceful social integration of the Indonesian community to that of the local Chinese or Malay community. The Indonesian and local friends' base that we have consists of the Indonesian Chinese, Malays and Eurasian from various religious backgrounds but with one main objective and love - the love for Indonesian music.

While their efforts are indeed to be appreciated, I was quite shocked to see the ticket price for the event. The standard ticket price is S$157 if purchased online, and S$175 if purchased at the door. The price includes of $2 booking fees and one drink coupon redeemable for soft drinks and juices only, but excludes $1 mailing/collection at venue charges. The ticket price is just too high, in my opinion. According to Andre, it’s even higher than the ticket price for The Police’s concert here in Singapore last year.

The Influenza A (H1N1) Virus is Getting Closer

After reaching Thailand, yesterday the Influenza A (H1N1) virus, previously known as the swine flu virus, is confirmed to have reached Malaysia’s soil by the country’s top health official. The patient is a 21-year-old male student who arrived on a Malaysia Airlines flight from Newark (near New York) in the Unites States, via Stockholm, Sweden.

This confirms that the virus is now getting much closer to Singapore and Indonesia. While the Malaysia official confirmed that there’s no Singaporean passengers nor any passengers with onward connecting flights to Singapore, the MH091 flight from Newark is a code share flight with Garuda Indonesia, so there could be some passengers, exposed to the infected patient on the same flight, who might have gone to Indonesia.

I wonder whether the Indonesian health officials have taken the necessary precautions on this matter. From what I understand, everyone there is very busy preparing for the presidential election.

The Ministry of Health (MOH) of Singapore says that it is only a matter of time before the virus reaches Singapore. Yes, I agree that it’s not possible to prevent the virus from entering Singapore, since the virus has been reported to be highly contagious. More efforts should be put into treating the infected patients when the virus comes in, rather than fire-fighting in preventing the virus from reaching Singapore.

However, I disagree with the Singapore government’s move to lower its alert level for the H1N1 flu from orange to yellow last week, despite the World Health Organisation (WHO) maintaining its alert level on 5 (near pandemic) out of 6. I personally think that lowering the alert level would bring Singapore residents closer to complacency and will make them become less alerted. With this latest development, it would be wise for the government to increase its alert level back to orange.

MSM Released New Map Version in Mapking Format

I just read that Malsingmaps (MSM) has released their new March 2009 version of the map in Mapking format, although it’s only covering Singapore and East Malaysia (including Brunei) only, and doesn’t include West Malaysia as yet. While it’s a good news for Mapking users in Singapore and Malaysia, I find it a bit strange, since normally they will release their maps in the original Garmin format first, before converting them to Mapking format.

Not too sure why they haven’t released the Garmin format of the new version of their maps. I understand that MSM has been approached by Garmin to supply the Garmin official maps for Malaysia and Singapore (and Brunei as well, I presume). This means that there’s a possibility that the next official Garmin maps for the region will be Garmin-compiled MSM maps, instead of the not-so-good City Navigator Singapore/Malaysia NT maps.

Does it mean that we will have to pay to use the new version of Garmin-compiled MSM maps? I’m not too sure, since there’s no official announcement from MSM on this matter, yet. However, I understand that at least one GPS vendor in Singapore has advertised the new nuvi 255W which is pre-installed with Garmin City Navigator Singapore/Malaysia *and* Garmin-compiled Malsing maps, which I presume is referring to the Garmin-compiled version of MSM maps. The hint is that the new maps will be released during the IT Show event in Suntec City, Singapore, this coming weekend.

One of the advantages of using the official Garmin compiler instead of using the normal cGPSmapper compiler is the ability to provide some new features supported by newer Garmin GPS devices, such as lane assistance and 3D junction view, although unfortunately my Garmin Mobile XT, which runs on my Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 mobile phone, does not support that yet. That would bring MSM map one step ahead of its competitors, I agree, but since it will become a Garmin official map, are we still able to use it for free? What would happen to all the contributors who have contributed in building the maps?

Let’s wait for the “official announcement” to come from MSM admins. In the meantime, I’m very much impressed with the progress of the Singapore map built by Malfreemaps (also known as MySgFreeMaps or MFM), and have been using this map, together with MSM’s map, for my navigation in Singapore. The MFM version of Singapore map has much nicer polygons for HDB blocks and some other types of buildings as well, which is much better than MSM’s Singapore map and is comparable to Jerome’s donor version of the Singapore map. I am just hoping that MFM’s copyright issue with Jerome, who is the MSM’s mapper for Singapore, can be settled soon so that it won’t affect the good progress of building the best GPS map in Singapore.

1000 Twitter Updates

I just posted my 1000th update on Twitter. Most of them are not really my direct updates, though, since they are cross-posted from Kronologger.

Nothing much special to call for a celebration. It just a reaffirmation that I’m now more into micro-blogging than the actual blogging itself.

Pretty sad, indeed…

Deepavali This Year Moved to a Saturday

This year’s Deepavali, which previously has been tentatively set on a Sunday, 15 November 2009 (which means the following Monday, 16 November 2009 would be a public holiday), has been brought forward one month earlier, on Saturday, 17 October 2009.

When Singapore’s Ministry of Manpower releases the list of Singapore public holiday every year, the date set for Deepavali is always tentative because it has to be checked against the Indian Almanacs when they become available. Last year, MOM also moved the Deepavali date albeit only one day earlier, from Tuesday to Monday. It is just so unfortunate that for this year, the date is being moved from a Sunday to a Saturday.

This means that the public holiday will only benefit those who are working on Saturdays, and that Monday, 16 November 2009 is no longer declared as a public holiday. :(

In Singapore, if a public holiday falls on a Sunday, the following Monday will also be a public holiday. For example, since Hari Raya Puasa for this year falls on a Sunday, 20 September 2009, the following Monday, 21 September 2009 will also be a public holiday.

Another thing to note, in Singapore, the government has always been able to predict the day for Hari Raya Puasa correctly, and the actual Hari Raya date normally falls on the predicted date without any revision. This is different from the Indonesian government who always decides the exact date of Hari Raya at the last minute, waiting for the result of hilal (moon) sighting. Not too sure where does the Singapore goverment get their formula from? :)

Happy Lunar New Year

On Chinese New Year's eve, I went to Chinatown with Irza to soak into the festive moods of Lunar New Year, and also to watch the fireworks display during the countdown to the new year of ox.

We parked our car at VivoCity and took the MRT train to Chinatown, to avoid (human) traffic jam around the area. After the fireworks display, we had ourselves some tiramisu cake and double chocolate coffee from Coffee Bean at Chinatown Point while waiting for the crowd to disperse, before we took the train back to Harbourfront.

I would like to wish everyone who celebrate Chinese New Year, a very happy new year of ox. Hope that everyone will have a very happy and prosperous new year ahead.

More pictures can be found here.

Planet Indra is Temporarily Down

I have temporarily shut down my Planet Indra site. For some unknown reasons, the WordPress-based aggregation blog site refuses to show the contents of the blog and instead it's giving this error message to everyone who tried to access the site:

It doesn't look like you've installed WP yet. Try running install.php

I have Googled around and mostly people would encounter the above message when they tried to upgrade their WordPress installation. This is not the case in my situation. I was not doing anything on the WordPress installation and suddenly the error message appeared. I have other WordPress installations for Minda Indra and Planet Singapura on the same server, running under the same user-id and connecting to the same MySQL database, and they do not encounter the same problem.

Anyone has a clue on what could have happened? Could it be that the database used is corrupted?

I haven't got the time to investigate this issue further. Will look into this problem later when I have the time. Apologise for the inconvenience caused.