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.
Wow, it has been quite some time since we updated this blog. Amongst
the things that kept us busy are upgrading our CEPH storage capacity
and unrolling a major upgrade to CloudStack 4.2.
But the biggest thing of all is an important new feature that we’ve worked very hard to bring out – snapshot backups.
A snapshot backup is a way for high-availability systems to avoid
downtime and still enable backup by performing the backup on a
snapshot—a read-only copy of the data set frozen at a point in
time—while allowing applications to continue writing to their data
(definition partly taken from Wikipedia).
This is a major feature crucial to any system administrator’s server
management strategy. And we are pleased to announce that snapshot
backups of our customers’ servelets is now available after this major
upgrade. With this new feature, customers can perform snapshot backups
of both the root-disk and data-disk of their servelets, directly from
our customer’s portal. This feature is chargeable based on the size of the snapshot backup and how long the snapshot is being stored in our storage system.
How do you make a snapshot backup?
To make a backup snapshot of either your root-disk or data-disk (or
both), you can log in to our customer portal, choose Services >
Simple Menu / Power Menu (depends on your servelet’s category). Click on
the hostname of your servelet, then choose Storage > Disks. You will
see the list of your disks (both your data-disk and root-disk).
To make a snapshot of either the data-disk or the root-disk, click on
“Create a new snapshot” next to the disk. There will be a prompt: “Are
you sure you wish to create new backup?”, click “OK”.
The window will then show the snapshot area of the storage section,
showing the list of your existing snapshots, including the one you are
creating. If this is the first time you have created a snapshot, then
you will only see the snapshot which you are creating, with the status
“Pending.”
Snapshots will take some time, depending on the size of your disk.
Once snapshot is completed, the status of the snapshot will change to
“Built” instead of Pending.
How can you restore data from the snapshot backup?
If you want to recover any data from any of your snapshots, you will
need to open a support ticket with us, and let us know which snapshot
you would like to restore data from. Please kindly provide us with two
information:
- The date when the snapshot was created (e.g. 2013-10-12 22:51:17+0800)
- The disk name (e.g. #DATA-2080)
You can find the above two information from your servelet control panel > Storage > Snapshots.
We will then convert the snapshot into a disk volume, and temporarily
attach the disk volume into your existing servelet, so that you can
copy the data over to your servelet. Once you have done with the
copying, we will detach back the temporary volume.
At the moment, the process has to be done manually. However, we are
looking into possibility of making this process automated for the
convenience of all our customers.
More information about our snapshot backup feature can be found on our knowledge base articles at this URL:
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.
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:
Improve the overall performance of your website.
Protect your website from malicious threats.
Computer infection alert to visitors of your website.
Offline browsing mode of your website when your servelet is down.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
Good news for web-hosters!We have releasedservelettemplates forcPanel andPlesk. 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 alsobuy 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 toParallelsfor us to start providing Plesk licenses for you, for the convenience of all our customers.
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:
Software-Defined Networking (SDN), which is an approach to provision network connections on-the-fly, normally within cloud computing and virtualisation environment;
DNSSEC, in a bid to secure the DNS (Domain Name System); and
Last but not least, IPv4exhaustion 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.
As I have mentioned on my tweet earlier, I have got myself a new phone. And you know what, I got my phone upgraded for free. Really. :)
Since I’m a SingTel’s mio Home user, I am eligible for re-contract every one year. And this month is exactly one year since I re-contracted my line for me to get my SamsungGalaxy S II phone last year. I checked SingTelShop’s website and with my current 3G Flexi Value plan, I can get the new Samsung Galaxy S III phone for $348. Furthermore, with SingTel UOB credit card promotion, I can get $50 off the handset price, so the price of the phone reduces to just $298, or approximately 2.2 million rupiah.
Lastly, I traded-in my old Samsung Galaxy S II phone and fortunately, SingTel’s trade-in value for my old phone is quite high, $300. Therefore, I don’t need to pay a single cent for this upgrade. :)
There are two colours available for Samsung Galaxy S III, and I chose the pebble blue. I’ve checked some stores which sell the phone without contract, and for some reason, the blue Galaxy S III is more expensive than the white one. Not too sure why. I suspect that many people prefers the blue one rather than the white one, causing the demand for the blue one is higher, thus pushing the price slightly higher.
Apologise for the low quality of the picture above, I took it using my Blackberry Bold 9900 phone, which you might have known, its camera is not really that good. Of course, I cannot take a picture of the phone using the phone itself, can I? :)
My verdict after using this new phone for a couple of days: I feel that its CPU processes faster than my older Galaxy S II. Applications such as Seesmic, Facebook and Instagram runs faster on the phone, thanks to its quad-core 1.4 GHz CPU, which is much better than S II’s dual-core 1.2 GHz CPU. I also appreciate its bigger display, it’s a 4.8-inch display compared to S II’s 4.3-inch. Furthermore, the resolution is much better, 720 x 1280 pixels compared to S II’s 480 x 800 pixels.
Compared to my older S II, I think that the S III has a slightly longer battery life. But it could also be because it’s new, so I cannot compare apple-to-apple with my 1-year old S II. Some people have pointed out that the S III might have a software bug draining its battery, but so far I don’t see it happening on my phone.
I also love the bahasa Indonesia dictionary. I can type faster using its swype function with ease in Indonesian. Its notification functions are also much better. And having this new phone allows me to have 50 GB of space in my Dropbox account. There are also many new features which I didn’t have it on the earlier Samsung Galaxy S II.
Basically, upgrading my phone from my older S II to the new S III is a good choice. Especially since I can have it for free. :)
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.
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.
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.
Late last year, MFM was born, and it was started without the Singapore map. So for GPS users in Singapore like me, MSM was still the only choice. Unfortunately, after the MSM-MFM split, there was no further significant update to the MSM map for Singapore. The only users who can get further updates were those who had donated to Jerome’s donor version of the map.
Not too long later, MFM started to incorporate Singapore into its map. It was removed at some point of time due to some copyright infringement alleged by Jerome but it has been reinstated since. And to be frank, I’m very happy with the progress of MFM in rebuilding the Singapore map, and have been using it since. I’m currently having both maps (MFM and MSM) loaded into my Sony Ericsson Xperia X1, although I set the MFM map to take precedence over the MSM map. Therefore, all routing will be done using the MFM map, the display will also show the MFM map, while I’m still able to search POIs contained on the MSM map. This is because in terms of number of POIs, the MSM map is still more complete and MFM would still need some time to catch up.
Some reasons why I chose MFM to take precedence over MSM for routing and display, at the moment:
MFM map has all the HDB polygons being drawn, while the public version of MSM map doesn’t have. Only Jerome’s donor version has similar HDB polygons, and it’s not free.
MFM map is being updated on a weekly basis. New versions of the map are always released every Monday and so far they haven’t missed it. :)
The MFM mapper for Singapore is very accommodative in accepting my contributions and error corrections, and most of the time, any contributions or corrections would be implemented immediately on the next version release.
This is the current situation now and it might still change. I heard that MSM will release their new map this month, and I’m looking forward to it. I also heard that MSM will distribute the maps for free to all the users and contributors. The map might still be locked but the unlock codes will be given for free, as long as you are an MSM registered user.
So, back to the original question, which map is the best for Singapore, MFM or MSM? I would say, both. Yes, both. :) At the moment, we need to have both maps loaded into our GPS devices so that we can make the best out of both maps. That would be the best combination to form the best Garmin GPS map for Singapore, at least for the moment.
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 EricssonXperia 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.
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.
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? :)
My first encounter with claypot chicken rice was in Malaysia. I immediately fell in love with this dish, rice cooked in a claypot together with all the additional ingredients such as diced chickens, vegetables and, most importantly, the spices, thrown in. Cooked over charcoal stove, and served with the pot while still hot. Wonderfulicious. :)
Since it's a Chinese traditional dish, it's quite difficult to find halal claypot chicken rice in Singapore. Normally, I would go to Johor Bahru to look for this dish, notably the food courts at Johor Bahru's City Square and Tebrau City. Therefore, it was a very delightful surprise to see this dish in one of the stalls at Banquet halal food court, located on the basement two (B2) floor of VivoCity shopping mall, Singapore.
On a side note, Banquet VivoCity is one of our favourite Banquet outlets, other than the Bagus by Banquet at IMM and Banquet Jurong Point. In Banquet VivoCity, the kids would normally go with the chicken rice, other than fish and chips or chicken cutlet from the western stall. For me, another favourite dish there is the cockles kway teow.
I was very surprised (if not shocked) when I read from today's Weekend Today newspaper (which I get for free in my doorstep everyday, by the way) that some (or all?) of Julie's biscuits made in Malaysia are also tainted with melamine.
This is because our family (myself, my wife and the kids) has been buying Julie's biscuit products all this while. Inka is a great fan of Julie's wheat crackers (see above picture) while Julie's Cocoro crispy chocolate wafer rolls are also one of our family's favourites.
Yes, the Agri-Food and Vetenirary Authority (AVA) has reassured that the levels of melamine in the affected products are very low, and one has to consume large quantities of the contaminated products over a prolonged period of time before it can affect his/her health. But this still cannot much relieve our worries, especially since we have been consuming the affected products for quite some time.
Siam Kitchen is our family's favourite Thai restaurant, providing quite a wide range of Thai cuisines.
My wife's (and also my) favourite menu is the BBQ platter, containing grilled prawn, squid and meat with a special sauce, while the kids' favourite is the crispy soft-shell crab with mayonnaise sauce.
It has many outlets around Singapore, and the outlet we often visit is the one at the second floor of Bugis Junction, just above the Bugis MRT station.
It is one of only a few Thai restaurants in Singapore which obtains halal certification from MUIS.
How I envy those who live on the east side of Singapore. Looks like they are more accessible to many attractions and leisure activities compared to us on the west side of the island.
Some of you might have been wondering why we went all the way toSembawang, an area north of Singapore which we seldom visit. You might be surprised to know that the reason why we went to Sembawang is to hunt for chicken rice. :) Cavana chicken rice, to be exact.
At that time, we decided to go to the Cavana outlet at Sun Plaza since we seldom go to the shopping mall and would like to know what other things it offers. Nothing much, though.
I really hope that the new outlet in Jurong Point will open soon.
Learned about this new site from Tomorrow.SG, and I found that GoThere.sg is really helpful for both motorists and commuters in Singapore. Not only that we can search for any addresses in Singapore, we can also easily put two addresses in Singapore and the site will automatically calculate the best route from point A to point B under three main categories: "Train + Bus", "Bus" and "Drive".
Its map is powered by Google and the recommended route will be marked on the map. And the best thing I find on this site is that we can easily drag the point A and/or the point B markers to anywhere within the map and the route -- be it driving route or public transport route -- will automatically be recalculated. Estimation time for each leg of the route (bus, train and even the walking time) is given. For driving routes, option to avoid ERP gantries is also given. Searching can be done by entering the partial address, building name or the postal code.
For me, this site is currently the best replacement for the Street Directory site, which is still offline until don't know when.
This might be an old news for some of you, since it's already happening since May 2008. But still, it's a good news for all my Muslim friends in Singapore. Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, one of the leading cafe in Singapore, is now certifiedhalal by MUIS.
My family and I have already been fans of Coffee Bean even before they were certified, since we knew that they are not providing food which contains pork or lard. In fact, we prefer Coffee Been much more than Starbucks. Inka and Irza's favourite is the tiramisu cake, which is superbly wonderfulicious.
Inka enjoying tiramisu cake at Coffee Bean VivoCity
Yes, I know that some people said that Starbuck's coffee is better than Coffee Bean's. But hey, I'm not a coffee lover, in fact, I always order non-coffee beverages at Coffee Bean. :) My favourite non-coffee beverage at Coffee Bean, which is the kids' favourite as well, is the ice blended chocolate. :)
