3rd April 2009 – A day to remember, where dreams were fulfilled, and history was made.
“Hwa Chong Institution, High School. Gold with Honours”. Thank you, thank you juniors.

I was cleaning up and reorganizing some of my things today. So I took the chance to take a few photos of the “after” part of the cleanup. The “before” part is kind of messy so I didn’t bother to take photos.

My Linux Box
Only the top-most box is in use.
It’s an old P4 desktop converted for use as my home file-print-proxy-mail server.
Nothing fancy, it just works.

Do Not Enter
The sign says it all. Don’t attempt to touch my box, open it, or root it.

Cisco 2611
Previously used for NAT, tunnel termination and firewalling, but unable to keep up with my broadband provider’s constant upgrades. Now used for testing and experimental purposes.

The Whole Setup

Afternoon
Sent off yuanfeng at the airport today.
Had a good chat with him over coffee at Terminal 1.
It’ll be nice to see him in May. I hope he’ll be back, for good reasons of course.

I found this on Eric’s blog, it’s a song he heard at company night. It’s a really nice song and the tune is catchy. Yes, I know terms like “nice” and “catchy” are hopelessly vague descriptive terms. But do listen to it.

And if your Bahasa Indonesia is as bad as mine and all you can grasp are the meanings of several phrases in the song, here’s the full english translation.

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Yes, I can hear you think – “what the hell is this?”.

The simple answer is, the subject of the photograph embedded to the right of this wall of text is my 15-year-old teddy bear who now permanently lives on the shelf next to my bed.

The slightly longer answer though, is that I finally decided to make use of the camera that’s built into my E65 mobile phone and this was the first thing that I saw in my room. It’s supposed to be a 2-MP camera, but considering that it’s a phone designed more for business applications rather than fancy multimedia and cam-whoring, I don’t suppose I can complain. Well, at least not about the camera, though I’m sure that I have a lot more to say about Nokia’s customer support (or the horrendous lack of it).

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Look at the example output for the show ip bgp command below.

 7606 9837 9837 9837 18250, (Received from a RR-client), (received & used)
   198.32.212.61 (metric 20) from 203.17.96.105 (203.17.101.40)
     Origin IGP, metric 0, localpref 90, valid, internal, best
     Community: 4854:6002
     Originator: 203.17.101.24, Cluster list: 203.17.101.40, 203.17.101.22

 1221 2764 9837 18250, (received-only)
   203.62.252.39 from 203.62.252.39 (203.62.252.39)
     Origin IGP, localpref 100, valid, external

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The Preamble - It seems that I’m starting to like this style of writing. I’ve always liked reading blog posts of this nature, yet I’ve always refrained from writing them, for fear of saying too much, or sounding too shallow. Nonetheless, I’ll give it a shot, at least I’ll have a way of remembering those days gone by.

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The Preamble – I guess it was the sort of day that you never want to end, and you just keep hoping that it can go on, and on, and on.

Yet it all comes to an end. I wish it didn’t have to. But as they say (cliche alert!), all good things come to an end. Well, so do bad things, but that’s aside from the point. This is probably my first foray into writing a blog entry that describes the events of a day. It’s something that I’ve tried to abstain from. But to use yet another cliche, there’s always a first time for everything. I’m still not familiar with this style of writing, so I have the tendency to jump between tenses. This problem should sort itself out once I get used to writing in this manner.

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Of course, this report only adds additional detail to that which most people already know. Or at least those who keep track of sources of information aside from the mainstream media. I will not debate the extent of neutrality of this report. Nonetheless, it serves as an authoritative (meaning reliable, not authoritarian!) external reminder of what we often fail to realize amidst the limited availability of local press coverage over such issues. As it is often said, you’ve got to see it to believe it.

US Department of State – 2008 Human Rights Report

Singapore is a parliamentary republic in which the People’s Action Party (PAP), in power since 1959, overwhelmingly dominates politics. The population was approximately 4.6 million, with foreign workers accounting for nearly one fifth of the total. Opposition parties exist, and the May 2006 parliamentary elections were generally fair and free of tampering; however, the PAP placed formidable obstacles in the path of political opponents. Civilian authorities generally maintained effective control of the security forces.

The government has broad powers to limit citizens’ rights and to handicap political opposition, which it used. Caning is an allowable punishment for numerous offenses. The following human rights problems also were reported: preventive detention, executive influence over the judiciary, infringement of citizens’ privacy rights, restriction of speech and press freedom and the practice of self-censorship by journalists, restriction of freedoms of assembly and association, limited restriction of freedom of religion, and some trafficking in persons.

…… or is this just part of a western conspiracy to do Singapore in?

This is sort of a follow up to the previous post on the movie Australia, discussing the changes, or lack thereof, that have occurred since 13th February 2008, colloquially known as “Sorry Day” after Australian PM Kevin Rudd made a symbolic public apology to the indigenous people of Australia for the years of indignity and injustice that they suffered under discriminatory policies of the not-so-distant past that serve as a reminder of the ugly head of racism and ethnic supremacy.

UK (BBC)

Progress has been made on improving living standards for indigenous Australians but further gains will take time, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says.

In a report a year on from his historic apology, Mr Rudd said foundations had been laid to improve housing, security and health for Aboriginal communities.

But he said generations of indigenous disadvantage could not “be turned around overnight”.

Aboriginal leaders have lamented a lack of progress since the apology.
Ask many what has changed since then and “not much” or even “nothing” is the fairly common response, says the BBC’s Nick Bryant in Sydney.