I'm beginnng to wonder if Singaporeans can really work. I deal with few of the largest telco providers here in Singapore and believe me when it comes to work people are as good as dead. It's a world of difference from my previous experience in startups and US-based companies.

For one project, I attended two meetings lasting 3-4 hours each where ten of us from four different companies and departments try to sort out a service provisioning process flow. While I do not disagree that a proper structure should be in place, half the time was spent simply just pushing responsibilities between groups simply because they have "never done it before", it's "too troublesome", or they are "only supposed to do [a defined list of responsibilities]" .

Too troublesome? Talk about calling department X, Y and Z just trying to get a simple thing resolved!

Then comes the product manager (PM) who insists that the vendor (us) provide 99.9% SLA for a service that does not really warrant the need for such a stringent SLA. The PM having worked with a telco enviroment for years was so familar with traditional fixed-line services that she applied the standard guidelines to a totally different product. I call this the brain-dead template driven work.

I was at a datacenter (D)C migration yesterday morning at 2AM to physically move servers to a new DC. We got the servers shifted and racked at the new DC by 4.30AM, but to our surprise the new DC had no network set up for us. We were sent a brand new IP subnet via e-mail about a month ago and nobody did anything about it - the cables weren't patched, the VLANs weren't set and the routes weren't added. The most amusing part was that the engineer onsite simply said he wasn't informed and that it wasn't planned and seemed ever so reluctant to help. My colleague dug up his e-mail that showed the new IP range assigned with the e-mail sender's name and only then he decided to act upon it with "somebody else to blame". Even then, it took them a whole 2 hours (from 5AM to 7AM) to get the link working.

A few weeks ago, my (personal) datecenter had a major power blackout. When they sent me the final report, I was surprised to find that the report set the blame on building electrical technicians who were simply carrying out their routine electrical maintenance jobs. Nobody related to the poor design of the DC's power supply system or NOC engineers was mentioned in the report. I wrote back saying the report was flawed, and that they (the NOC) failed to properly notify customers of a planned electrical maintenance. It's been three weeks and I have yet to get a reply.

There are many such incidents that I'm sure some of you may be so familiar with or even guilty of. This "responsibility push syndrome" is simply a killer of productivity. Many people are well educated and technically capable but unwilling to bear any form of responsibility. Some are worse - they don't want any responsibility AND are technically uncapable. These people just want to sit at a job with no responsibilities and no challenges where they spend half their life at. While I do not understand why, I have no respect for such people.

What troubles me is that we lack people who would stand up and take action during a situation and do what's required to resolve it without worrying having to "answer" for his/her actions. If a person stands up for what he thinks is right, then he/she shouldn't be worried about having to answer for making a positive decision. If he/she is reprimanded for taking such an action then I think it's only right that he/she seeks a new job.

While some people say you're trying to "act hero", think to yourself the next time you get robbed at gunpoint, you'll be hoping there was indeed a hero.

Wow check out this piece of news from the Straits Times (link: http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_293432.html)

Quote:

THE ceremony in the Old Parliament House had all the pomp and circumstance associated with any graduation.

The professors and graduands were in full academic regalia. Speeches flowed in English and Mandarin. And afterwards, a gala dinner at a hotel.

At the ceremony, the university's honorary president, a Professor Bernard Cadet, delivered an inspiring speech, urging graduands to transform the world.

'Believe nothing is impossible. West Coast University (WCU) will be proud of you in the future,' he told the 76 graduands from Singapore, Indonesia and China, before handing them their doctorates, master's and bachelor's degrees.

But this was a ceremony for an unaccredited university based in Panama, not Los Angeles, as its school in Singapore had claimed.

The Asia-Australia School of Management (AASM), a Case-certified school in Middle Road, offers West Coast University programmes here with a related company, Huanyu Training Expert.

At least two American states have outlawed degrees from WCU, describing it as a 'degree supplier' that offers 'fraudulent or substandard degrees'.

The Texas State Higher Education Coordinating Board warns on its website that WCU 'is used by multiple unaccredited entities. The extent to which they are related is unknown, but more than one operator is suspected.'

In some parts of the United States, it is a criminal offence to use degrees from unaccredited institutions.

'Dr' John Huang, one of the owners of AASM and Huanyu, insisted that the university is based in Los Angeles and faxed The Straits Times documents showing West Coast University International registered as a business in California.

But he confirmed that it was not the California-based West Coast University reputed for nursing and health science-related degrees. He admitted that WCU was unaccredited, but said his students had been given the facts.

His doctorate is from Ashwood University, the same degree mill that granted this reporter's pet dog a doctorate for US$599 (S$886) just two months ago.

The guest of honour at Monday's ceremony was MP for Joo Chiat Chan Soo Sen, who delivered a speech in Mandarin and English.

Contacted afterwards, he said he had been invited by a grassroots leader and accepted as he wanted to encourage the habit of life-long learning.

Told that WCU was unaccredited, he said he had not been given any information about it. 'If my presence there had given the university credibility, that was not my intention,' he said.

Several graduates interviewed after Monday's ceremony believed the university was based in Los Angeles and that it was a proper institution.

They had paid between $13,000 and $19,000 in fees to take up bachelor's, master's and doctorate courses lasting one year to 15 months.

Those who took up the doctorate programme said they attended classes two days a month, from 9am to 5pm.

Several said they did not know a university can be registered and yet have no academic accreditation, where it is subject to quality checks by an independent body. It also means employers may not recognise the degrees.

An electronics factory quality controller who paid $13,000 in fees for her bachelor's degree said: 'I was hoping to get a better job in logistics with this degree, but now it may not be possible.'

Ms Ho Fee Men, director of a Chinese medical hall, said she had heard rumours that the university was unaccredited, but continued with her PhD programme anyway. To get her doctorate, she paid $19,000 in fees, attended classes twice a month over 15 months and wrote a 50,000-word thesis.

Two businessmen said they knew their doctorates were worthless but took up the programme to learn about business management.

Mr Chang Chia Sheng, 55, managing director of X.L. Handle, which makes industrial fasteners, said he gained from discussions with other businessmen.

Earlier this year The Straits Times exposed another school, Boston Business School, which also offered degrees from West Coast University. It has since stopped running the courses.

At least 218 people here have been found with degrees from dubious universities such as Preston, Wisconsin International and Kennedy-Western.

Business owners make up one of three groups here who have degrees from unaccredited institutions and degree mills. For many of them, an honorary PhD has become a must-have symbol of success.

Another group comprises consultants and private school lecturers who may have a first degree and some expertise in a particular area, but seek a master's degree or doctorate to bolster their credentials.

And lastly, there are those who pay for undergraduate degrees and transcripts - usually non-graduates who want qualifications to gain jobs or promotions. 

'nuff said. Sorry guys, I had to flame you for being silly. $16k! Fuck dude, I started WhyMobile with way less cash than that!

As I think about the recent mayhem, it began to seem apparent that the world has been living on imaginary cash for the longest time. The recent economic downturn is probably long overdue.

The problem began ever since cash was free to value itself against gold. Then, we have stocks and property market that are actually made up by us humans putting an imaginary value to it. It's sort of like a super intelligent and legalized pyramid scheme you know - putting money into a money pool and "cashing out" at the right time.

To put it simply, one moment I could get a valuation of your house and it's worth $1m. The next moment another person comes in and values it at $1.1m. You think you have gained an extra $0.1m, but that's not true until you actually sell your house. And to really sell your house, you'll need somebody to pay you cold hard cash.

That guy valuating your house ain't the person that's going to buy it. He's just looking at general market statistics and putting a price tag on your house. Until somebody out there has $1.1m to spare, your house is probably worth as much as how much a person is willing to pay for it. If you ask somebody from Zimbawe, it goes like: "the bricks and cement".

About cold hard cash. Where do you get it from? Maybe take a loan from the bank... well, where did the bank get their cash from? It's from all the people who put money into it. People who clean your toilets, sell you fishes at the wet market, deliver your goods to your office, milk the cows.

Yes, money originates from something very basic, and that's trade (tada, your supply and demand topic); you have something I want, and I give you something in exchange for it. It used to be exchange of farm produce (barter trade), then it became precious metals (gold, silver), and finally, money. Money used to represent gold, but now, it's just a piece of paper with a floating value! If you look at it objectively, US dollars is probably worth nothing. If you hold a dollar bill, it's likely that piece of paper meant you owe Japan some money... better sell that "IOU" to somebody else who wants it :P

Singaporeans don't really realize that day-to-day, they pay for something that doesn't even physically exist. Don't believe me? Check this out...

• PSLE, GCE O Levels, GCE A Levels, Diploma, Degree, Masters', PhD
  
• Housing Valuation
• Certificate of Entitlement (COE)
  
• Registry of Marrige (ROM) Certificate
  
• Lottery Tickets
• Certificates, certificates, certificates

Some may tell me, oh yes, education is for knowledge. I'd agree that to learn something has to be paid for, but for the sake of a "piece of paper" (as many Singaporeans affectionately call it) is basically a form of bribery. Certifications are glorified testimonials, albeit highly inaccurate. It's like you getting a letter from Bush saying that you are good in Computer Engineering. How many times have you seen your company hire a new degree graduate and you think to yourself, "this guy is dunk"?

Back in the old days, testimonials were made out of goodwill: "John makes great pizza!". Without a dollar value pegged to testimonials, they were honest and accurate.

People are telling me, times are bad; go study. I was like: "Uh? Siao boh? Buy another certificate?" In fact, 9 in 10 government sector tell me to go study and join the government. You'll be safe. Nice try. Methinks please go get some cash and gold... in times of war, your degree is as good as toilet paper.

I'm sure a lot of you would have been offended by my post. Well, times are bad... what to do? It makes me think harder :P

A notable time in history worth blogging about. This is the first time NZD, AUD, GBP and EUR went so low against SGD:

• 1 NZD = 0.8904 SGD
• 1 AUD = 0.9878 SGD
• 1 GBP = 2.5265 SGD
• 1 EUR = 2.0057 SGD

On the contrary, USD, JPY and CNY (RMB) is on a crazy rise...

• 1 USD = 1.4786 SGD
• 100 JPY = 1.4751 SGD
• 1 RMB = 0.2163 SGD (1/x = 4.6233)

And for the record, a lot of money changers decided not to do business last Friday. Let's see what happens today.

I mean, who can get as stupid as this goes:

http://sheylara.com/2008/04/09/xiaxue-gets-flamed-on-high-profile-usa-blog/

http://gizmodo.com/377601/crazy-popular-asian-blogstar-prefers-fake-chinese-iphone-to-the-real-thing

I've seen XiaXue's blog but I really never bother because her entries are of no interest to me (mostly bimbotic complaints and crap). I never knew she had a stupid talk show but wow this video was... OH MY GOD. *Palms forehead* I don't know whether to laugh or cry. I can't believe she actually thought the chinese iPhone was a real iPhone. That goes to show it's empty up there, or she's been living on the moon. I hope chang'er will slap her to Mars. XX, if you see this, please get the fuck out of Singapore.

I'm not an Apple fan but I simply love the iPhone. It's a brilliant piece of engineering. Even if a proper, not-so-bimbotic, 5-minute style review of the iPhone does not justify the amount of work Apple has put into this product. There's so many nitty gritty details that Apple has put into the iPhone that a 5 minute review won't tell, like the automatic keypad lock when you put the phone up against your face, the automatic light detection that varies the screen brightness, the amazing ability to text with your THUMBS (I'm not kidding) on a tiny touch screen, a on-screen keyboard that finally responds to your tapping (as opposed to the crappy Windows Mobile keyboard that sits there even when you tap it), the text input error correction, the ability to detect an intent to scroll than to tap, the astounding quality of the 2MP camera, the crazy lots of apps available out there whether you need it or not, the super intuitive "slide to unlock" and "slient mode" switch, the browser based on Safari that actually WORKS... the list could go on.

Sure the lack of MMS and SMS forwarding turns a few off, but seriously probably 5% of the world uses MMS.

Have you even tried the Samsung Omnia? Slide the screen and it triggers a tap? It's crap! In iPhone's justice, you really need a STYLUS to operate that thing. A phone is a phone, I shouldn't need to bring a toothpick around.

2MP camera? Grab a Nokia 2MP camera. No way you will get anything close to picture quality. The iPhone's white balance and compression quality surpasses any Nokia or Dopod or HTC out there... maybe Sony Ericsson has some exceptions.

They are the cause of this. AIG took a second loan after spending $440k for their top performing agents to go on a chill out at a resort. What the heck are the Americans thinking? They should be eating raw coffee seeds by now and not sipping wine. The war is still going on (a losing battle? was that the latest?).

Japan insurer up lorry. Oil at $82/barrel. People here are still wishing they get $40k COV on property? WTF are Singaporeans thinking? Hello?! Stop reading the local junk papers like New Paper and Lianhe Wanbao can? Who you think is going to sponsor soccer teams if the world economy up lorry? Read some real news from Yahoo!, Reuters and Bloomberg...

There was a massive power outage at Qala yesterday. QQblogs went down, together with all the other sites hosted in the same rack. I'm furious. I've switched from datacenter to datacenter because of poor service and empty promises. Is there a datacenter in Singapore that doesn't make empty promises? Tell me about it.

Here's a list of datacenters I've been to... since probably 1998 or so:

• WingTai - Left because they closed shop
• Intermedia - They aren't exactly a datacenter but they have rack spaces that they resell. Intermedia used to be hosted at PCCW (excellent datacenter!) and later shifted to 1-Net without any notification or consent - you could imagine one day your servers went down, nobody was contactable, and the next day your servers are up and you see the traceroute changed. Of course everybody jumped and wanted out. Then I found out that Intermedia didn't pay their bills and as a result the line was cut and all were servers held up. 1-Net refused to release our servers and we were completely stuck. Intermedia people also didn't pick up phone calls and was they were no-show when we finally managed to contact them and meet them. Long story cut short, don't buy co-location from idiots.
• PCCW - Back to PCCW but as a direct customers this time, but they decided to wind up their small-time co-location business so we shifted once again. I was quite upset actually because they had the best datacenter I've been to so far!
  
• Pacific Interenet - Moved out after a series of power failures, network outages (due to individual racks tripping the circuit breaker), poor cooling (the datacenter got really warm at times), poor call center response, security guard missing from data center at times and poor inter-departmental communication. I have had quarrels with the security guard for removing my server when my bills were paid and when I've sufficiently notified of my account termination. Read this post.
• Qala - Good price and pretty decent network speed but a poorly setup datacenter with only 1 staging computer, no staging area, access cards held by datacenter staff (you had to make a call for them to come open the door for you), racks a little too shallow and don't fit standard Dell rails, they charge you for rack trays, and of course the recent massive power outages affecting the entire datacenter.
  

After all these saga I might as well just get an ADSL line and put a 21U rack in my home. The money I pay for a datacenter in a year can easily cover the cost of a steel cage and a UPS. I think that's a better alternative.

Here's my e-mail to Qala:

Yesterday (Sunday) morning at about 9-10 am the power at the Qala datacenter went out, shutting down a lot of our servers. At first I thought it was a network issue, but after a while I realized my switch was back up but some servers were still down so I went to the datacenter and found out that there's already a lot of people there all due a massive power blackout. I checked with the security guard and he say this is a planned electrical maintenance.

I can accept a network outage but I cannot accept a power outage. The data center has 3-4 levels of power (mains, UPS, and backup generator and a second backup generator) so there should be no excuse for a power failure. Even if so, the three stage power backup should be sufficient to hold the data center's power for a few hours - enough to notify customers and allow us to plan and take action, e.g. shut down our servers.

Because of this power failure a few of my machines had hard drive errors and I have to spend hours recovering the data.

The other issue is that there's no notice of this planned maintenance communicated to us, and there was no notification that our servers were down, and that I have not receive any report of the incident from yesterday - not even an interim report which most data centers would have sent out within an hour or two of an outage.

In the peak of the disaster yesterday the whole data center also had no lights (I had to bring my own lights - see picture), not enough monitor/keyboard, not enough pass and poor security access clearance. I also had to wait at the main door for almost 10 minutes before somebody opened it. When I got in, I see the whole NOC team sitting inside eating pizza and I only see 2-3 persons helping out with over 20-30 customers on site recovering their servers.

Apparently Cisco does not apply the KISS (Keep it Simple, Stupid) principle in the design of their product.

I have this Cisco 800 Series Router sitting on my desk now and I'm configuring it for SingTel's ADSL with a /28 static IP subnet. So I was considering hooking up the entire office directly to it and setting up NAT for the server when I was overwhelmed with the NAT terminologies used! Yes, this is my first time setting up NAT on a Cisco and it has never been more difficult.

Adding on to my list of frustrations was the lack of support for more than 1 VLAN (like, WTF?) and the inability to assign an IP address to individual ethernet ports so I decided that the router shall remain a KISS router in this case and we'll get a proper firewall box for NAT and etc. instead.

So anyway, after some reading up and twiddling, here's a summarized Cisco NAT guide for dummies.

First, there are two magical terms you have to learn - outside and inside. Cisco people (I call them Cisco people because they seem to live a world of their own) call it outside NAT and inside NAT as if they weren't confusing enough.

Sorry for my rant. Back to the topic.

• Outside stands for... outside. The WAN link. The public. The Internet. The dark side. The evil side. Whatever you may call it.
• Inside stands for... inside. The LAN link. The VPN. The private segment. The trusted side. Whatever you may call it.

So before you set up NAT, you will have to tell the router which interface belongs to which side. So for my case, ATM0 is the dark side, and Vlan1 is the trusted side.

Router> en
Router# conf term
Router(config)# int atm0
Router(config-if)# ip nat outside
Router(config-if)# exit
Router(config)# int vlan1
Router(config-if)# ip nat inside
Router(config-if)# exit

Here you have it. Now the router knows where the interfaces belong, we can now start telling it what to do!

So here's another bunch of terms you have to learn.

• Static NAT. We all know this. This means a one-to-one NAT - to map an address to another.
• Dynamic NAT. This is the many-to-many NAT. How does it map I am clueless but I am thinking it's either random or in sequence. Whichever it may be, uncertainty is always bad. KISS.
  
• Overload NAT. This is the many-to-one NAT. It's a new term to me but Cisco people seem to know it at the back of their heads for some reason. Linux guys will know it as masquerading.
• Destination NAT. This translates the destination as opposed to the above three that translates the source address. I won't cover this here.

Static NATs are easy. These are generic source address translations. You only need to add a static NAT line and you're done. The following line adds a static public IP 12.34.56.78 that translates to 192.168.0.10:

Router(config)# ip nat inside source static 192.168.0.10 12.34.56.78

For the remaining NATs, we have some work to do.

First, you'll need to create an access list. An access list is identified by it's access list number and is used Cisco-wide to determine access to various things - such as for firewall, NAT, whatever. So it's good to plan your access list numbers. The weird part of this is that the access list uses a wildcard instead of a netmask, so take note! The example below adds my private LAN IP range to ACL number 10:

Router(config)# access-list 10 permit 192.168.0.0 0.0.0.255

Next, you'll need to consider how many outside (public) IPs you have. If you have multiple that you wish to NAT, you will need to create a NAT pool. The NAT pool is a bunch of IP addresses that is to be seen on the outside. If you only have one public IP, don't worry - no NAT pool is required - we can assign the NAT to an interface.

Here, I create a pool called "WAN" with address range 12.34.56.1 to 12.34.56.10. Skip this if you don't have a range of addresses to use.

Router(config)# ip nat pool WAN 12.34.56.1 12.34.56.10 netmask 255.255.255.0

And then we'll start to add the NAT line using the access list "10" we just created and the pool of addresses called "WAN".

If you have the same number of IP addresses both inside and outside, you'll do this:

Router(config)# ip nat inside source list 10 pool WAN

BUT if you have more inside addresses than outside, you will need to add the overload keyword, like so:

Router(config)# ip nat inside source list 10 pool WAN overload

Lastly, if you only have one public (outside) IP address, you can assign the NAT directly to an interface instead, like so:

Router(config)# ip nat inside source list 10 interface atm0 overload

Once you're done you can check your NAT statistics and translation table:

Router# show ip nat statistics
Router# show ip nat translations

I haven't had a chance to test all the NATs though, so let me know if I provided any incorrect information!

My workplace parking for the month of September was a whooping ~$300. Wow. Talk about cost of living. Can the basket of goods be revised to include transportation like cabs and CBD parking?

The best video I've found on YouTube for this piece. Enjoy!