Okay, I am all set and ready to brew my own beer! I am planning to get all the equipment needed to make the best brew out there. However, due to the problem of heat in Singapore, I am forced to purchase additional equipment - the cooler box. It’s sort of a foam box especially made for the fermenter ( actually a food bucket with airlock and tap). All you need to do is to add packets of ice into the foam box everyday. Sounds a bit tedious, but if you want good tasting beer, you will have no choice but to make the temperature lower. The heat will make the yeast (which makes the alcohol from the sugar & malt) create weird flavours, which in turn changes the taste of the beer. Although it is not poisonous (nothing bad can live in alcohol), it may make anyone drinking the beer stop drinking beer for the rest of his/her life. It is good that people stop drinking beer, but I am afraid that it will create a pandemic that will spiral out of control. Just imagine everyone drinking vodka and singing Russian love songs.

This is what I will be getting for my first home brewing setup:

1. Coopers Complete Home Brewing Kit (comes with 30litres fermenter, bottles, airlock, tap, long spoon, thermometer, bottling valve, Coopers lager concentrate, 1kg of brewing sugar as well as carbonation drops). The carbonation drops is to help create the gassy drink.

2. Yeast, I am getting the Safale US-56 yeast which is supposed to be of a higher quality than the rest. Hope that it will create a great tasting beer for my friends. I am not going to use the yeast supplied by the manufacturer.

3. Cooling box as described above. Just hope that it is not too big and obvious that I get yelled at when someone sees that box.

4. Sanitizer, something which no home brewer should live without. Bacteria and germs are the biggest causes of beer brew failure. They create all sorts of odd flavours in your beer. You need to eliminate them as much as possible. Cleaning alone isn’t enough, you really need to sanitize them completely. The best is actual to sterilize them, but due to the fact that several of the equipment are plastic, it’s best not to sterilize them.

5. Malt. I am not going to use brewing sugar completely. I am going to substitute a portion of the brewing sugar with some malt. It will probably give it better taste and body. No point creating something that doesn’t taste much to the drinkers.

All these cost a bomb, but I believe that subsequent brews will be much cheaper. No need for the equipment, just the beer ingredients and a little water. I think it is worth it to brew yourself, just look at the tax we have for alcoholic drinks in Singapore. All I have to do is to wait for my next pay check.

No, I am not kidding you. In Singapore, you can get away with murder if you are NOT a Singaporean and the victim is. Please read the following article here.

Basically what happened is that a Chinese National who works in a kitchen stabbed his supervisor with a kitchen knief (and he died) but the judge decided that the Chinese National was “not responsible” for his action because he had a “moderate depressive episode” and he was “provoked” by his supervisor. So I guess next time if my supervisor shouts at me, I will have to respond by stabbing him and then shout “We Singaporeans are not easily bullied”. Oh but wait, I am a Singaporean, probably will get life in prison or be hanged by the state. Plus my boss is probably one of those powerful elites.

Of course there are cases which there were killings with provocation but seriously, this happened in a big open workplace not some dark corner in Singapore. The supervisor didn’t really provoke the kitchen helper as claimed by the judge, he probably was overworked or stressed, just like everyone else in Singapore. And I am pretty sure the kitchen helper was also overworked and stressed. My boss shouts at me every time, but I didn’t take my pen and stab him in the eye because I am angry. Some of my co-workers are very nasty, I didn’t stab them with my stapler because I have a “moderate depressive episode”. Come on, even the defense lawyer had asked for 6 years for the sentence, but the judge gave him 4 years. There is something fishy. Even the fishes in the sea knows that this is very fishy. And shouldn’t this be a hate crime as well  since the kitchen helper has expressed hatred against the supervisor?

So, now I am asking everyone in other countries to come to Singapore and start stabbing Singaporeans. Or if you want something less extreme, just go around and beat up some poor Singaporean, especially those without money. In Singapore, if you assault someone, it is NOT a criminal offence (except to rich govt officials). They need to fork out a huge sum of money before they can even prosecute you. Woohooo! Avoid rich/elite people (you can spot an elite because he wears white and can travel to anywhere in Singapore within 20 minutes) because they got connections. Best thing, if that Singaporean hit you back, you can get a knife and stab him to death and shout ” We xxxxians are not easily bullied, bitch!” You get only 4 years or less if you are well-behaved in prison! 4 years for the thrill of killing a Singaporean? What more could you ask for? Or you can just fly back to your home country and forget all about it. No Singapore government official will care at all. After all, the dead are just useless and talentless Singaporeans. Our lives are not worth much after all. Nice country right? Come and enjoy! We all love being stabbed and beaten.

Oh by the way, you shouldn’t shout at any government officials. If you do that, the police will invite you down for a very long talk. This may be considered as “criminal intimidation” and you could be jailed up to 7 years for this hideous crime. Yes, that’s 7 years in prison for shouting at the government officials.

It’s been a long time since I have made fun of Google and I thought it’s about time we did something to show how good Google actually is. If you have used Google to do your searches, you will realize that Google differentiates between paid(or sponsored) listings and organic search results. So, let’s say you search for the term “fish oil” and you then be directed to a page where you can see all the results. However the first “result” is a sponsored link and you can easily notice it as a sponsored link by the words “sponsored link“. The rest of the results are from organic search. And on the left hand side, you will see more links, these are also sponsored links. They are just advertisements.

Why do you think that Google is doing this? Why do they want to differentiate between organic searches and advertisement links? Well, because Google has integrity. Really, they do. I am not making this up. As you can read from their editorial “Why we sell advertising, not search results“, you will understand more about this. “Honest G” doesn’t want to contaiminate their search results with advertisements (unlike other search engines). They definitely don’t want to “bias” their results on how much someone is willing to pay. The organic search rankings is based on a number of factors, none of which has anything to do with how much you are willing to pay Honest G. Of course, that doesn’t stop you from paying others money to get good results from Google. We call these group of people Google’s children or SEOers. Hey, no one can say Honest G is a miser anymore, can they? They are sure spreading a lot of their love around.

But in all seriousness, I still think that Google’s search engine is the best out there. Yahoo’s search results is okay, but still nothing compared to Google. Let’s not talk about MSN or Live. I had hoped for great things to come from Google, but alas, Google has failed miserably in everything else, except GMail. But even that, other email providers have caught up wth Google. So sad.

I recently discovered that Nigeria is one of the richest countries in the world. No kidding. Although you may think that it is not possible, but it is true. How do I know? Well, I will tell you a secret - from secret email communications between me and some brother of some rich fellow in Nigeria. He wanted to give me a few million for some small help. And sometimes, I get emails from bankers and lawyers who want to share their great wealth with me. Yes, they are so rich, they are willing to part with millions of US dollars, all because I can send them a few hundred dollars. Who in their right mind would turn down such offer! Best of all, I keep getting a lot of such emails, although some of them are tagged as spam by my spam filter. Yup, sometimes those spam filter gets crazy and wrongly classify important emails as spam.

Plus when you put your items on sale on ebay or Yahoo! Auctions, you will get people from Nigeria willing to pay 10 times the amount it is worth. Boy, they are sure very rich. I once placed my harddisks on sale, and someone from Nigeria offered me a few thousand dollars for it. Man, it was impossible for me to refuse right? It probably worth only like two hundred bucks and they are willing to buy it for a few thousand! Generous Nigerians I gather.

I think for my next overseas trip, I will visit Nigeria and see their vast wealth. I bet I will see beautiful palaces and huge modern buildings and hotels. And the people there should be kind and generous. Give me money! Long live Nigeria!

The Chinese New Year falls on the 7th and the 8th of Feburary, which is on a thursday and friday. This means that we all get a very long weekend, yes, 4 days of off for most of us. If you have to work on a Saturday, then tough luck to you, that’s what you get for working in Singapore. So what are your plans for this very long weekend? The first 2 days we will probably be visiting friends and relatives plus collecting Ang Pows all over Singapore, but it definitely won’t take more than 2 days right? Unless of course if your family is damn huge and then you will very likely need a few months to visit them all. There are people who have relatives in Malaysia and Saturday and Sunday, they will most probably be traveling down to Malaysia. But how about the rest of us stuck here in Singapore?

For me, I will be resting at home. That’s what I do best - rest or sleep. Maybe I will catch up with some reading and some other stuff, but mainly I will still be at home. Or I could go catch a movie with some of my friends? And maybe we will be playing Mahjong the entire Saturday night? I think that’s the likely scenario.

Oh, remember, it’s the holidays, so you need to know where to go. A lot of places will be closed, especially on the first two days. I believe that most shopping centres and hawker centres will be closed as well. Get your food prepared first (especially breakfast) because you may not be able to eat your favourite half boiled eggs with dark soya sauce since most of the hawker centers and coffee shops are not open. If you need to eat outside, those places which open are usually the fast food restaurants like McDonalds or Burger King. And Hotel restaurants will also be open. Other than that, you will probably have trouble finding food during the holidays.

I have a list of restaurants in Singapore. However, please check with them whether they open on the holidays.

No, I am not really a fan of exotic vehicles. I am more of a practical guy, not going for expensive shiny white elephant kind of scrap metal. But a lot of people do, so as a gift to all of you, I am going to write this article.

I bet a lot of us would know about those high end exotic car manufacturers like Lotus, McLaren, Ferrari and so on. Well, these are the famous ones which everyone knows about. But in all seriousness, if I am rich enough to purchase one of these vehicles made by them, I would rather choose a model that very few people has. It’s the exclusiveness that matters, right? I mean, if it is rare, it would probably worth more to the collector. Well, how about getting high end exotic cars from little known manufacturers? Sure, that Lamborghini you are driving is cool and all that, but how about this Venturi Fetish electric sports car? Won’t that be even cooler? And considering how rare these vehicles are, this would be the exclusive of the exclusive.

Okay, I am here to make it less exclusive for all of you. So, I am going to introduce to you some of the little known exotic car manufacturers in the world. They are in no particular order.

1. Spyker Cars  

2. Panoz Auto Development Company

3. Alpina Automobiles

4. Shelby Automobiles

5. AK Sports Cars

6. Qvale Automotive Group

7. Vemac Cars

8. Abarth

9. Cizeta Automobili

10. Covini Engineering

11. Mosler Automotive

12. Ultima Sports Ltd

13. Vandenbrink Design

14. Cisitalia

15. Westfield Sports Cars

16. Farbio Sports Cars

17. T1 Cars Limited

18. Caterham Cars

19. Gumpert Sportwagenmanufaktur

20. Venturi

21. Aeon Sportscar

22. Laraki Automobiles

23. Leblanc Cars

24. Allard Motor Works

25. Anteros Marketing

26. Tramontana Group

27. Acrea

28. K1

29. AGM Sports Cars

30. Telsa Motors

I bet you guys didn’t even heard of most of them, right? But they do build some of the most beautiful cars. And if you do find any little known exotic sports car manufacturers out there which I have not listed, please do not hesitate to comment here.

In Singapore, a lot of us (Chinese) nowadays don’t cook for our reunion dinner. We usually go out and have our dinner in the restaurants, saving us a lot of time and effort. Of course, that is not the ideal situation since I always like home cooked meals instead of those from the restaurants. I always miss all those nice traditional food that my mother used to make. And during this very peak and busy night, the food they cooked are probably of a lower quality than what is usually served. Plus, it is definitely more expensive than normal. Perhaps 2 to 3 times more than usual. But what can we do? It’s Chinese New Year eve! Everywhere you go, restaurants are all fully booked and unless you are planning to have your reunion dinner at McDonalds, then you are out of luck.

So here is my advice to you, book early! Don’t wait till the last moment before you book your seats in the restaurants. I think a lot of restaurants are already fully booked, so you better get your act together and decide on which restuarants you would like to spend the evening with your family. Or you could cook yourself. Get your sisters, mother or someone and start preparing a list of cookery and ingredients and buy them early. Cookery, you can probably buy a few weeks before Chinese New Year, which means NOW! Ingredients, you get it a day before or if you have a freezer, get them the weekend before.

If you are looking for a list of Chinese Restaurants in Singapore,  please take a look at my directory. Of course, reunion dinners are not restricted to just Chinese restaurants, you can even try those Fusion restaurants.

I am sure that every Singaporean knows that gambling is a serious problem in Singapore. Everywhere you go in Singapore, you will find those 4d booths, even in housing and neighbourhood areas. Although gambling is actually illegal in Singapore, legal forms of gambling like buying lottery tickets and betting on soccer and race horses is allowed. And now, with the casinos (or Integrated Resorts) going to open in 2009, we will see even more forms of gambling.

Even now without those casinos, we can see that there is a serious gambling problem. I know that for a fact. Several of my friends cannot control themselves. They spend all of their salaries gamlbing. Yes, well, sometimes they do get lucky and make a few quick bucks here and there, but overall, they are still losing tons of money to gambling. And even if they win, they will probably spend it on something stupid instead of investing or saving their money. Luckily for them, they are single, so at least they don’t have anyone that depends on them for food. But how about others with families or perhaps parents who depend on them for their daily bread?

The problem is greed. And in Singapore, we are flush full with it. Just look around you and you will have to agree with me that Singapore is a paradise of greed. Our leaders are greedy and by definition, the people will be greedy too. It’s both a good thing and a bad thing. Singapore is economically strong, but the problem is there is no satisfaction. We just want to make more and more money, irregardless of the actions. Thus, a lot of people turn to gambling in the bid to get rich quick.

I myself think that the casinos will cause more problems than it will solve. Of course, there are experts in the Singapore government that think otherwise. Or they just think with their wallets and don’t even care about the social problems it will cause. Just imagine, the gambling problem is already so acute with so little forms of gambling. Come 2009, the casinos will open and just think of the ways people can gamble away their money just a stone throw away! And now, they can spent it in just one night in one place. Those big money and high risk gambling tables are just waiting for these people to throw money at them. How do we cope with this problem? Gambling is addictive, there is no doubt about that. People get a thrill at the chance of winning big and living off those winnings without the need to work. But seriously, how many people will be lucky enough to win so big? Very very few, I would gather.

So this is my advice to you gamblers out there. Think of your family and your children. Gambling is not the solution to your financial woes. In fact, we all know that it will most probably make it even worse. If you have a gambling problem, admit it now and go seek help before it is too late and you lose everything.

Below is a list of sites where you can get some help:

http://www.camp.org.sg/gambling.cfm

http://www.ncpg.org.sg/faq.html

http://www.care-centre.org/RayOfHope/index.html

I have started using AVG Free for a few weeks already and I find it very good. I mean, if you are a cheapskate like me who is not willing to pay several dollars for a good antivirus software, then AVG Free is for you. First of all, it doesn’t take up a lot of resources. My system is an old Pentium IV 2.53 and it runs fine with both AVG and Avira together. I don’t get slowdowns at all. The great thing about AVG compared to Avira, you can download the anti-virus definitions much faster. I don’t know why but Avira servers seemed to be always overloading and sometimes, you can’t even update the definitions at all. Or perhaps they are doing it on purpose to force their free users to buy the full edition. Not problems whatsoever for AVG. And since we all know that viruses spread like wildfire these days, it always good to get up-to-date virus definitions.

For the free version of AVG, you get only basic virus scanning and protection, while for the Internet Security edition, you get the full shebang, that is anti-spyware, anti-virus, anti-spam plus firewall protection. However, it does scan incoming emails for virus which a plus. The user interface is quite easy to use. You won’t get confused by options after options in many other software. It comes with a control center which you can administrate how your anti-virus software runs and setup your scheduled updates. Oh, you can also download their anti-spyware software for free. But as always, the free software is limited and doesn’t have any real-time protection. If you need that, go and get the Pro version of their anti-spyware software. Hey, what do you expect? Everyone needs to eat right?

If you don’t have a anti-virus software, what are you waiting for? You want to get infected by viruses? Go and download and get at least some protection for your PC for god’s sake. Oh, this only applies if the system in question is not a commercial one. If you are a business entity, then get the full version, you real cheapskate!

Yes, that’s my advice to all of you. Get a job which you love and enjoy and it becomes less of a drag to go to work! I mean, a lot of us, especially the people of Singapore, often try to find jobs pay us the most. However, most of us don’t like our jobs. Everyday, we have to drag ourselves to work. It becomes tedious and we start to lose our faith. But because of our financial committments or because we are just interested in the money, we can’t leave. Thus, every morning, you will see a lot of zombies on the bus or the MRT, barely alive, barely breathing. And I think to myself, are all these worth it?

I sort of enjoy my work. I am sure if you have read this blog before, you will realize that I hate my company and the top management. However, even if I hate my company and the top management, I don’t hate my job. Seriously, it is a great job which I enjoy and take a bit of pride in. I pride myself in properly maintaining the IT infrastructure and making sure that there are as few as possible downtimes in the company network and the systems. All the software in the company is properly audited. I enjoy helping others solve their IT problems. For me, going to work is fun, it would be more fun if someone were to smite down the top management and their angels of death. As usual, most of the manpower problems and politicing are caused by these greedy bastards upstairs. But of course, they are blaming everyone else for all and every problem in the company. Real bastards these people.

And if you enjoy your work, you will be more willing to learn new things. You will also be more willing to change for the better because of this. And the amazing thing is that you will feel that it is not longer so stressful when you go to work. So ditch that high paying job, and start living your dream and make full use of your many talents. You will be much “richer” because of it, I can guarantee you that much. No longer will you drag yourself to work anymore. It’s like the weight of the world being lifted off your shoulders! You can thank me later.

“Get A Job You Enjoy, And You Will Never Work Again”

Somebody said that and I will tell it, it is true. Life will be good.