Better ways to donate to the needy

It’s indeed disheartening to learn that some of the supposed “non-profit welfare” organizations in Singapore are misusing donated funds.

Refer to The Straits Times (July 13 2005) for such an example. The CEO of the organization in question actually treated himself to a monthly wage of S$25,000 plus a 12-month bonus!

All this money are drawn from the public-donated money that are meant to help the needy. Can you imagine this: the needy who are supposed to be aided by this fund are living in dire conditions while the CEO himself is generously helping himself to the fund and living in such luxuries! Please enlighten me if you can, as I simply does not see any logic in this whole thing.

My kind appeal to everyone is to stop donating to such organizations. The reasons are simple:

• You do not know how much of your donation actually goes to the actual needy. For all you know, maybe only 1% of your donation goes to the needy while the rest of the 99% is used to “upkeep the organization”.
• The financial status of such organizations are non-transparent, and thus easily prone to misuse by the management.

Some suggestions on better ways to help the needy:

• Donate monetary aid directly to the needy parties.
• Donate daily neccessaties.
• Provide companionship.

East Cost outing on 9th July 2005

9th July 2005 Saturday is an unforgettable day. Both you and I decided to let our hair down and indulge ourselves in a one-day local getaway.

We had rented a car for that day. We left home at around 10:50am that Saturday morning. We headed to Blk 241 Compassvale to retrieve our rented car, a Proton Wira. And henceforth began our journey for the day.

Our first stop was mother’s place. We had laksa breakfast with her and Sing Ying. It’s a pity that we arrived at mother’s place a bit too late, coz she’s rushing to work at 12 noon. So she ate quickly and left for work (at the Sheng Siong supermarket below her block).

Next, we went to SSDC to register for your basic theory test. The queue was very long; all in all, we spent 1 hour at SSDC. We left SSDC at 1:30pm.

After successfully registering for the basic theory test, we started our journey to East Cost loh! From SSDC, we took this driving route to East Coast: AMK Ave 3 -> Hougang Ave 2 -> Eunos -> Still Road -> Still Road South -> East Coast Park Service Road. Somehow there was quite a jam at Eunos… maybe it’s due to the homegoing crowd on a Saturday afternoon.

When we reached East Coast, we looked around for the carpark nearest to MacDonald’s but it was fully parked. Hence we settled for the next further one which still has spaces available. Another great thing we realised is the free parking.

Our first activity at East Coast was cycling! We left all our barang barang in the car and headed for the first bicycle rental shop. We booked 2 bicycles for 2 hours each. We cycled towards the seafood restaurants side. After some time our bums were aching due to the uncomfortable bicycle seats. We passed by the hawker centre as well as the jetty where people were fishing. We U-turned at the jetty.

We stopped for some refreshments at the hawker centre. We ate grilled tau-pok and you-tiao in peanut chilli sauce and drank whole coconuts. After recharging, we headed back towards MacDonald’s (still with our aching bums. hehe).

Once back at our car, we retrieved our “camping” barang barang which consist of a straw mat, magazines, newspapers, tidbits and drinks. We settled down at a spot along the beach that is close to the sea. There, we had a good time reading papers and enjoying the wonderful sea view and sea breeze. There was also a cute little toddler girl scooping sand beside us. Those were such enjoyable moments. Ahh…

At around 5pm+, we packed up and headed for dinner. After much consideration, we decided to go to Old Airport Road’s hawker centre. When our car reached there, we had difficulty finding the entrance to the carpark. In the end, we circled twice before finding the entrance. For dinner, we ordered mutton soup, shells, otar, satay and sugar cane juice. Hmmmm…. so yummy! To our pleasant surprise, the satay sauce comes mixed with pineapple sauce. It was indeed a very enjoyable and fulfilling dinner!

Now came the difficult part. We were scratching our head very hard for ideas on where to go next. Finally we decided on Expo, since it might have some exhibitions that we can view. So we made our way towards Expo. When we reached Expo, we encountered a funny scene of 3 guys and gals singing offkey at a stage. We headed indoors and tried to search for any exhibition. However we were denied as there was completely no exhibitions on that day. Before we turned to leave, I visited the toilet for a big business. Ok, at least our trip to Expo were not wasted. Haha…

Our last venue for the day was Punggol. We originally wanted to go to the beach, but we failed to find it. Hence we ended up at Puggol Plaza instead. A bit small, but at least we knew how the plaza is like, after hearing so much about it from your mum.

After we left Punggol, it is time to return the car. We headed for the Esso station near to Rivervale Plaza to top up the fuel tank. Then we drove back to Block 241 to park the car. We gathered all our belongings and walked back to our block. Before going up, we bought 3 durians for $10.

Hence, that wraps up our enjoyable one-day local getaway. I really enjoyed myself and thanks for the happy memeories. I pray that we have more chances to do so in future.

Love you,
dar dar

How to generate SSL cert for Apache

(excerpts taken from http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/answers/270)

openssl genrsa -des3 -out pass.key 1024
openssl rsa -in pass.key -out server.key
openssl req -new -key server.key -x509 -out server.crt -days 999

cp server.key /etc/httpd/conf/ssl.key/
cp server.crt /etc/httpd/conf/ssl.crt/

apachectl stop
apachectl startssl