Citizenship Ceremony

Today is the culmination of my journey in becoming a new citizen of my adopted country, a journey that took slightly less than a year.  Of course, the preamble to this short journey began 28 years ago.  However, when I first came to this island nation as a student, it certainly did not once cross my mind that this will be the land whose passport I will bear.  But here I am.

The citizenship ceremony was one of many held throughout the country on this day.  It was a simple, yet very Singaporean experience.  Upon registration, I received a ‘goody bag’, like the ones I give out for my son’s birthday to all his guests on his birthday party.  The program proper started with 2 propaganda films, ‘propaganda’ because it was certainly meant to whip up emotions.

This was followed by a short speech by a Member of Parliament who was the Guest of Honour.  He proceeded to present the citizenship certificate and Identity Card to each of us on stage.  There were in all close to 300 percipients.

At the end, a small makan session.  Food-wise, it was OK.

So, that was it.  From this point hence, I am a true blue (or red) Singaporean.

However, that was not it actually.  Roughly two years from now, I will have to collect my Renunciation Certification from the Malaysia High Comm and to present it to the Singapore Immigrations.  Hope I remember to do that.

Planning for a Taiwan Holidays

I am planning for a 10 day Taiwan family vacation during the end-of-year school holidays.  My party includes my 70 year old parents and child of 11.  The age range spans 60 years.  So, where do I start?

I obtained a lot of the information I need from blogs and websites like trip advisor and virtual tourist.  However, the blog postings are more suitable for young travellers.  Still, they were sources of really useful information.

Air Tickets
First off, the air tickets.  No tickets, no go.  Given the pickup in air travel this year, I had better got going.  In any event, two days after I booked my tickets, there was news that airlines are hiking the fares.
Two weeks ago, in early September, I booked our tickets online with Cathay Pacific.  The reason why I chose CX is because I plan to stop by HongKong  for 4 days on the way back to Singapore.  A return ticket cost me SGD690 per person.

Itinerary
After that the details of the itinerary.  I have never liked going on a tour, certainly not one-stop-a-night kind of a rush.  Planning your own free and easy trip will certainly cost more, in my case, probably double what I would have paid on a package tour.  For me, vacation has to be easy and slow.  What I enjoy most in my travels are the taking in of the atmosphere rather than the sights themselves.  Waking up at 9am and having a leisurely start with a cup of coffee in a cafe is the norm.

Of the 10 days, 8 will be in Taipei and 2 in Hualien.

Arrival
Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport is the international gateway into Taipei.  There are numerous modes of transport from here to Taipei.  Among them are buses and taxis.  Taxis typically cost NT$1100 and can accomodate 4 persons each.  I will require two taxis for my party.
I instead intend to book a van from Oscar Limo.  An 8-seater van will cost NT$1400.  I was told by a Taipei taxi driver whom I have called that only certain taxi companies are allowed to pick up passengers from the airport.

Taipei
While in Taipei, my itinerary will include the following places :

• National Palace Museum.  This is the home of the largest collection of Chinese imperial treasures, collected by the emperors who resided in the Forbidden City in Beijing
• Night markets, Taipei 101, Danshui, Wulai, Taiwan StoryLand
• Day trip to Yangmingshan National Park, Yeliu GeoPark
• Day trip to Jiufen, the Gold Ecological Park at Jinguashi with dinner in Keelung night market
• Food, Food, Food.

Hopefully, that should provide something for everyone.

Hualien and Taroko Gorge
Thrown in at middle of our trip is an excursion to Hualien.  The main purpose of this is the Taroko Gorge.  Some make it a day trip, leaving Taipei at 8am for a two hour train journey to Hualien, Taroko exploration by taxi before another two hour train journey back to Taipei.
Instead, I have planned to set out for a two nighter in Hualien.  We will leave Taipei about noon time, stay a night in Hualien.  The next day is a full day out to Taroko.  On the final day, a short half day excursion to somewhere.

Accomodation
While in Taipei, I will stay at a small hotel near the Taipei Railway Station.  This is a big transportation hub.  That should make it convenient for me to travel to Hualien on the 2 day excursion.  More of that later.
For my hotel, I first checked out the online hotel booking sites like agoda.  Finally, I figured that I should just book directly with the hotel since my schedule requires me to stay there twice, at the beginning of the trip and after the Hualien excursion.  Besides, I have to find out if we can leave my luggage in the hotel while we are away.
As it turned out, this is the cheapest option, albeit by just tens of NT$.

For Hualien, I opted for their local bed and breakfast, also known here as minsu.

Transportation
While in Taipei, we will rely mainly on public transportation.  The mass transit system is supposed to be really modern and efficient, hence proximity to a station is high on my priority when looking for accomodation.  Besides, if we were to take taxis, one will not accomodate all of us and having two taxis is more trouble than is worth it.
For our day trips, I have booked a driver, sourced from comments in blogs.

Travel from Taipei to Hualien will be by train on the Taroko Express.  Booking can be done on the Taiwan Railways website two weeks in advance.  Booking Instructions

For the Hualien excursion, I have also booked a driver to take us to Taroko Gorge and for another half-day trip while we are there.

Reference Blogs
I must express great gratitude to the following blogs :
Taiwan 2009
Kampung Boy City Gal
The information has been invaluable.

Setting up SAP Netweaver 7.01 TestDrive for BW

To set up the stock SAP Netweaver 7.01 Windows TestDrive for BW, first I need to create a new SAP client.  A client is kind of like a sandbox, a work environment isolated from other clients.  This is not necessary but I rather work in my own client than to use clients delivered by SAP.  This way, I can do what I want, scratch it, and to re-create it.

Firstly, change the profile such that it allows for a standard SAP* login.  SAP* is a user that is automatically created whenever a client is created.  The system is defaulted to disallow this user, for security reasons.

To do this, login to client 000, run transaction RZ10.  For the profile, select NSP_DVEBMSGS00_xxx, where xxx is the name of your server.

If there is no profile available, then from the menu Utilities | Import profiles of active server

Select Extended Maintenance and click on Change.  Create the following parameters
login/no_automatic_user_sapstar=0
login/min_password_lng=3

Save and activate the profile.  The profile now takes a new version.
Now, restart the Application Server.

This time login to the newly created client using sap* with the default password pass.
Do a Client Copy by running transaction SCCL, and copy profile SAP_ALL, from Client 000 and User Masters 000.

Click Start Immediately followed by Continue.
This process took me 14 minutes.

Set this new client as the BW client.  There can only be one BW client per SAP instance.  Do this through the transaction SE16, table RSADMINA, set the field BWMANDT to 100.

Restart the SAP service and this time login to the BW client 100 using the userid BCUSER.

If you want to, change the default login client in the profile with the parameter  login/system_client=100.  While you are at it, you can remove the two parameters set up earlier, ie login/no_automatic_user_sapstar and login/min_password_lng.

Define a logical system for the client using SCC4.  Select client 100 and in the Logical System, define a new Logical System and assign it to this client.  Click on the button to the right of Logical System, Maintain Entries, continue without Specifying Project, select Business Information Warehouse.

Create a Logical System by giving it a name.  Create a new transport request, if required.

Now, assign the newly created Logical System to our client in the SCC4 screen.

Run transaction RSA1, and Activate and Replicate As Well when prompted.

Tweaking SAP Netweaver 7.01 ABAP on VM

The SAP system now needs to be tweaked.  This is to allow it to run comfortably in a VM with limited resources.  My setup is limited by the host machine which runs 32-bit Windows 7.  32-bit Windows have access to only 3GB of RAM or slightly more, and that is if the hardware allows it.  This is so, even if the machine has 4GB of RAM.

I have initially assigned 1.5GB of RAM to the VM, but there seems to be quite a bit of disk thrashing.

Tweaking the OS
This is when I started googling to see if anything can help my poor harddisk.
1. Stop NTFS from updating the access timestamp on the filesystem.  This is done by adding an entry to the registry.  Using regedit, add to HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\FileSystem an entry NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate (DWORD value of 1).

2. Turn off System Restore through Control Panel , System, System Restore

According the SAP Help, in the section on SAP Memory Management (BC-CST-MM), it states that 'Windows file cache directly competes with SAP programs for physical memory by pushing them out of the memory.'  Hence, following the instructions there, set System Properties  → Advanced  → Performance → Settings → choose Advanced → Processor Scheduling → Background services.  For Memory Usage → Programs

I decided to then install Process Explorer, a really fantastic system tool.  Guess what, the memory usage is at 2.5GB, way above the 1.5GB I have given to my VM, and above the 1GB minimum stated in SAP's minimum requirements.  I suppose that is for a physical machine where swapping is acceptable.

Next up, we'll see if SAP's parameters can be tweaked to reduce its memory consumption.

Tweaking the Database

Move database files to a fixed preallocated virtual disk.

Create a new preallocated vmdk file.  Then add to the OS using Administrative Tools; Computer Management; Disk Management.

Then using the Database Manager, move the volumes and log to the new drive using the instructions here.  Essentially, bring database offline, do a OS file copy to the new drive, point the volumes there, and finally bring database back online.  I am missing the dbmrelocate executable which would have made it easier.  This allows me to move the C:\sapdb\NSP\sapdata and C:\sapdb\NSP\saplog, but cannot find how to move C:\sapdb\NSP\db.  Well, that may suffice for now. 

All these work is not sufficient to stop the thrashing.  Watch this space for updates.

Installing SAP ABAP Test Drive in an XP Virtual Machine

SAP has been providing downloads of their latest Netweaver platforms on their SDN website.  This is a great way to play around with their latest and greatest infrastructure software.  There is an active community in SDN with helpful instructions to guide you in your endeavour.

Note that there is no business logic included in these download packages.

Packages are available for both Windows and the various flavours of Linux.  Combinations of Java and ABAP servers (SAP call these personalities) are included in these packages.  In this blog, I detail my experiences in installing the ABAP only server on a Windows XP virtual machine.  The host computer is a Windows 7 laptop.

First, the downloads.  I downloaded the SAP NetWeaver 7.01 SR1 SP3 ABAP Trial Version from SDN.

For the virtual machine, I am using VMWare Player 3.01.  So, while the SAP packages are being downloaded, I prepared a VM with 40GB virtual drive.  I installed Windows XP and upgraded it to SP3, applying all the patches.  This process took me 3 hours.  I gave the VM 1.5G of RAM.

Now, with the VM ready with Windows XP SP3, I proceeded to install the SAP server software.  I appreciate this blog posting greatly, followed its steps closely and after 5 hours of harddisk whirring, the software is finally got installed.

Oh, this one stumped me for a while.  Use winrar to extract the downloaded files.  I had lots of problems with zip7, with messages like corrupt archives.  Just extract the part1.rar and it will also extract part2.rar.

While the installation is going on, it does not hurt to look at the documents contained in the install package.  Open up the \DOC\html\index.htm file found in the extract directory.

Now is time to install the rest of the tools.  Installation notes can be found in SAPNWABAP701SR1_TRIAL/DOC/html/gettingstarted.htm

The following tools will be installed :
1. SAPGui - this is what you use to access SAP;
2. Database Manager - a program to administer the SAPDB database;
3. SQL Studio - you can perform SQL queries here.

To start and stop SAP, use the SAP Management Console.  Select the SAP system, in our case it is NSP, and click start.

To login to SAP, start SAPGui, create a login connection and log in using one of the userids provided.

The installation comes with a 1-month license.  You can request and update the license with a new 3-month extension.  Instructions are in the Getting Started webpage in the Installation Documentation.

So, here we are.  SAP running in a Windows XP virtual machine.

I have yet to start exploring it.  Once I have done that, I will update on the memory requirements, as I think the 1.5GB of RAM may not be sufficient.

There seems to be a whole load of disk thrashing, given the limited resources given to the VM.  That's the topic of another post.

Renunciation of Malaysian citizenship

Thanks to the various blogs on the renunciation of Malaysian citizenship in Singapore, my progress so far has been rather smooth.  As I spent the requisite time at the Malaysian High Comm, I noticed that a lot of time can be saved if only the steps are clear.

Here, I return the favour that I have gotten by detailing my journey.

It started last year, when I decided that I have lived long enough in Singapore to apply for citizenship.  This was a rather straightforward process.

1. Check your eligibility and download a set of the application documents from the ICA Citizenship website.
2. Submit your documents to ICA.
3. Turn up at an interview where your documents are verified.
4. Wait for the approval, which will come in the form of a letter.  This will take between 3 to 6 months.

So much for the Singapore side.  By this stage, the application for citizenship is approved and all that needs to be done is to renounce your current citizenship.  The 'all that needs to be done' turns out to be multiple trips to the High Comm.  This is where it gets a bit unclear.  Having scoured the net for information, I followed their experiences to the T.

1. Bring along the approval letter, your Malaysian and Singapore ICs, turn up at the Malaysian High Comm.  It is advisable to turn up before the offices open at 8am, if you do not want to wait for long.  Go to the main entrance and exchange for an entry pass.  The entrance is along Cable Road.  With the pass, now you can enter the High Commission through the side entrance at Jervois Road.
2. Go to the Consular section, where you will receive a stack of documents to fill.  That's all you do on this day.

After all that, you get some papers to fill and a date to submit.  For me, it was 5 months out.
Ah, you will require some passport photographs when you come back to submit your documents.  So, while you have already spent a morning just to obtain the forms, you might just as well have your photographs taken.  There is a camera booth in the passport section.

So, when the auspicious day came, again I turned up at the High Comm.

1. Turn up early, exchange your pass, and go straight to the Consular section again, this time with all your filled up forms, supporting documents and photocopies, and your photographs.  Make sure you have everything they want.  It will be very sad to forget something, only to have to come another day.  Of special note are the following : Birth Certificate to be laminated; current and all previous Passports (if any are missing, you need to produce a Police Report).
2. Your forms will be checked and thumbprints taken.
3. This time, they will retain all your Malaysian identification documents and in return, you get a slip for you to turn up a few days later to collect a proof of submission.

Wait a few days.  In the mean time, make a booking with ICA to register yourself as a Singapore citizen.
1. Go back to the High Comm to collect a letter addressed to ICA that acknowledges their receipt of your documents.

With this letter, go to ICA to get your citizenship registration done.  You can also apply for your passport on this day.  You will then take an oath of allegiance to your new country.  Welcome to Singapore.

On registration day, you will be issued with a temporary NRIC card, while you have to wait for a ceremony to be held in your constituency where your newly mint pink IC will be presented to you.

That's not the end of it, though.  The renunciation process is not complete until you receive Certificate of Renunciation from Malaysia, a process which will take 2 to 3 years.  That's the Borang K that is mentioned in a number of websites.  That Certificate needs to be presented to ICA when the time comes.

Updates
1 April 2011 : Just got a letter from Malaysian High Comm telling me to go collect my Borang K.  Wow, this certainly more than met my expectations.  It has only been 9 months.  Next step is to go collect it and submit to ICA.  Then I'm done.