Temasek Review needs a new server urgently
August 16th, 2010 | 
Author: Dear readers,
We have received feedback from readers that some were unable to access our site during random period of the day since 7 days ago.
Our in-house technical have consulted with our host and the issue is attributed to a massive increase in our daily traffic by almost 7 times (700+ request per sec) causing increase load and demand on our present server cluster. As it stands now, our 2 server’s capabilities are almost maxed.
We have since instructed our host to standby another server adding to the present cluster to handle the additional traffic and would like to urge our readers to avoid visiting our site during peak hours ( lunch and dinner time ) till the new server is deployed.
With the massive increase in traffic and readership, we have now reached a stage where we can no longer keep our site up without the need to excercise access restrictions (ie: restricting access from certain netblocks).
It is therefore with mixed feelings that we announce the following access restriction policy (if need to) till we are able to afford a new server to add to our existing cluster:
1. 220.255.0.0/18 : 8 am to 2 pm ( SingNet )
2. 218.186.10.0/24 : 2 pm to 8 pm ( StarHub )
[Amended: 01092010]
The following netblocks are blocked PERMANENTLY for suspected malicious activities:
1. 203.126.242.0/24, 203.116.50.0/24, 203.127.112.0/24, 141.0.0.0/8, 170.148.0.0/16, 203.116.208.0/24, 192.193.0.0/16 and 203.120.205.0/24.
2. Any network IP/s generating multiple simultaneous requests including but not limited to genuine users using an offline browsing client (known to generate massive multiple requests).
* Other direct allocation netblocks will also be restricted depending on the number of connections originating from them on a need-to basis.
We apologise for any inconvenience caused but this is necessary to ensure that our site is accessible at all times (although not to all readers) till we are able to get the new server deployed and running.
Our present servers are 2 x Xeon 3240 HT c/w 8gb RAM and we will be adding another CoreI7 920 with 16gb RAM (50mbps dedicated) to the cluster.
Presently, our site is 100% sustained by our advertising revenues and we have not been soliciting for donations. However, advertising can only help so much and with the new server, it will be added cost for us which is beyond our budget.
As such, we would like to urge readers who genuinely believe in our cause to make a token donation towards our new server by using the “Support Our Site” form on the widget bar or the donation panel below.
Donations received will be used solely for the initial setup and configuration of the new server while the server leases will still be covered by our advertising revenues. Once we have received the targetted amount for the new server, our donation request will be removed.
If you do not wish to make a donation, please consider order a TemasekVPN from us instead.
Thank you.
Molina Han,
Managing Editor, Temasek Review
* Please note that we DO NOT accept PayPal and our previous PayPal account is no longer in use.
Posted in Editorial
Hi, since you are using Wordpress, I suggest you consider installing a WP plugin called “WP Super Cache”. It uses a clever way to cache the content so that the website can cope with higher traffic.
It has worked well for me.
The link is:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-super-cache/
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Is there a method cash can be donated? Fix a time, place….. cash donations are non-traceable and will encourage more small donors
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Dear TR, I think your sites had been “black listed” and access to recent postings had been “disabled”, possible ISD “screening” ???…
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@NeverMind, assuming TR wants to meet you for your small US$10 donation, then they take cab or bus or mrt, minus that and they are left with?
Not forgetting ISD also wants to donate too
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What’s the CPU utilization like for your two current servers?
Don’t throw more hardware at the problem unless it’s really a hardware problem.
Tech’s note: CPU @ 252.37%, Mem @ 87%, MYSQL Process @ 84%
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You can consider implementing comment preview, captcha verification before posting, and as a last resort, mandatory registration to view (certain) content. I believe Slashdot, a tech blog, does the same.
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I do encounter unable to access problem occasionally. Donation thru website is it safe? Singtell and starhub can trace? Because these 2 coy belong to lee family. Also singtel use to hack its user pc and not get sued because protected by lee family.
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I strongly feel that TR should just close shop and let Sinkapore die a natural death.
Sinkapore is already a lost cause with all the fixing and vote rigging, WHY bother to even try letting Sinkaporeans see light when all are comfortable being in a dark well?
Can some more willingly pay their Millisters MILLIONS a year, no complain.
One server is only how much? For a cluster, maybe US$500 including setup and Sinkaporeans scare this, afraid that? Never heard of SECURED CONNECTION meh?
TR, don’t waste time lar, get a few mistress everyday bonk here bonk there, better right?
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Forecaster I agree, let Singaporeans be marginalised and replaced and no hdb to stay. Singaporeans kiasu, kiasi and kiabors.. until the day when they found they have no jobs and no money and no place, maybe too late.
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@inception, PRECISELY my thoughts lor.
Sinkaporeans all like this one, ONLY when their wife becomes a whore and daughter become FT’s mistreses then they will wake up.
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@FE2
I disagree. A good setup would easily set TR back by more than $500. If you’re just looking at $500, you’re looking at something extremely basic. Just because you deem it a lost cause doesn’t mean that one shouldn’t carry on educating the masses about the shortcomings of the incumbent just as how not all whom wander are lost and no, I’ve never heard of this “SECURED CONNECTION”. What is it exactly? I have an idea what it should do but in what context are you using it?
@TR
Perhaps you could share your setup here and some of us that work with high availability servers can advice and help? You don’t have to share your exact configs, generic ones would suffice.
Mod’s note: We are running Apache 2 on CentOS 5×86 64bit.
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@Anonymous Coward, I was referring to a basic clustering server and I used “maybe”. There are servers costing thousands of dollars, no disagreement there.
With regards to SECURED CONNECTION, I was replying to soneone who said: Donation thru website is it safe? Singtell and starhub can trace?
Basically, SSL employed by TR’s processor, ie: moneybookers.
Hope this clarifies.
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Again. Sure or not..? Last time no accounts published. Now, suddenly say paypal freeze. Where the money go. Before freeze no money meh. How come never say earlier. What if people keep donate to paypal. Cock up.
Mod’s note: The PayPal have been closed and no payment can be made to or from it.
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@Ask for money, just curious, since WHEN did TR asked for donations? I have not seen a DONATE button on TR’s site for months!
Were you referring to TOC?
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Long time ago. The faster old design time. Not this new design, btw seems slow. Is it design problem? Got even list of money but most blanko out.
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After seeing the pictures, I feel sorry for those performing. Not their fault, but I suppose they get paid (unless they are conscripted hah hah).
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anyone else facing the same problems acessing The Singapore Daily website?
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@Ask for money, OIC, when police were wearing shorts and LKY was the PM?
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Paypal is majority owned by DBS. They bought it a few years ago.
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Paypal is owned by ebay. DBS is just a business with Paypal. DBS is small fry.
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nothing in this world is for free. if anyone doesn’t like the idea of donations, they can stfu and gtfo.
maintaining a site like TR takes conviction and commitment. learn to appreciate them more.
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TR is doomed, doomed! All govt servants have been ordered to surf your site as often as possible to overload your feeble servers. Natural DDOS – works everytime.
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What made this sudden high influx of traffic? What topics are suddenly generating a lot of interest among our readers ?? Based on the recent events, could it be YOG the prime susspect??
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@Forecaster Extraordinarie II:
Why bother to bring enlightenment to Sinkaporeans?
Let them sink. Sinkies are not driven to the wall yet.
They must kena jialat jialat before they see the light.
Aside to TR, no lesson is greater other than “kena” something jialat jialat. Let Sinkies die and reborn.
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Notice article of LHL falling asleep during YOG taken off. Naughty, naughty TR – really, your server suddenly overloaded or “someone” just sabo your connection.
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all kids will come home and say “mummy, mummy how come so few people watch YOG har”, “mummy, mummy how come there is no singaporean contestants?so should i cheer for Hong Kong, Philippines or Indonesians or should I cheer for Australia or New Zealand?” Why civil servants bother 2storm Temasek Review to read criticism-you will spoil your working day. Civil servants, go watch the games lah! YOG is created for you.
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Sigh. Even TR discriminates against locals.
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I’m confused, how can it be CPU @ 252.37% when percentage is based on 100%?
Am I missing something here?
Most servers CPU load are usually around 30% with 70% not utilized.
VR-Zone (and looks like Wordpress) is using NGINX
http://www.nginx.org/en/
http://wiki.nginx.org/NginxConfiguration
http://wiki.nginx.org/Main
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Ar… so TR was not blocked or filtered by ISP but they block traffic themselve as traffic is too high for their server to handle…
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@theforgottongeneration, MM Lee also dare to report liao, why afraid of PM Lee, dio bo?
Here lor: http://www.temasekreview.com/2010/08/15/pm-lee-caught-napping-at-yog-opening-ceremony/
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Since you people are so incompetent. maybe you should outsource the management of your servers to the brotherhood. That is what many people do. And they even come with 100% guarantee or your money back arrangements. As every now and then. We all have to put up with the cockamamie stories of TR. Some of which I dont even know is true or not. But if you just give it all to the brotherhood to run for a fee. I am sure you and us will be very happy.
Mod’s note: We have no idea who is brotherhood nor is brotherhood the only person/s on earth that knows about servers. Besides, we need confidentiality, can the bortherhood (based in Singapore) guarantee that they won’t spill if and when contacted by the ISD?
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TR can let us know a local account number where donations can be made.
The government is not worried about TR or TOC because your readership is only about 2% that of ST.
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Try the plugin Bad Behaviour to filter our SPAM bots and stuff.
Editor’s note: Thank you for your suggestion, we have already blocked most Zombies netblocks and installed Akismet filter.
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So what if my donations to TR can be traced?
Since when is donation to an online news media that lend voices to common Singaporean an offend or is illegal?
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Hello,
You people seem to have so much problems in managing data. Why dont you let us help you?
We can do it for free?
Singaporedaddy (Internet Liaison officer of the brotherhood)
Editor’s note: Thank you for your kind offer which we must reject for the one and only reason that we don’t know you and have not worked with you before.
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only a minority true blue kind singaporens left in sinagpore already.
BTW sometime those elites singaporeans who interview lesser mortals singaporeans always used sarcastic and insult them until their pride is worse than dog. (SCORE, MHA, MOM, etc all govt position)
(http://forums.hardwarezone.com.sg/showthread.php?t=2865166)
own kind kill own kind.
its better to die young and not live old
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It seems the the WP Super Cache plugin is working well for your home page. I suggest you also activate it for the single post pages.
Tech’s note: We are using AA Crazy Cache.
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let the brotherhhood run it.
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It’s obvious why your site is slow. There’s something wrong with your page.
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tr alredi known as a fox in she clothing. Many pol feel it may just be a government or ids run site. Let the brotherhood run it. They will run from Munich. You all get to travel and drink free beer
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Time now: 1823hr.
Date: 19th Aug
Site CANNOT be ACCESSED through starhub.
But thru vtunnel, CAN.
Browser title shows “Loading…” then main page shows the usual page not found if a site doesnt exist.
Please rectify!
p/s tried with diff browser. With and without vtunnel simultaneously.
Mod’s note:
It’s not blocked. We have to ban selective IPs to relieve the traffic load, limited financial resources to upgrade our server.
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I love TR for the fact that they actually report things that we don’t see in the common media.
However, what I read here at times, is of a very prejudiced nature trying to ’stoke the fire’. I could have closed one eye if it were sporadic but it appears to be consistent throughout over 90% of the articles.
As much as I know PAP may be great at wayang, then surely TR writing in such a style doesn’t exactly reflect well on their own credibility? At times I have had to quickly close TR’s site in disgust.
Having said so, it is thus worthy to think twice before donating.
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close down lah. stop throwing singapore’s face in front of international reporters with your biased and untrue reports.
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@Virtualization Tech who said: I’m confused, how can it be CPU @ 252.37% when percentage is based on 100%?
Most servers nowadays are multiple core, like Core2Duo, Core2Quad, Xeon, etc.
These CPU’s when measured under *nix is taken to be 100% per core, NOT per CPU. Hence a DUAL CORE CPU will have 200% at its max, not 100%
Hope this explains.
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Are there any lawyer here , if have please advice .
Donation of this kind does it goes against the law?
@reviewer:
Knn Go and shaft it up your Ass , you son of a Papaya dog.
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@Half hearted, the money is in your pocket and TR certainly did not shove a gun to your head asking for donations.
Its your perogative to decide to nor not to support TR, you have a choice unlike your CPF in Sinkapore.
Many supporters of TR have said this and I’ll repeat it for you again: If you do not believe in anything TR publishes, then don’t visit TR and read TODAY or SHITTYTIMES instead.
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I have already donated $50. I urge everyone to do the same to contribute to a good political cause.
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I think beyond all the praises/criticism on TR, I think we all can agree that by coming here, it has given you some form of entertainment/source of information. Since TR has become my daily read (and probably for some of you), I see giving back via a small donation should be of no problem to most. It probably cost more to buy Straits Times/TNP anyway.
I think a lot of Singaporeans do not like to stand up for their political stances due to the fear of the govt. However, I see this as a small way to help. It is anonymous and it is convenient. I do wish that everyone who kept asking others to vote for the opposition, everyone who like to see a change to just give a little so that TR will be able to continue its reporting
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@OrEmuN, good say indeed.
However, TYPICAL Sinkaporeans (with the exception of minorities) only know how to take and be taken.
They expect and demand that TR WILLINGLY GIVE FREE everything they want to them but allowed the PAPies to TAKE EVERYTHING from them.
MAJORITY of Sinkaporeans have no freaking idea what RECIPROCATING means or they would have voted the PAPies out long time ago. Instead, they allowed themselves and family to be screwed over and over again.
Why TR bother to even setup such a site to educate these DAFT Sinkaporeans is beyond my comprehension.
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With this kind of stats and ranking, it wont be difficult for TR to sell off its domain for many more servers than they are asking for right now. Maybe SPH can buy over TR and shut them up for good?
http://www.cnhaode.com/siteinfo/d6639/869044639.shtml
http://www.urbandata.com/www.temasekreview.com
Global Traffic Statistics (month)
Alexa Rank 49,583
Compete Rank 24,999
QuantCast Rank N/A
Pageviews 900,240
Visitors 538,221
TR has close to 1,000,000 page views a month and approx 30,000 individual readers a day!
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@ Forecaster Extraordinarie II
I can understand your frustration well as I am politically apathetic initially but I think we should not be calling people names as that is the way of the PAP. We must not become those whom we oppose.
Anyway, I think its kinda sad to see that a typical articles decrying the PAP will bring like hundreds of comments but yet an article asking for donation has just 50 so far and many are just the detractors. For those who are not sure if the donation links are secure, I can understand them. However, those who normally comment but run away when it comes to donation are disappointing.
I am not saying everyone must donate a big amount. Just a token sum by each one of us will suffice. Btw, I am not in any way linked to TR and i have no interest in TR except for hoping that it will remain online.
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@OrEmuN, TR has provided links to their processor moneybookers which uses a secured connection to process all transaction that can be verified.
Unless readers are completely ignorant of what is SSL and the net, a few clicks on the links provided is all its takes to read abut their encryption and privacy policy.
As for the names calling, DAFT isn’t exactly the word I use, it was MM Lee, I believe
Anyway, if and a BIG IF Sinkaporeans are NOT DAFT, then why not PROVE it instead of keeping quiet which suggest an admission?
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Am glad to be able to access the site again, I guess I have been blocked out on some days.
Well on the positive side its a good problem to have, this massive increase in traffic.
You guys have done a super excellent job. I will certainly donate again, and hope you will be able to meet your target very soon.
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So arh, singaporeans talk so much and comments so much, what is the point?
Might as well start protesting , real protesting i mean. Just like thailand, hong kong , taiwan , like that ga ga lai… dont be like cowards singaporeans…
Sometimes i dont know wat to say. ..singaporeans are just good in commenting and commenting, but however NATO (No action but talk only)…
Sigh…..
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@Forecaster Extraordinarie II:
Kindly read my post carefully. I said I loved TR for educating us on things that do not always present themselves on the common media.
Have I ever said I do not believe them? Rather I simply pointed out their style of writing has casted aspersions on their own credibility.
You seem to be unhappy with my statement, whilst I’d like to point that constructive feedback leads to change, and I have no other agenda other than that TR will become a better site.
If you would like to defend TR, do it by reading, thinking and writing – and not any other way else because from your comments, one would think you seem like just another person who lets his emotions rule his head.
In the same, exact style TR has portrayed itself to be.
If you are so unhappy about ‘Sinkapore’, in your same fashion: ‘No one is forcing you to live here’. You can choose to leave. quit. do whatever you want.
No one put a gun to your head to stay too, did they?
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@Half hearted, I left Sinkapore more than 10 donkey years ago
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Forecaster Extraordinarie II:
How can you say you left? Place is still on yr mind.
Move on.
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Do you only accept S’pore-issued credit cards? Mine is US-issued (I work in the US). Told me I’ll need to enter my local phone no. – don’t have lay, I’m overseas. Want to help but cannot.
Mod’s note: MB accepts credit cards from all countries. Please select the correct card-issuing country on their website when making donations.
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Half hearted:
August 21, 2010 at 8:48 am
Agree. TR is becoming hopeless.
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This website is full of exaggerations, lies, hate-mongering, stupidity and is written in a propaganda language that would make Stalin proud. Such rubbish does a lot to damage the credibility of opposition in Singapore. Maybe you should go ask PAP to donate, I’m sure they would be happy to give you as much as you need since it helps them stay in power.
Mod’s note: TR publishes articles contributed by Singaporeans, not only editorial piece and we are NOT affiliated to any opposition parties.
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yah right moderator, not affiliated to opposition parties. i have every reason to doubt you guys, just like how you guys doubt the PAP. Yea, it’s that unreasonable
Mod’s note: If we are affiliated to any opposition party, prove it.
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i am trying to donate but i dun wish to put my real name etc on the form.. can i just input fake details with valid card number and proceed with the donation?
Mod’s note: All information submitted to our processor is STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL and even TR has no access to it. These information needs to appear as it is on your credit or debit card.
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keep it up
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Why do you no longer accept PayPal donations? Even if Moneybookers offers you lower fees, you should at least provide the option of both payment services and let us choose the one we prefer. I have donated to TR previously, and would like to do so again, but I have my reasons for sticking to PayPal instead of alternatives like Moneybookers. Please don’t ignore the world’s leading online payments service!
Re-open your PayPal donation line, and I will chip in my little share for sure.
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@ML, please browse: http://www.paypalsucks.com
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I never said PayPal is perfect, but neither are alternatives like Moneybookers. Like I said, I have my own reasons for sticking with PayPal despite their flaws. Why not just give us a choice, especially since it costs nothing to maintain a PayPal account alongside the alternatives?
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Ok done, please check and confirm you have received paymnet because they cannot redirect me to the merchant site after making payment.
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I want to donate, but I can’t seem to confirm my MoneyBookers account. Can you please take PayPal instead?
Mod’s note: There is no need to confirm your MB account or create an account, you may just complete your particulars on the online form and choose payment method as Credit/Debit card.
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@TR, Done (USD50)
As with Amran, could not return to merchant site, but I did get confirmation from bank (sms) that transaction was successful.
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Added my humble contribution of US$10. All the best to TR, and keep the flame burning for true blue S’poreans.
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4 years ago, S’poreans made comments in places such as kopitiams. These people talked very loud, so brave and bold. Yet when the time came for them to vote, they cowed.
If you meant what you said/posted, pls be sincere and just do it (donation)! If not, pls go somewhere else to brag with your kopitiam talks.
For those who really talk and do the walk (donation), I kudos to you!!
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