Vote For Singapore

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I am turning 23 this year. By Singapore’s laws, I am eligible to vote in Singapore’s 2011 General Elections. Yet I cannot do that. Although my constituency is being contested for the first time since 1991, I failed to enrol my name into the Registrar of Electors.

If I had registered my name before President S.R. Nathan announced the writ, even going down to Canberra to register my vote on Polling Day would not have deterred me. For the first time, I can exercise my right to vote. But I can only stand by the sidelines of history and watch as my generation makes their decision.

Voting aside, I have to get this off my chest. It may seem to you as prejudiced, temperamental and judgemental. It may seem to you as some random rant by a young man. Yet, these are the opinions that have been fermenting in me for a couple of years.

I’ll start of with the first issue.


Increasing Productivity and Our GDP

Each year, our ministers exhort us to increase our productivity, to work cheaper, better and faster, all in the name of increasing our GDP. To what end? To demonstrate Singapore’s economic prowess? What is the point if we do not have a decent standard of living, if we cannot enjoy the fruits of our labour? Do we really want to be mere cogs in the machinery of Singapore Inc.? We exist to live; we do not live to exist.

Furthermore, there are people who did not get to enjoy the fruits of Singapore’s economic boom. Everyday, the poor are faced with rising costs, working harder to pay the bills, to pay the housing loan, and to provide for their families and themselves.  In the past five years, there were GST hikes, rising house prices and increasing cost of living but yet, our wages have stagnated and the gap between the poor and rich has increased. In chase for economic growth, the PAP has not addressed these social issues adequately.


Past Achievements Do Not Beget Future Accomplishments

I do not deny the PAP any credit. Yes, they led Singapore to where it is now: a global, vibrant city. Yes, they led Singaporeans through the dark period when we gained our unexpected independence from the Federation of Malaysia.

But the PAP who led Singapore is not the same as the current PAP. The first generation PAP team was an extremely capable team, led by a capable leader. But the current PAP team is complacent. 52 years in power and they believe it is their mandate to rule Singapore continuously.

It’s not their mandate. It is our mandate. We, the citizens, are the ones who vote for them at elections. It is our mandate to choose which political party to lead Singapore.

Some cite the PAP’s track record as a legitimacy of its power. Past achievements do not beget future accomplishments. I am grateful for what the PAP had done in the past. But to constantly harp on past achievements while ignoring or belittling their current errors is nothing short of complacent and contemptuous.

What is the big deal, you ask, humans make mistakes. Yes, we all make errors. But to brush aside citizens’ concerns as mere “noise” and to belittle us by saying that we know nothing about the complexities of national policies is nothing short of arrogance. Is it wrong for the PAP to deal with well-founded criticisms? If we have to deal with criticisms from the PAP daily, shouldn’t the PAP be brave enough to face our criticisms? We, after all, elected them to run the country for us. As citizens, we should demand accountability as the standard of legitimacy.


The Opposition Parties are Inexperienced

The current PAP team believes that renewal of Singapore’s leadership can only come from within the party, their party. I disagree. Renewal can come from outside the PAP, from other political parties. The PAP do not have a stranglehold on the ‘best and brightest’ of Singaporeans. The current General Elections has demonstrated this. The Opposition parties have fielded the best political candidates; most are of higher calibre than the new political candidates fielded by the PAP.

Yet, some Singaporeans say that the opposition have no credibility and experience in leading a nation. The first generation of PAP leaders had no credibility and experience but was voted and given a chance by the people to lead a fledging city-state. I believe this time round, the Opposition parties are more than credible; they are more than ready to lead the country. They understand the average Singaporean’s needs and concerns. A majority of them do not receive fat paychecks for their political and social contributions to Singapore; they invest their own time and efforts into the nation building of the Singapore society.

Some cite political inexperience as the reason for not voting for the Opposition. They say that they are afraid that if the Opposition wins, if they form a government, they lack the skills to deal with foreign affairs and may make Singapore the laughing stock of the world. Besides, the Opposition always focus on mundane national issues.

How are issues such as the increasing costs of living and housing mundane? If the Opposition focus on these issues, what say, does the PAP focus on? Supreme national issues? Furthermore, How can we deal with international affairs in the first place if we cannot deal with our own national affairs?

No, all national issues are important. As a small island city-state, these mundane national issues will affect each and every Singaporean. We have to come together as a nation first, if we want to deal with international affairs effectively. Besides, many of the Opposition candidates such as Worker’s Party candidate Chen Show Mao has experiences negotiating and dealing with large corporations, skills that can be parlay into international relations


If a ‘Freak’ Election Occurs, Singapore Will Descend Into Chaos

Some say Singapore will descend into chaos if the Opposition parties win majority of the seats. Lee Kuan Yew told the voters not to rock the foundation. We are not rocking the foundation. Our parents, our grandparents and the first generation PAP team laid a solid foundation for us. We are reinforcing the structure with more democratic and pluralistic means.  After all, does our national pledge not contain the sentence: “To build a democratic society, based on justice and equality” ? We need to reinforce our democratic structure, based on social justice and equality.

If our grandparents and parents can help to build a nation without a stable foundation, why are we not able to do the same thing with a strong foundation supporting us? Do we have so little faith in our own abilities? Must we believe in the apocalyptic scenario painted for us by the PAP?


A Credible, Alternative Voice

Voting for the Opposition parties will allow for a credible, alternative voice in the Parliament. It will be the check and balance, the standard of accountability. No longer can the PAP hide behind their unchecked power to avoid accountability for their errors, to push through policies without any proper debate. For a political party so hell-bent on insisting the citizens to ‘upgrade’ their working capabilities so as to be better, faster and cheaper, having a powerful alternative voice in the Parliament will ensure that the Members of Parliament be cheaper and better (although not faster in this case).

For the current General Elections where 82 out of the 87 seats are contested, it is the first time in many years where the majority of Singaporeans can vote. But we have to ask ourselves; do we still want a political party to maintain power for the sake of power? Where it views power not as a means to end but as the end?

So vote for Singapore. Vote for the Opposition parties so that we can have an alternative voice and can truly be represented, instead of being dictated by the PAP constantly.

Vote for Singapore. Vote for us.

The PAP is not Singapore. We are Singapore.

Brownies

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The first quarter of this year has been filled with events, both for me and the world at large.

And some are not really good events either.

Jan 2011: Revolutions in Egypt, Tunisia and other Middle Eastern and North African countries.

Feb 2011: Earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand.

March 2011: 9.0 magnitude earthquake in Japan. Civil war in Libya.

Late March 2011: Earthquake in Burma. Civil unrest in Bahrain. NSW Labor Party lost power for the first time in 16 years to the Coalition. NSW Liberal leader Barry O’Farrell becomes NSW Premier.

A very busy first quarter.

For the media, this is a perfect field day for them. The perfect mix of politics, civil unrest and large-scale natural disasters. And since I’m a media politics student, it’s my duty to keep abreast with the news. But I’m reaching the point where I’m sick and tired of the news.

So fuck the news.

For approximately another 10 minutes.

 

Besides being updated on world news and checking if any of my Japanese friends were doing okay, I was busy feeding the masses of the Unimates society.

What’s Unimates? Basically we’re a society that brings together most of the international students in USyd and bring them around Sydney, New South Wales and Australia. More accurately, we are sort of like an international network, where people can meet and make friends with everyone from everywhere.

For this semester, I’m the Coffee and Cakes officer. Basically, this girl and I are the unofficial caterers.

We have Coffee and Cakes every Tuesday morning and the two of us are in charge of organizing, preparing the food and drinks, making sure that the members are kept sated and satisfied. It’s not an easy job, but we have people helping out, so it’s doable.

The only problem is that everyone keep asking for my brownies.

See, the problem was that I baked brownies for my friend’s Christmas party last year. It was my first time but it turned out to be a huge success. Unfortunately, 80% of the people at the party were or still are, Unimates committee members. So they recommended me to make brownies for Coffee and Cakes.

It was a great idea and at least I could bring something homemade for the event. So for the first C+C (Coffee and Cakes), I brought the brownies.

They were gone within 30 minutes and there were still at least 40 to 50 people who had not got the brownies yet.

Considering it was my second time making brownies, the response was pretty good.

The only problem was that the people (aka the people at the Christmas party) came too late and didn’t have the chance to try my brownies. The vice-president of the society, had heard wonders about my brownies but he was too busy helping out and didn’t have a chance to try it out.

So I promised that I would make brownies again.

For the next two weeks I didn’t make brownies cause I wanted to try something else for Week 2 (chili jam meatballs and vegan mashed potatoes) and was too fucking lazy and tired for Week 3.

Week 4 came and I decided to bake brownies.

Some people would usually bake the brownies the night before. But not me. I demand fresh-out-of -the-oven brownies. So I got up at 7am, baked two batch of brownies (after baking brownies for so goddamn many times, it only takes me about an hour) and brought them to C+C.

Good times were had by all.

But it’s tiring waking up so early or staying up all night just to bake brownies. So I’ve decided to put the recipe. I actually got it from this website and follow it closely. But you can make some tweaks to it. Be creative. Just don’t blow up the oven.

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The Recipe

Note: The original recipe calls for 16 servings of brownies. But I double the ingredients to make 32 servings (I have mouths to feed after all). If you want to bake 16 servings of brownies, use a 8 x 8 inches baking tray. If you want 32 servings, use a 9 x 13 inches baking tray. The recipe below is for 32 servings.

 

Brownies:

  • 225 g (1 cup) butter
  • 400 g (2 cups) white sugar
  • 4 eggs
  • 10 ml (2 teaspoons) vanilla extract
  • 55 g (2/3 cup) unsweetened cocoa powder
  • 125 g (1 cup) all-purpose flour
  • 3 g (1/2 teaspoon) salt
  • 2 g (1/2 teaspoon) baking powder

You might want to ease up on the vanilla extract cause if you put too much, your brownies might have a slightly bitter taste. Also, I use Cadbury’s Baking Cocoa Powder (I think that’s the name).

 

Baking time:

 

  • Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour an 9 x 13 inch pan.
  • In a large saucepan, melt 1/2 cup butter. Remove from heat, and stir in sugar, eggs, and 1 teaspoon vanilla. Beat in 1/3 cup cocoa, 1/2 cup flour, salt, and baking powder. Spread batter into prepared pan.
  • Bake in preheated oven for 25 to 30 minutes. Do not overcook.

    •  

    Seems pretty simple right? That’s because it is. But there’s some things you need to take note first. Always, always preheat the oven first. That’s the first thing you have to do. My oven is some brand-new, fan-forced, Italian-made oven, so I can turn it on and know that it’ll be hot and toasty within a few minutes. If you have an old one, it might take longer. As a rule, I preheat the oven while I’m preparing the batter. Rule one: Know your oven.

    Rule 2: Shift the cocoa powder. Especially when you are greasing the pan. What I do is that I grease the pan with some butter (using a brush makes things easier) and shift a mixture of cocoa powder and flour over the pan. This prevents the brownies from sticking to the pan during the baking process. I usually use one part flour and one part cocoa powder. You don’t have to use a lot. The most you should use is about 1/2 cup. Also, when you are making the batter, I recommend to shift the cocoa powder. It makes the brownies much more ‘smoother’. But it’s up to you to decide.

    Rule 3: Don’t over mix! Just mix the batter enough to make sure that all the ingredients are mixed together. You want to retain the thick, fudgey taste.

    Rule 4: Don’t overcook. Seriously, I can stress this enough. I usually bake my brownies for 25 minutes and then I take it out and let it cool. While it’s cooling, the brownies are still baking due to residue heat. The last thing you want is burnt brownies. So don’t overcook.

     

    As for the frosting:

    • 85 g (1/4 cup and 2 tablespoons) butter, softened
    • 30 g (1/4 cup and 2 tablespoons) unsweetened cocoa powder
    • 30 ml (2 tablespoons) honey
    • 10 ml (2 teaspoons) vanilla extract
    • 240 g (2 cups) confectioners’ sugar

    To make:

    • Combine all ingredients in a saucepan and heat it. Remove from heat and stir. Pour onto warm brownies. Wait for frosting to set.

    I can’t find confectioners’ sugar in Sydney. So I got chocolate icing sugar from Coles. If you use chocolate icing sugar, I suggest using 1 cup. Oh, and shift the cocoa powder.

    The frosting is optional. The brownie is already quite sweet by itself. But if you have a huge sweet tooth like me, then go ahead, make the frosting.

    That’s it! Brownies for all!

    Sorry no pictures.

    Now will people please stop hounding me for brownies.

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    On Hiatus

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    I haven’t updated my blog for more than a month because I was busy house hunting, settling my school issues, settling my new house’s issues, settling my current apartment’s issues with the current landlord and preparing for the big move to the new house.

    In that order.

    School’s starting soon, so that means more school preparation. So that means less time updating the blog too. I’m not sure how long I’ll be on hiatus but it’ll probably be another month or so until everything settle down.

    But I’ll definitely break the hiatus if something interesting come up. But no commitments here.

    Before I forget, HAPPY BELATED CHINESE NEW YEAR! GONG XI FAI CAI! MAY THIS YEAR BE A PROSPEROUS YEAR FOR YOU!

    Sorry for the visual assault, but yeah, best wishes for the new year.

    Talking about Chinese New Year, I was sitting at a cafe at World Square (recognizable landmark in Sydney, go google it) when a troupe of lion dancers came up to the cafe and performed the traditional lion dance right in front of me.

    What did I do? Continue drinking my iced coffee.

    After years and years of celebrating Chinese New Year, seeing lion dances and being a lion dancer myself for a short period of time, it does get boring after a while.

    But I guessed I was trying too hard to be blasé about the whole lion dance affair. So blasé to the point that I didn’t even whip out my camera.

    Whateves.

    Anyway, here’s a picture to wish you a Happy Chinese New Year:

     


    (Taken from Haikal Ramlee’s blog)

     


    Yep, it’s the same picture I used last year. I’m really lazy.

    So that’s all, folks. Now here’s some pictures of my rats:

     


    Pantalaimon crossing the pole over the valley of carpeted death.

     


    That’s Pan full name: Pantalaimon. For those who have no clue, I named him after Lyra’s daemon in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy.

    But I always call him Pan. It’s shorter and easier.

     


    Bentley’s favourite place

     


    The last picture summed up the entire status of the blog.

    WordPress’ 2010 Review of my Blog

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    I’m too lazy to write anything at the moment. Since WordPress was so nice to sum up my blog activities in 2010, I’ll just post them here.

     


    The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

    Healthy blog!

    The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Fresher than ever.

    Crunchy numbers

    Featured image

    A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 3,400 times in 2010. That’s about 8 full 747s.

     

    In 2010, there were 28 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 62 posts. There were 115 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 71mb. That’s about 2 pictures per week.

    The busiest day of the year was December 16th with 86 views. The most popular post that day was Dessert, Breakfast and Dinner..

    Where did they come from?

    The top referring sites in 2010 were facebook.com, maddruid.com, nathandulce.blogspot.com, tvrizor.com, and digg.com.

    Some visitors came searching, mostly for rajan rishyakaran, wanton mee, lode runner, rajan rishyakaran accident, and fried bee hoon.

    Attractions in 2010

    These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

    1

    Dessert, Breakfast and Dinner. December 2010
    2 comments

    2

    Conversations With Rajan Rishyakaran (1986 – 2009) January 2010
    2 comments

    3

    New Year 2010. January 2010

    4

    When old PC games were The Shit. October 2010

    5

    Singapore Noodles Does Not Exist In Singapore August 2010

     

     


     

    Two things caught my eye. The first was the top referring sites in 2010. The first three referring sites were pretty understandable. I frequently post my blog entries on my Facebook wall and that is where I get the majority of the traffic. The second, maddruid.com, is a friend’s blog and is also the same guy who got me the Secret Santa Christmas’ present. The third is another friend’s blog and I get traffic from there since he links up my blog in his blog. However, I have no clue how my blog ended up on tvrizor.com and digg.com.

    Digg?

    Come on, I’ve only been to Digg a few times and that was purely out of curiosity since the people at the site I frequent often, Reddit, often take potshots at Digg.

    So how my blog ended up on Digg is a mystery, unless a reader is a Digger. Then all I have to say is join Reddit (enter at your own risk)!

     

     

    Reddit – reducing productivity since 2005. (That’s not their actual motto. Pic taken from Reddit.com)

     


    And tvrizor?

    I first encountered that site a few months back on my blog. I had no fucking idea what site it was, but deducing from the name, I assumed it was some television site. True enough, it was some site where they stream TV shows. I haven’t tried watching any of the shows though, mainly because they asked me to download some sort of bullshit free premium content in order to watch the shows and also because I’m not a very big fan of TV shows (only a very certain few).

    The second thing that caught my eye was that the top two posts that got the most views were, coincidentally, written at the beginning and the end of 2010.

    The post written in January 2010 was a tribute to my friend Rajan and at that time, I had no idea how well-known he was on the Internet and Malaysian political forums. Somehow, the mutual friend at maddruid.com found my post and linked it in his blog. So the majority of the traffic came through maddruid.com.

    As for the December 2010 post, it was the first time a shitload of people was interested in what I was eating. I guess that’s why food blogs are so popular.

    I have a theory that people like reading food blogs because most of the time they want to judge the blogger’s cooking skills (if the blogger cooked). This judging of a person’s cooking ability has always been the norm but it has recently increased nowadays and this is due to the proliferation of cooking shows and networks like the Food Network.

    It also produced a certain set of people who say: “I watch MasterChef, therefore I am a master chef.“

    Well fuck them, I hope they stick a big, fat cucumber up their pretentious assholes.

    I’m not saying everyone who watches MasterChef is a pretentious asshole nor am I saying judging a person’s cooking skills is bad. It is normal, it is a human instinct to protect our stomach from potential diarrhea and all of us judge a chef’s ability the moment we taste his/her food. This inherent comparing and judging is present in all humans. It’s why Harold and Kumar went to White Castle instead of eating at Burger Shack. It’s why some people walk through the drunken crowd in Sydney’s CBD during New Year in order to find a Hungry Jack’s. It’s why people have different favourite restaurants, cafes, hawker stalls….

    But to assume just because one watches MasterChef and learns all the useful tips and amazing recipes makes one an incredi-fucking-bly great cook (even if one only touches the stove a few times) and therefore feels validated to dispense lectures on the cooking ability of another person, well, fuck you.

    Anyway, I’m going off tangent here.

    I’ll put up more posts about food, but in no way will this become a food blog, partly because I can’t be bothered to arrange the food in some eye-catching pattern and partly because the moment I transfer from the food from the wok to the plate, I want to eat. I cook because I’m hungry (well, most of the time).

    Anyway, that’s it for this post. I’ll probably post my reflections of 2010 and my resolutions for 2011 soon. If I get around to doing any reflections and resolutions.

    The Leaning Tower of Kimchi Fried Rice, Great Balls of Potatoes and Brownies (the pastry, not the magical folks)

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    I was supposed to post this last week but somehow never around to it. I drafted, edited but somehow the entry was never to my liking. So I just let it stewed in the dark halls where incomplete stories lay in repose.

    Anyway, I added more content to the original draft.

    But first, we need to backtrack to last week.

    In my previous post, I wrote about last Monday dessert, last Wednesday breakfast and dinner.

    This will be about last Thursday’s and last Friday’s dinner.

    I’ve always like fried rice and it’s a comfort food for me. Making fried rice is easy as the dish is very versatile. Just throw in any leftovers, add some oil and fry everything.

    For such a simple dish, it’s also very easy to get it wrong.

    The most important thing is leftovers.

    Fresh ingredients are not completely banned. You can use fresh veggies and eggs (I hope your eggs are fresh) and any kind of meat (but I prefer to use Spam). But your rice strictly needs to be leftover.

    I cannot stress that part. Your. Rice. Need. To. Be. Leftover. The first time I made fried rice, I made the rookie’s mistake of using freshly steamed rice.

    I spent the next one hour suffocating on sticky, hard-to-swallow fried rice.

    When you eat fried rice, you can feel the individual grains on your tongue. This texture is achieved by using steamed rice that has been left overnight in the refrigerator. This helps the rice to become dry and making it easier to separate the grains. Rice left in the refrigerator for two to three days is the best, although you don’t want to leave the rice in there for too long or you’ll have tough, crunchy rice grains.

    You’re not eating fried rice cereals.

    There’s a fine balance to strike, too much moisture or too little moisture in the rice can sink your dish

    Anyway, I love fried rice and I love Korean cuisine and one of my favourite Korean dish is kimchi: the spicy, fermented vegetable dish.

    So I decided to combine the two and had this for yesterday’s dinner:

     


     

     

     


    The Leaning Tower of Kimchi Fried Rice. The tilt was accidental.

    The kimchi fried rice tasted great, although I wanted it to have a more “kimchi” kick. I went over to the wikipedia site and it stated that using over-ripened kimchi is better than using fresh kimchi. Hmph, didn’t know that. Probably that’s why my fried rice didn’t have that intense kick I was going after. The drink of the meal was plain water.

    I had a surplus of mashed potatoes after last Wednesday’s dinner so I decided to do something special to them for last Friday’s dinner:

     


     

     

     


    Deep-fried mashed potatoes with pan-fried pork sausages seasoned with sea salt and black pepper. Drink of the meal was Ribena.

    I haven’t had sausages in a long while and they went nicely with the deep fried potato balls. I don’t have a griller so pan-frying was the way to go. However I didn’t expect so much smoke and even with the exhaust fan on and the balcony window open, the smell of fried sausages still lingered in my apartment for a good few hours. But other than the smoky atmosphere, the sausages were a success. They were a bit dry, but still juicy nonetheless.

    The deep-fried mashed potatoes, on the other hand… was a near disaster. Well, they did come out edible but I almost screwed it up right from the start.

    I made the mistakes of putting the mashed potato balls in a bowl before leaving them in the freezer for two hours so they could set. After two hours, they potato balls did set, but instead of the perfect balls that I wanted, they set into a mass of unrecognizable shape.

    According to the law of gravity, the potato balls at the top compressed the potato balls at the bottom. So while I still had some spherical potato balls at the top, I had to remake the potatoes balls once I got to the bottom of the bowl.

    That was the first mistake.

    The second mistake was the size of the balls. I decided to ignore the recipe and made my potato balls palm sized when it called for the balls to be golf ball sized. A minor error that resulted in a grave consequence. The batter that covered the potato balls was too thin due to the large size of the balls.

    The third mistake was the temperature of the oil. As I don’t have a deep fryer, I used a large wok with a liberal amount of canola oil in it. The first batch of potato balls took a long time to cook because the oil was not hot enough and even after I removed them from the wok, some were slightly undercook. The second batch was just perfect (they are featured in the pictures above) while the last batch was almost burned.

    This is my first time deep frying food and I’ve always thought it was easy since my grandma makes it look easy. But I’ve forgotten that she has years and years of experience. Controlling the heat, the amount of oil in the wok and the amount of time deep frying the oil is no easy task.

    But overall, the potato balls tasted okay and at least it was not inedible. So my leftover mashed potatoes did not go to waste.

    So that concludes last week entry.

     


    I went to a Christmas Eve party last night at a friend’s place. It was a gathering of friends with food, drinks and presents (I mean, what’s Christmas without the gifts?). For the party, most of us brought food along to share. I brought my mashed potatoes, with some slight changes. I added a lot more Italian Parsley, five gloves of garlic and two large handful of Parmesan cheese. It gave the mashed potatoes some kick.

    And being the chocoholic, I baked brownies from scratch, which means, instead of using those box brownies, I measured out every ingredients, hand mixed and baked them.

     


     


    Unfortunately, that’s the only picture I took. The frosting didn’t really turn out what I wanted it to be, but I managed to spread it across most of the brownie.

    It got rave reviews and I was asked for the recipe. I wanted to say it was just some age-old secret recipe handed from generation to generation but I decided to tell the truth. I got it off from the Internet. The brownies were really easy to bake and taste much, much better than store bought brownies.

    All in all, last night dinner party was very enjoyable and although it was the first time spending Christmas Eve alone without my family, I still had fun.

    After the dinner, the host gave out the presents from the secret Santas. I got the coolest present from my Secret Santa:

     


    An old book with parts of the front cover torn off

     


    But wait for it…

     


     


    That’s right, people, Isaac Asimov’s Fantastic Voyage II. But the best thing about the book? It’s the 1987, first edition book. My very first Isaac Asimov book and I get a hardcover first edition. I mean, how fucking awesome is that?

    This is the note from my Secret Santa:

     


     


    It says:

    Hey Zareth,

    Since you knew that scifi about the names of god (referring to the Nine Billion Names of God by Arthur C. Clarke. I told this story to a couple of friends, so I kind of figured out my Secret Santa), I figured you’re a fan of old scifi. I hope you like this.

    Guess who?

    I do enjoy classic science fiction like Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke but most of the stories I read were either from books I’ve borrowed from the libraries or from websites. So the fact that my very first science fiction book is this hardcover first edition makes it more awesome.

    Thanks mate.

    Merry Christmas everyone.