How to engage with public health system in Penang

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Government subsidized health system helps a lot of my fellow countrymen to get health care.

To navigate the public health system is a bit overwhelming.

The pre-requisite will be but not limited to (Yes in order of priority):

  1. Malay language is key being able to speak fluently will help a lot (trust me, I been navigating in the system since May 2024).
  2. Malaysian citizen

Most important is to identify the local health clinic at your area of residence (Klinik Kesihatan in Malay language).

In order to be registered and admitted into the clinic make sure that you are Malaysia Citizen, whipped out your national issued identity card.

In order to get specialist in the main hospital, aka GH aka Hospital Pulau Pinang. It is imperative to get a referral letter from the health clinic (Klinik Kesihatan).

Example of referral letter.

Then go to the specific specialized clinic in Hospital Pulau Pinang, do check around with staffs around. From my experience, the specialist clinics will start opening at 7am to 8am.

For the specialist clinics to set your case from referral letter, you need to bring along the referral letter obtained. Talk to the registration counter staffs, it will open a new case in the clinic, a new paper slip will be given. Do not expect the specialist be available for new cases. An appointment date will be given, usually in a paper slip.

Referral letter with the appointment slip.

Make sure you drop the referral letter with the slip into pigeon-hole on the day of the appointment. Please check with the staffs.

Due to the numbers of patient daily, it is recommended that only one appointment is done in one day.

Here is the generic flow chart at the time of this post.

Flowchart of how to get health care from Malaysian Healthcare system, valid on the date of the post

This post is not a conclusive article on how Malaysian health system works but as a general guideline on how to get help from my personal experience gained from May 2024 till Dec 2024.

Using AWS metadata to manage and automate tasks in AWS EC2 or AWS Lightsail

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This post is based on reference to Use instance metadata to manage your EC2 instance – Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud

Metadata is a powerful tool for AWS users. It allows users to make query of data describing EC2 instances, and making a self reference API call.

By default any linux AMI will have curl build in, hence using of metadata will be simplified.

One of the best test case is automating input into shell script that will requires a lot of user prompt is automating or at least make configuration of setting up openvpn using AWS Lightsail easier.

!#/bin/bash
sudo chmod 777 ./openvpn-install.sh
sudo ./openvpn-install.sh << INPUT


y
1
1
11
n
n

client
1

INPUT
sudo cp /root/client.ovpn /home/ubuntu
sudo chmod 777 /home/ubuntu/client.ovpn

Above shell script will cause the openvpn-install.sh to fail in AWS, as the script does not provide public and local ip of the instance.

Below script are including the AWS Metadata

!#/bin/bash
TOKEN=`curl -X PUT "http://169.254.169.254/latest/api/token" -H "X-aws-ec2-metadata-token-ttl-seconds: 21600"`
PUBLICIP=`curl -X GET "http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/public-ipv4" -H "X-aws-ec2-metadata-token: $TOKEN"`
LOCALIP=`curl -X GET "http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/local-ipv4" -H "X-aws-ec2-metadata-token: $TOKEN"`
sudo chmod 777 ./openvpn-install.sh
sudo ./openvpn-install.sh << INPUT
$LOCALIP
$PUBLICIP
y
1
1
11
n
n

client
1

INPUT
sudo cp /root/client.ovpn /home/ubuntu
sudo chmod 777 /home/ubuntu/client.ovpn

By adding the metadata the ovpn file will be populated with correct IP.

AWS Metadata allow automation to be made simpler by running scripts that requires self-reference metadata to configure newly booted up EC2 instance(s).

Playing Terraform for AWS

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This post is based on terraform tutorial Build infrastructure | Terraform | HashiCorp Developer

Make sure AWSCli being installed and configured correctly (aws configure). Make sure IAM user are configured with AWS role, AWS Access key ID and AWS Secret Access Key.

Use the ami catalog, to determine the ami ID, then after make necessary changes run the init

Result of terraform init
terraform plan will show configuration to be applied once init are successful
AWS EC2 creation failed

To solve this VPC and subnet needs to be created first.

Creation of VPC completed, copy the DMZ subnet ID

Make small change to the EC2 instance of terraform file.

Add DMZ subnet to the terraform file

Rerun the terraform init, terraform plan, terraform validate before rerunning terraform apply, then type yes.

EC2 provisioning Completed
Cleaning up, terraform destroy

To clean up the experiment to avoid paying more, start by destroying the instance then the VPC.

Terraform code is available at https://bitbucket.org/KarMeng/terraform_aws

Experimenting with Terraform

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All the experience in this post is based on Install Terraform | Terraform | HashiCorp Developer

After terraform init, terraform apply needs confirmation of “yes” before applying into environment

Feels like running ansible but simpler, as the tutorial of quickstart runs on docker engine.

After applying terraform, confirm the nginx is running

Further confirmation running browser to browse the site.

The terraform tutorial are running nginx at port 8000 of your host machine.
If you preferred curl

How to use docker compose to setup AWStats

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Have added changes to incorporate both generating AWStats logs and starting up AWStats service in a single docker compose file at KarMeng / docker_awstats — Bitbucket

Sample docker compose for AWStats

This is an easy and simple example that beginners can use to generate web statistics using AWStats.

Required softwares:
Hashicorp Vagrant 2.4.1
Oracle VirtualBox 7.0.14

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Bandai HG 1/60 ARX-8 Laevatein version I.V.

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Bandai HG 1/60 ARX-8 Laevatein box

ARX-8 Laevatein is the final upgrade for the MC in Full Metal Panic. It features lambda drive that the antagonist uses.

Bandai had made a good job for this kit. While alot of the parts are reused, yet some smart designs are used to make the reused part unique.

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Making the Bandai EG Grade Nu Gundam complete with Fin Funnels

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Box art of EG Nu Gundam

This is a nice kit that gives a very basic Nu Gundam at scale 1/144. Unfortunately, it does not come with the fin funnels.

Bandai do recommend the HG 1/144 Nu Gundam fin funnels are compatible with the EG Nu Gundam. Nope, am not getting another kit to make the EG Nu Gundam.

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Joining the GCPBoleh Season 6 for swags

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GCPBoleh S6 (rsvp.withgoogle.com)

Never know how to respond to learning rate, had learned from my mentor many years ago that its undeniable that when we reaches 30s or above the rate of learning new things will drop. Just know from experience using AWS, am able to blaze through 3 subjects that will take many hours.

In cloud computing, its hard to determine if one is an expert. Depth and breadth of Cloud services are too vast. Whenever, I hear a person confidently says he is an expert, red flags are raised.

From 3 days of the GCPBoleh season 6, which was introed by my staff, it is an interesting rediscovery that GCP is no longer a SaaS focused service. Unlike in the 2010s, AWS is the defacto leader for IaaS, MS Azure for the PaaS and GCP is definately SaaS competing with Heroku.

Other than relearning terminology used, how managed cloud services are implemented, and re-familiarization of the web console. I no longer see there is any difference between AWS, Azure and GCP.

Cloud computing are just our-sourcing most of IT Operations, and some middleware/framework to a 3rd party vendor. I do agree with my counterpart now that not everything can be cloudify.