DR KOH KHO KING

Just to share some photos of Megumi…reminds me the most meaningful purpose of me creating this blog…

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Japanese celebrates their new year according to the Christ calendar. So 1st Jan is their new year.

Every year, local community in Saijyo, Higashi-Hiroshima, organizes new year party for foreigns and locals. My wife and I join the party during our first year in Japan.

The location of the party is in the same building as where we live, so it is very convenient for us to go down stairs and join. In fact, we just overhead the announcement on 13th Jan 2008 morning, so went down to check out the party in the afternoon.

Here’s some photos to remember…this should be our last year joining this party. Get to learn some Japanese culture (wearing kimono, tea, shu fa, etc.).

At the entrance.

Quite some visitors to the party…

Family shot

Happy *New* Year!

Surprised! Yes, ebay has just announced a new fee for their customers. I received an email from ebay today…went to check out the new fee…and to my surprised, reduced! Ebay has increased their fees from year to year…and it is really surprised to see that they are now reducing their fee.

Eg.

I do use ebay from time to time (not a powerseller), so this is still a good news for me.
Check out the details at:

http://pages.ebay.com/sell/update08/basic/index.html?ov=004W6

A Malaysia cooking…taste very similar to curry…but quite different as well.

The very common sharing between the two = DELICIOUS!

Foong cook big bowl for her New Year gathering with Saijyo international women group party today (Sat – 16th Feb 2008), while the smaller bowl one is for me…

中午时分，我们到楼下Saijo Plaza的Yumemokuba去玩。原来离上次来时已有两个月了！里面真的好好玩，不信你你进去看一看。。。

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A song I like a lot… 恋爱症候群 by 黃舒駿…

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My wife “unwrapping” the Valentine cake from the box…

Can see the new Valentine Cup already in use…with lemon tea inside.

Taste delicious, though not cheap (in Malaysia standard) but definitely worth every cent for the smile on Lydia’s face.

Yummy!

I checked my blog statistic today and notice something “weird“.

I have a dramatic increment of visitors since 11th Feb 2008. That’s more than doubled!

That was the day my blog becomes Featured Blogger at BlogMalaysia.com!

Yes, the impact seems huge…especially since BlogMalaysia.com is still a new site.

Every month, there will be newly selected Featured Blogger. How to qualify? Makes your blog unique and nice, with banner in your blog, then you will stand a chance to be featured!

I bought something for my wife today…nothing fancy…not rose…not chocolate…not diamond…something she can use daily.

The paper wrap is *free*…

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What I have for dinner tonight…

1. Fried fish

2. Tauhu

3. Chicken soup

4. Tauke

Did not take photo of 3 and 4…already too late as they are now in my stomach…

Happy Valentine!

張學友 – 如果愛

Don’t know what it calls in English…in Chinese it is “goat hook bean”

Not something spectacular…but a healthy food.

(Vege is never my favorite… )

This is my dinner tonight…Yummy!

Side view…

Not clear enough? How about a top closeup?

Trust me…it is DELICIOUS!

(my wife said don’t post online…nanti paiseh people said she showed off…but still I think it is good to blog about something my wife did for me everyday… )

Today is the new opening of a new corner at my blog…

Foong Can Cook

Cooking is my wife’s favorite…or strength. So I thought why not create a special category so that she can share her cooking in the blog?!

Hope will benefit some…but of course…don’t get envy…because all the food you saw in this FCC are in my stomach by the time you read this…

Here’s one that I enjoy just now for my dinner…

What is it? It probably has become shit now …but let me tell you…it is delicious sweet and sour fried bone meat. There are some potato wedges in the sweat and sour sos, very delicious. We did not mix the meat with the sos, as it will kill the crispiness of the meat. When serving, dip the meat into the sos and consume it. Yummy!

I will let my wife explain more in future…now need to go do some “business”…

(Text below are typed by KhoKing…but are from the bottom of Lydia’s heart…)

This is my hubby…I love him very much…he is very handsome…see my baby agree also…

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My wife uploaded the photos of Megumi in the Chinese New Year shirt today, so I must blog about it a little and let them see the light!

My wife said the shirt is so nice…so must show more.

My wife is wearing her Chinese *New* Year cloth too…

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Just updated some new smilies to my blog…I like smilies…but I don’t like the one that WP supplied.

Here’s mine…

smilies	smilies

Now I can smile more often…

I installed WordPress.com Stats few weeks ago, it is an official blog statistics software by WordPress, which I find it easy to install and use.

It is good to know how busy or popular your blog is, by studying the statistics.

Here’s the statistic of my blog for the last one week…average around 100 visitors per day…hmm…quite low. Anyway, that’s not my purpose of blogging (just want to have a place to release some of my thought from the little brain).

I got quite addicted to blog recently…thinking of starting a forum to discuss about blog (installing, features sharing, promoting…etc.). However, no time for it at the moment…and the burden is going to be quite a lot maintaining a site…so let’s keep it aside first.

(Got another project in mind at the moment…)

Just did some update to BlogMalaysia.com.

There are around 0~3 new bloggers sign up to BlogMalaysia.com daily. Yeah, sometimes it is 0…

I noticed that some bloggers are using reciprocal link of BlogMalaysia.com at their website, which is good. However, the previous reciprocal link is just text of BlogMalaysia.com, which is hard to notice…not so presentable…so I did some modification and added the below codes today:

The above codes will show the reciprocal link and picture below:

So…what do you think? Better huh?

My brother in law asked about this shoe today…I thought it is kinda interesting and nice. Seems pretty cheap at ebay, less thanUS$100, while it is selling at over US$300 in Japan!

Descriptions

Nike celebrates Finish Line’s 25th Anniversary with an exclusive collection like no other. Inspired by athletic achivement and iconic moments of the last few decades, they’ve blended performance with style, unique materials and color together with stories that have shaped both companies times. Each shoe in this exclusive collection is about dreams becoming reality and athletes becoming heroes. Charles Barkley and his team dominated the court in Nike Air Force 180 shoes to become legends. Draped in red, white, blue and gold, this premium hoops shoe is about to conquer the court fo a second time.

Shipping from USA to Japan is a hefty US$40 charged by the ebay seller…more than 50% of the selling price…hmm…total will be around US$120…hmm…I don’t wear sport shoe actually. Need to think again…and again…and again…

My wife cook this today…my favorite food! Curry Fish Head!

Not just any curry fish head…but a very delicious curry fish head!

Not so easy to cook one that is tasty and delicious…me as a curry fish head lover…I must say that the one cook by my wife is better than most restaurant and is definitely among the best curry fish head in Malaysia…or even the world!

Don’t believe me? Nevermind…I can let your eyes taste it first…

I have been using Paint Shop Pro program since version 4…that was more than 7 years ago…and I just love this program.

Why not photoshop? One of the main reason for me to go for Paint Shop Pro during the early days is because it is a FREEWARE. Yes, free to download and use on your computer. That was in version 4 and version 5. Version 9 and later is a paid software, but later Corel bought JASC and the last version from JASC was version 10. Version 9 was later given as a free software together with Lexar professional memory card, which is definitely a very very good value!

How is Paint Shop Pro as compared to Adobe Photoshop? For me, it does everything I needed in photo editing. Curve, contrast, brightness, unsharp mask, crop, border, layers, etc. It also is much easier to use and less resource hungry like photoshop. I can start and use my PSP within 5 seconds after launching, but for PS, I have to wait for 10s or more. Of course, if you have very fast PC, you might not notice the difference.

Today, I download the 30 days trial version of PSP from Corel website. I was already about to BUY already (already in the PayPal page, one click away from paying), but since there is a 30 days trial, I thought why not? I clicked the cancel order button and went back to download the software to try out first. The latest version is Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 and my experience with PSP is mainly based on version 6. I want to see how much improvement it has after Corel bought over JASC, and the US$89.99 is worth spending or not.

What I am expecting from the latest version which I think is lacking in the dated version 6:

• Better noise removal
• Faster processing
• RAW file processing (version 6 can process raw file but loading takes ages…)
• More features on borders, templates, effects…etc.
• Smarter one step photo fix (available in version 6 as well, but I wonder if there is any surprise in the latest version)

Basically, that’s it. I don’t really need a software that has tones of features that I don’t use but burden down my computer.

Now…let’s see some examples that I run through PSPPX2 just now. The photos below are taken using Nikon D200 at IS3200, I set the camera at high ISO the night before and forgot to set it back to low ISO. My wife used the camera the next day to take Megumi’s photos… Originally posted at: 看我笑得见眼不见牙

(Take note that the before images are already of some processing previously…which used automatic batch process…hence the quality still not so good and some sharpness already lost)

Before

After PSP

Before

After PSP

You have to click the photo to appreciate the difference. There is a nice Skin Smoothing command in PSPPX2 which I find it delivers good results. The above is just a quick test…I will have to get some RAW files to test it further, but I think I am definitely going to buy one before the 30 days trial period ends up.

Casio G-SHOCK’s 25th anniversary – MR-G Type MRG-8000G Ultra Limited Edition (200pcs)

Price? EUR 3220 (RM15k). Rolex definitely has a better resale value than this Casio watch…and once you wear (scratched) it…say bye bye to at least half the $$$ of what you originally paid. Ok, I know you do not intend to buy and sell later…you are rich…

Good news? Yes, this watch is available worldwide, not just in Japan. So you can ask your local Casio distributor now if you intended to get one. 200pcs worldwide…hmm…

Dream again…yeah…

Today I managed to restore another photography forum of mine…CaptureSG.com. Since the server HDD failed on 21st Jan 2008, I was having problem in restoring CaptureSG.com from my backup, as the database tables were corrupted.

Today I learned a few things and managed to restore the database and manage to repair the corrupted tables and everything is back online.

Though CaptureSG.com is not a very active site and can’t be regarded a successful yet, but still there are some faithful members there that I owe to bring the site back.

I am glad that CaptureSG.com is back online now. Hope more will visit it especially photographers from Singapore.

CaptureSG = Capture Singapore!

…

Yes, Megumi has a very special new year shirt…we purposely bought this for her. We bought it few months before…and you can see it is a bit tight now for Megumi…hahaa…but it is all worth it.

Photo for remembrance, as I don’t think the shirt can fit her again next year…

Megumi:”Do I look like a mouse? Red Golden Mouse?”

“Papa…help!”

Actually Megumi fall sideway after I took the first photo above…she still can’t sit well especially on the soft bed.

In Chinese tradition, the day before Chinese New Year is a very important reunion for family members. Today, here in Japan my wife, Megumi and I have a good reunion here in our little home. Last year I was alone in Japan…

Chinese New Year 2008 – nien 30 on 6th Feb 2008.

My wife wake up early in the morning to prepare the food – big fest – for our little family.

Here’s some of the dishes…no, don’t ask me how to prepare…maybe Lydia can add that later…

While I was busy taking photos…my wife said…not yet lah…still got one…

(the soup in the middle…5 dishes one soup!)

Not forgetting my wife’s favorite…Coca-Cola…in “romantic” glass…

Finally…before we start enjoy our food (must pray and thank to God)…family photo first…

Notice our little ShaShinKi.com very own angpow? Megumi is hungry for it!

Happy Chinese New Year to all!

Just updated by bank book in Japan and noticed that Google has paid me! Yeah…money from the Adsense ads.

How much? Not much…only US$100+ and the conversion rate to JPY is very poor now (weak USD).

The good thing about Google in Japan is that you can have Google deposit the money directly to your bank account. No need to receive check, just update your Google account with a valid Japan bank account, Google will then deposit a small amount of money (in my case JPY120) and you will have to answer the question of the exact amount in your Google account later. This is to verify your bank account is really belongs to you…and yes, you get the FREE JPY120.

My earning from Google Adsense is actually very minor…the USD100+ was accumulated since more than 3 months ago…and only till early Jan I was able to hit over USD100, and Google paid me end of the month on 30th Jan 2008. Yes, you have to have over USD100 before you can withdraw the money.

No…don’t try to cheat and click on your own ads. This will result your account being suspended. As Google motto says…”Don’t be evil!”

Happy Chinese New Year too to all the Chinese and those who are celebrating the Spring in the world!

Got a new PC yesterday…what a surprise!

They said I am the senior in the laboratory, so the new PC is for me. Yes, there is only one new PC, but there will be another few coming in April 2008 (few months away), which will be given to to the other few “seniors”.

Just managed to migrate all my data and files today, also have to remove all sensitive information in the old PC…

Specifications?

• Intel Core Duo 3.00GHZ – E6850
• 3GB Memory
• 300GB HDD
• 19 inches LCD monitor
• Microsoft optical mouse 3000
• Speaker
• Keyboard
• DVD-RW

Very fast as compared to my previous PC…I am a happy man.

I feel really good today, because I have managed to install a modification to ShaShinKi.com/Shop.

~ Stock Status ~

Yeah…I have wanted to have stock status shown on the product page since day 1. I use to type this on every page…

Ready Stock! Next Day Delivery!
or
Special order item, allow 1~2 weeks for delivery.

Typing the above is easy, not difficult at all when I create a new product and copy and paste the sentence in my product page. However…the product arise when I started to keep stock of a certain hot selling products…this is the headache part as I have to open up every in stock product page and change the description, or when product sold out, I have to edit the description again (else will get fire by customer shouting why the product page say in stock but I do not have stock?).

I want a system that can show the Stock Status based on product stock quantity. In my store, changing quantity is easy as I can change them in batch. Yes, even 100 or 1000 products at one time.

Finally, I managed to install the Status Status modification! Yeah! I work till 4am last night…but the result is fruitful and I am quite satisfied with it. Here’s what you will see:

I guess I don’t have to explain any further…except “Special Order” means product will take 1~2 weeks for delivery in most cases.

So next time when you see the above sign/picture at ShaShinKi.com/Shop, remember that I work till 4am for you ya!