JustinKoh.net

I felt like I just celebrated Christmas in the office last month and Chinese New Year two weeks ago. I can’t believe it’s July already.

The magazine was sent to print and I hope everything will be fine. As usual, this is the after wrap effect. I can’t sleep, my timezone messed up yet again.

Eileen’s birthday this weekend, one day after her dad’s. I don’t know what to buy for her but I think I’ll think of something when I go Mid Valley tomorrow for an event.

There is no point in this entry, I just wanted to write something. There will be some interesting developments soon. So watch this space.

Good night/morning!

I woke up this morning, drove to work and was surprised to hear two Michael Jackson songs playing in a row.  Yeah, It only takes less than 2 songs for me to drive from home to office.  I thought it was a coincidence.

Went into the office, check my Twitter and I saw the news. Michael Jackson died.  My designer came in, switched on the radio and it was playing all of his songs, until 12am in the morning.

For people like me, who is an 80s baby, the death of Michael Jackson will hit us.  It means that you are old.  It’s the same feeling when all your friends are getting married and becoming parents.  It’s another level of life.

I’ve been watching Michael Jackson’s videos on Youtube the whole day today.  I didn’t feel like working but I had to. No matter what he has done, just treat it as water under the bridge.  Watch his videos, see how he performed.  Look at the energy he had. No one in this day can perform like him and the wannabes today are no where near him.  His white glove and socks will always be in our hearts.

I am a silent fan. I like his songs and I like the way he moves.

Michael Jackson, you are my king and yes, I shed a tear for you.

Rest in peace and thank yo for the music you’ve given us. Thank you.

I am really busy now so this entry will just be pictures with captions.  Enjoy!

First picture I took in Taipei. Alicia’s Olympus FL-50R and my Nikon SB900 fired at the same time!

Zhien taking pictures, along with the Scanart people.

Cheah taking pictures with my Lumix LX-3.

Garmin-ASUS phone. I WANT THIS!

Cheah won the “Build a Bomb” challenge at XFX. The prize: A G8 T-shirt.

I lost to Cheah. The girls giving me a thumbs down!

HAHAHA. Huei is a shorty!

Some cute thing that won the Taiwan Excellence award.

Burj al Arab in Taipei!

Alicia “paying attention” to the Galaxy people.

Huei tulan because she has to wake up early!

Some random shop in Shin Zhu, on the way to Kingmax’s factory.

Me in full anti static suit.

Huei cam-whoring in anti static suit, using a DSLR, complete with the grin in her eyes. Really PRO!

Our lunch box in Kingmax’s conference room.

Every type of meat and vegetable you can think of! With egg some more!

Huei tulan again…This time don’t know what.
That’s all!

I came back to Malaysia this afternoon after a 4 and a half hour plane ride.  The plane was very empty and I onlyhave to share the four seater row with Huei. Anyway, I slept throughout the journey, waking up only for the brunch.  I wanted to finish Watchman that I missed on the way to Taipei but I couldn’t because I was just too tired and can’t be bothered on what happened to it.

I reached home at about 3pm and planned to go for the HTC Magic and Nokia N97 launch, which are back to back and near to each other.  I set my alarm to ring at 15 minutes before 5pm (HTC starts at 5.30pm) but little did I know that I’ve set it to 4.45am.  I woke up at 6.30pm and was just too tired to go to Mandarin Oriental for Nokia N97 (which starts at 7pm).  I continued my slumber and woke up at about 11.30pm.

Well after nearly 4 days of hardwork at Taipei, what what the outcome? I’ll blog this slowly, in a few parts.  Let’s go on with the happy stuff first - press gifts.

Like what I mentioned a few days back, this edition of Computex was really toned down.  There were not many visitors and booths were considerably smaller as compared to last year.  The gifts were also a little “off”.  Last year my best gift was the XFX casino chips, together with numerous flash drives.  This year, I got ONE flash drive, an 8GB one from Adata, which comes with a cute panda shaped enclosure.

Anyway, these are all my gifts from Computex 2009 (Forgive my unmade bed):

The most prominent one you see ther eis the Thermaltake hammer baloon thingy.  I got one with MSI’s livery last year, together with a Gigabyte hand and a Gigabyte zepplin.  This year, I have to fight for one, literally.  

Next to the Thermaltake hammer is a Kingmax bag that can be shrunk into the size you see above.

Items on the top row are as follows:

Two Taiwan Excellence combination locks, two Enermax cable ties, notebook cooler balls from NU and MSI, Kingston stress ball, NVIDIA tabletop pen/namecard holder, a deck of PNY poker cards, Liteon sticky pad, Kingston mobilephone wrist lanyard, Adata 8GB pendrive in the panda.

The bottom row consists of an actual NVIDIA GPU enclosed in a plastic case by Galaxy, pens from Kingmax, Computex, Arcsoft and Liteon, a ball from Opera, MSI cable management thingy, Nokia battery from Kingmax, LED torchlight from Kingmax, fridge magnets from Liteon and a 2009 diary from Liteon.

That’s all I got.  You guys might think that this is a lot but you should’ve seen what I got last year. Some of these stuff I really had to work for it, talking to the marketing people, explaining what can the magazine do for them and stuff like that. Last year, they just came and gave us stuff.

Oh yeah, the gashapons I bought at Shlin night market.

The Doramon set:

The I-don’t-know-what-anime-is-this-but-I’ve-seen-before Keroro Gunso set:

These are all original ones and it cost NT700 for it (NT300 for Doraemon set and NT400 for Keroro Gunso set).  Aparently these sets are not easy to get here in Malaysia and getting one whole set will mean that you have to practically spend all your money on the Gashapon machine.  Oh well…

Well I decided to take this day slow.  Woke up in the morning and left the hotel at 9am to go to the Kingmax factory tour. I slept in the van as it’s a 1 hour plus journey.  Oh yeah, it was raining the whole day, non stop!

Reached there half awake, taken to the locker room and put on anti static clothings.  Went to the SMT assembly lines where they make memory modules.  Took a few pictures and left to another plant, which was about 15 minutes drive, where they fabricate the chips on the RAMs.

At the Kingpack plant (a subsidary to the Kingmax group), we were required to change into anti static clothings, from top to toe.  Went through an air chamber and went around taking pictures and stuff.  This wasn’t the first time I went into a facility like this.  I visited Kingston’s factory at last year’s Computex.

Anyway, Kingmax bought us lunch boxes, AKA chap fan, and it was good.  Why can’t we have lunch boxes like this back home? After a short QnA session, we then went back to Taipei.

We got to Nangang at 3pm.  That’s half a day gone.  I figured I wouldn’t have time to cover everything anyway and since I have enough materials for the magazine.  I called Cheah and we met up, had MOS Burger again.  

Took a cab with Huei and went back to the hotel in the peak hour jam.  Got back about 40 minutes later but the fare was about the same, about NT350.  We rested a while and took a cab to go to Shilin night market again and we met Cheah there.  The rain didn’t help as the usual stalls were closed, only the shops stayed open.  I walked with Cheah while the girls went walking themselves.

I had a bit of makan here and there and I’m quite full now.  Went to a gashapon shop and bought two sets of figurines.  According to Alicia, it’s not easy to find these figurines and if you can buy one whole set, better buy it.  Some more it’s cheaper compared to Malaysia.

Came back to the hotel and went out to Yoshinoya opposite the hotel for a drink.  That’s my day.

Will not be sleeping as I’m afraid that if I sleep, I won’t be able to wake up.  I need to pack my lugage anyway.  I’ll be back tomorrow! Missing Malaysia now! Good night!