Wesley's Tool-Box

The title says it all. I got my preordered iPhone 6S Plus at Osaka Shinsaibashi Apple Store on the launch day. Review coming soon!

Or, Will OK Cashbag Points Help or Not?

I used to fly on airplanes a lot to visit my home in Ulsan from Seoul, so it was relatively easy to attain and keep the Morning Calm elite frequent flyer membership at Korean Air. This gives you the same level of benefits as SkyTeam Elite. But with the introduction of high-speed rail (KTX) service to Ulsan in 2010, flights suddenly lost competitiveness and I switched to trains entirely for the visits since. I lost my Morning Calm status in 2011.

But Korean Air restores Morning Calm status to the ex-members if the person fulfills 30 thousand miles during a repeating two-year period which starts after the demotion. The first period for me was April 2011 to March 2013, but nothing came of it. The second period, April 2013 to March 2015, was different. In 2014, shifting responsibilities at my company meant I'd be travelling internationally once in a while instead of not at all. And indeed I racked up more than 20 thousand miles at Korean Air during the year.

The miles could be either be exclusively from Korean Air flights, or at least 20 thousand of those flight miles with the rest coming from affiliate companies. The latter is tentatively valid until 2016, but the offer had been extending for a long time. With the minimum Korean Air flight miles fulfilled, I checked for ways to fill the affiliate miles before my period was up. The most viable ways for me were the conversion of reward points from Shinhan Card and OK Cashbag to miles.

I've owned a digital camera since November 1999, and I kept every photos and videos I did not immediately delete since then. So I now have more than 15 years of digital memory with me. The first 4 years or so were captured on my first digital camera, a 2-megapixel, 2x optical zoom Kodak DC280, which I bought for 960,000 Won (US$830 at the time). It was a top-of-the-line consumer digital camera, as most cameras back then were of either 0.3- or 1.3-megapixel types. I also remember paying 160,000 Won (US$140) for a 32MB memory card.

I went back to check out some of the earliest photos and revisited the places within them to see how much has changed. With me was my iPhone 6 Plus, which incidentally cost me nearly the same (equivalent of 977,000 Won, US$940 at the time), yet had an 8-megapixel sensor and 128GB of storage.


First up is one of the iconic buildings in the huge Yongsan Electronics Market area. Building 21 of the Seonin Plaza, a.k.a. Seonin Electronics Market had been my favourite place to buy computer gears and parts in my university days.

The 1999 photo shows a dual Pentium III 500 server ad at the entrance, while the 2015 one has a GeForce GTX 740 graphics card ad in its place. The 2015 photo also shows Building 23 behind the right side of the building, which didn't exist until 2007.

Let's move to somewhere underground now.

With the sale of iPhone 6 series, some accessories were on sale at the Apple Store Fukuoka Tenjin. This included basic screen protectors (all in anti-fingerprint type, sadly) and Apple's own cases, as you see here. They looked nice and durable, but I prefer something transparent, so I decided against buying one.


After spending about an hour at the Apple Store, it was now around 6PM. I moved to Canal City Hakata for dinner. I would have to be back to the airport by 8PM, and it takes nearly an hour at worst to make it there from Tenjin / Hakata area. So I couldn't make a stop at anywhere else.

On the early afternoon of September 19, 2014, the first launch day of iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, I was catching a plane to Fukuoka, Japan. All because those phones wouldn't officially launch for another month or more in Korea.

So why Japan? It used to be that Japanese iPhones were locked to the local carriers, but SIM-free version is now offered after some changes to the telecom policy. Also, pre-ordering in Japan doesn't require a national ID like what Hong Kong asks. Lastly, it's right next to Korea. And so, with my pre-order successful on the afternoon of September 12, all I needed to do left was picking it up at the store.


The airplane left sunny Incheon, flew for about an hour, and landed on rainy Fukuoka. I forgot to bring an umbrella, so I got one at a convenience store eventually. It had been more than 6 years since I set foot there.