This article contains the long and arduous process of fixing the water leak caused by the upstairs tenant of my apartment complex. In a nutshell, a hole in the hot water pipe in the floor above my apartment room caused water damage to a portion of my room’s interior in addition to a few personal items. A claim was filed and covered by the management company’s corporate insurance which included compensation for personal item damage (and hotel accomodation during water repairs). As I was 0% at fault there was no cost to me out-of-pocket.
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Using the Evercross Electric Kickboard EV08E in Japan
Are you tired of the daily city traffic and looking for an eco-friendly and convenient way to get around the city? The Evercross Electric Kickboard might be just what you need. In this review, we’ll dive into the specs, benefits, and drawbacks of the Evercross Electric Kickboard. We’ll also cover the rules and regulations of electric scooter usage in Japan, how to register your electric scooter, and what to keep in mind while riding one.
Japan Highly Skilled Professional to PR Process and Necessary Documents
Edit (October 12, 2022) : Fixed typos. Added some small details in required documents section.
Edit (August 4, 2021) : I have received my PR card. Updating documents required and all sections after and including “During Processing”.
Edit (April 14, 2021) : Added additional documents required for PR submission (self, proxy/agent). Filled in “Submitting Your Documents” section. Fixed typos. My PR application is currently still being processed.
Legal Disclaimer : The contents of this article do not constitute legal advice, are not intended to be a substitute for legal advice and should not be relied upon as such. You should seek legal advice or other professional advice in relation to any particular matters you or your organization may have.
This guide outlines my experiences transitioning from an HSP (HSFP) Visa to Japan’s permanent residency. I have lived in Tokyo, Japan since March 2014, starting out with an Engineer Working Visa before transitioning to HSP Visa (90+ points) in April 2019. One who maintains their 80+ points after a year of holding the HSP visa will be given the opportunity to apply for Japan’s permanent residency.
The permanent residence application process may vary from individual to individual, so please do go through the “Before You Read Further” section to understand my situation and background before going through the prepared documents and process. However, one thing you should know before this is that I worked with Deloitte to process my application, and there may be documents which may NOT actually be necessary but were provided for the sake of fortifying my application or just as a just-in-case. The permanent residency application requires so much of your personal information it will be like taking off all your clothes and showing them your bare naked body… the government will give a VERY thorough screening of your situation and background so it is best to provide them with as much transparency and info as possible to reduce delays to your application.
That’s it for the disclaimer… so let’s get right into it!
Google Cloud CDN for GCP WordPress
The more (concurrent) traffic a website receives, the more important it is for its contents to be hosted on a content delivery network (CDN). By having your site resources spread out across many servers across many regions around the world, it will take much less time (in terms of “hops”, or jumps from server to server a request needs to make) to fetch the site’s contents.
One of Google Cloud’s less-known features is its Cloud CDN which leverages Google’s global network of data centers, servers, and ISP integration to deliver content to the end user in a quick manner. Its efficiency is further increased when coupled or used with other services in Google and Google Cloud, such as Google Domains, Google DNS, and Google Compute Instances. Since 2018, this site is hosted using Google’s Click-to-Deploy WordPress deployment (tutorial) using Google Domains (tutorial) with SSL encryption (tutorial) and maintenance via SSH to instance VMs (such as updating PHP version in Google Cloud VM Instance). Thus it is natural to leverage Google Cloud CDN, with the added benefit that it won’t break with updates to WordPress since the CDN configuration happens server-side and not WordPress-side.
Follow along with me as we explore how to activate Google CDN for your Google Cloud-hosted service.
Protecting Your Cryptocurrencies – Online and Offline
The cryptocurrency universe continues to grow in popularity in the wake of global turmoil and COVID-19. Despite such uncertainties with the economy and unemployment levels soaring following the first outbreak of COVID-19, younger individuals in the workforce are eyeing cryptocurrencies as a method of investment. Just last week I was pleasantly surprised to hear both my older and younger brother asking me, a three-year cryptocurrency HODLer, the best and practical way of dipping their feet into cryptocurrencies. As I was explaining cryptocurrencies and its risks and how to properly HODL them, I noticed this topic can be extensive and would benefit the masses if compiled into an article such as this one.
So here it is: a live post on tips and advice to secure and protect your crypto from falling out of your hands. Owning cryptocurrencies not only involves risk with its price, but also how it is handled – a small hack or simply a wrong transfer can cause your entire portfolio to vanish in an instant, and once the transactions are verified and carved into the crypto’s ledger one will undoubtedly be at the mercy of the recipient.
Read on to prevent the above from ever happening to you.
Essence of Taiwanese Mahjong – Introduction
Even after immigrating to California at six years old, I have played Taiwanese mahjong on and off for a good majority of my life – mostly with family and friends. No friends and relatives around me were very serious about mahjong, so it wasn’t until a few months ago I was humbled by the skill of strangers. That night I played 4.5 complete, 4-wind games, and lost about $100 playing $3 base/$1 tai bets. Since that night I have researched – from both them and other research – about how opponents think and how they play.
This is the beginning guide to a trilogy of Taiwanese Mahjong, going into statistics and numbers before delving into player behavior and playing scenarios. I don’t think other places in the internet has quite as detailed analyses (in English), and I will continue to add to it for, as I have always mentioned in other of my posts here, personal learning and memorandum.
Opening A Rakuten Bank Account
Disclaimer (2020-06-03): The first half of the guide (first page of registration) has now been updated to the latest version. The second section about Credit Card information has been left as-is since its UI has been left nearly the same since two years ago. Ignore the sudden jump in numbering as I have only updated the first half of the guide. That said, if there are any discrepancies please do let me know in the comments section!
Introduction
Rakuten Bank is an online service that aims to provide various banking services to customers. Those who use or subscribe to various Rakuten services will often enjoy additional benefits for their banking needs. Just like with Rakuten Card, there are no physical offices you can go to so everything is managed online instead. Having an account with Rakuten is recommended if you heavily use things such as Card, Securities, Edy, or Super Points. In any case, you can read about a non-exhaustive list of advantages and disadvantages below:
Driving in Taiwan With Japanese Driver’s License
Visiting Taiwan and want to drive but forgot to apply for an International Driver’s Permit? If you have a Japanese driver’s license then it is possible for you to drive in Taiwan without having to transfer your license to Taiwan D/L or needing an International Driver’s Permit (IDP). On top of that, unlike IDPs which requires one to process before embarkation, those who are too late (already in Taiwan) are still able to process the necessary documents to drive – and it will be available to use immediately.
Read on for details, procedures, precautions, and other important information regarding driving in Taiwan with a Japanese D/L.
Tips For Building A Python Web Scraper
Automation is my hobby. Admittedly I never thought that I would be interested in it when I studied computer science and engineering back in my university days (my father said my personality befits a software engineer, and I blindly followed his advice). However, during my journey to become a competent software developer I invested much time in simple scripts to do repetitive work for me. While most of the above examples involve automating games (via something like Sikuli which can control your screen), lately I have been turning my attention to scraping websites and integrating APIs for data aggregation. This post contains some of the tips and tricks I have used in order to make your web crawler quicker and more robust.
Update PHP Version For WordPress On Debian 9
As of April 30, 2020, the current version of Google Cloud Platform’s WordPress Click-to-Deploy deploys WordPress 5.2.3 using PHP version 7.0.33. PHP 7.0.33 was released in January 10, 2019 and since then the PHP developers have released the most recent and stable 7.4.5 version. As a site administrator it is highly essential to update system versions in order to improve both security and performance.
There are many blogs – especially the article from WordPress themselves – which go into details about why updating PHP is important. Since I would be spitting out the exact same details I will not write about it here. However, pages I have visited would simply ask WordPress administrators to contact their webmaster/sysadmins to update the PHP version, which will not fly for an amateur such as myself. In addition, building from source often results in faster performance, so I took on that challenge as well. To serve as future reference, I have created a manual in the process of updating this site from PHP7.0 to PHP7.4.5. Continue on for steps on how to do it yourself!