Lousy shit

Sianz.. my bad luck and emo days continue. Just discovered a dispensing error today and as expected, I was somehow involved in it. Sigh.. I knew in late August and early September, I was not in top condition and got the gut feeling that somehow an error will occur. But I have not known the details yet and I don't know if it happened during this time frame!

I am very upset with the checker and dispenser! Why did they not do their job more carefully! Haiz.. But ultimately, I am most upset and angry with myself! How can I let such thing happen :( I always thought that I am already very careful in everything I do. I do more slowly as I tried to check things twice. If that is not enough, what else must I do? Haiz..

I always tell people: "Don't worry. You handle so many prescriptions in a day, a week, a month, etc. Sooner or later there will definitely be an error somewhere. Just make sure to be more careful next time." Bla bla bla.. But I am very hard towards myself :( I don't think it is acceptable. I want a clean sheet in my career. I have no face and reputation already. Not only I am a pharmacist, I am also in charge of medication safety at my branch. And yet I myself caused this. Fuck! Embarassing as shit!

My cough is not getting better even after 2 days MC and Procodin. I thought yesterday Procodin was working great. It knocked me out throughout the day. Today I am still coughing despite having taken it.

Sian.. I just want to die.. Don't wanna work and face people anymore. Embarassing!! Shameful!

Personal emo day

28 October has always been my personal emo day because 11 years ago, my parents shipped me away from home and sold me away for free education in Singapore. It is especially emo this year because of my broken Aladdin figurine and there is a risk of me losing the money as well. To top it off, I am very very sick.

I have been having this cough for almost 1 week now. There is phlegm which is very difficult to cough out. Not sure if there is really phlegm but the cough is getting "deeper" as if the phlegm is lodged deep within my lungs. The phlegm is minimal and surprisingly the color is still milky white-pale yellow. I am pretty sure this is cause by the same bug which affected my boss before her departure. Haha.. the symptoms are the same!

I took DMP + bromhexine throughout the weekend and there was not much improvement. I even decided to use salbutamol inhaler which I bought for standby due to haze a few months back! Also did not help :( Today I started on Clarithromycin and I bought Fluimucil to replace bromhexine. Initially Clarithromycin suprisingly also provided some symptom relief lol. However now the cough is back :( After all of these medication, perhaps what I really need is an MC to take care of everything.

Now I know that Clarithromycin which I keep is yellow in color and from now on I will advise people to take it with food. I took it on empty stomach and I felt the churning. On the brighter side, it sorts of distracted me from my chest discomfort. I also learn that Fluimucil tablet is rather small and is white in colour. Nothing fantastic about the taste. Haha.. Most importantly, I experienced first hand how to use metered dose inhaler haha.. I have no issue with gas coming out of my mouth. But I can taste the medicine on my tongue! That means the medicine does not reach my lungs :(

Totally unrelated by here is Sexy Zone's 5th single:

Post by Sexy Zone.

Can't find it on Youtube, Youku, Yinyuetai, etc but surprisingly I can embed it from facebook. The title is バィバィDuバィ〜See you again〜 or Bye Bye Dubai ~See you again~. It is a double A side single with A My Girl Friend as the other single which does not really sound gramatically correct. Surprisingly, the single is another no. 1 in the chart. I don't really like the Dubai song and I totally hate the PV. I always dislike PV which is shot against blue screen and then they insert whatever background they want. Unlike Real Sexy PV which is still rather cool and has a story, this Dubai PV is entirely pointless. They even try to fake the flying sand with white fog and digital white sparkles. Jeez.. And the clothes... ew.. nothing related to the Middle East at all.. Well, I will suprised if J-Pop PV actually makes any sense.

Anyway, I like the other single (A My Girl Friend) better and I enjoy Shori, Kento, and Fuma solo songs too. Hmm..

Broken pieces

Call me unlucky.. The last 3 figurines I ordered arrived broken or in imperfect conditions. Haiz.. Perhaps it is a heavenly sign that I should be wasting my money.

Lucky it is not a significant part of the figurine :(

Although the break is clean, after I glued them back together, the end result is still not smooth and it is obvious that there was a damage. Sigh.. To make this more upsetting, it is a super rare piece as it bears the sculptor's signature at the base. I got a full refund on this so at least that alleviates the pain a little bit :(

Paint scratches

I have been eyeing for this figurine for more than a year hoping for the price to drop to no avail. Found this at 25% less than the usual prices I saw so I grabbed it. I gotta be thankful that the item arrived in once piece. However, it looks like the figurine is kept in the box for so long that when I took out the figurine, some of the paint came off and was stuck to the styrofoam. There are some scratch marks on the base too. Seller offered 20% off the price I initially paid so it was not too shabby.

R.I.P Aladdin

And this is the worst. Have been seeing this for USD 199 so I was so happy that I got one for USD 100 inclusive shipping. Unfortunately, it arrived broken beyond my wildest imagination. Considering the fragile nature of the item, I assumed that this would be shipped with insurance. It was NOT! Sigh.. Currently it is still being stuck at comgateway warehouse. I am very upset with them :( They informed me about this 3 days after item arrival. In addition, they only provided me with one bad quality picture. It took me another day to give me this picture. They should be experience in this kind of thing and should know that in case of damage, they should provide the pictures of the broken items as well as external and internal packaging.

No matter what, ultimately it is my mistake for assuming that seller would insure this. The seller offered me USD 70 partial refund or full refund if I were to ship back. I guess no matter what I would be losing USD 30 and no item. Sigh.. Not sure if I should open a case with eBay and hope that they do not ask me to return this damaged item. What's the point of returning this as if the seller still can make any use from this? Asking me to return is simply like punishing me and asking me to pay.

Sigh.. I thought alcohol would be good to drown away my sorrow and make me forget about all these things.. I am half-drunk but I still feel bad :(

Age of rubbish

Despite the slew of bad reviews, I decided to bite the bullet and bought Age of Ultron. I normally hate time travel and alternate reality stories but Brian Michael Bendis did absolutely fantastic job with House of M and Secret Invasion. I thought I should give it a chance. I wanted to buy it during 20% Kinokuniya Liang Court sale 2 weeks ago but my friend happened to ask me if I wanted something from Amazon to combine for free shipping. I bought it from Amazon and with the free shipping it cost me about $10 than Kinokuniya's after sale price. Yay.

Age of Ultron turns out to be a pile of crap. Ultron has taken over (or destroyed) most of the earth and only a few superheroes remaining. After realising that Ulton is actually using Vision as a conduit at a present time, they decide to go into the future where Ultron is really present. Of course that does not make sense, doesn't it? They can't even beat Ultron minions in the present time with everything they have and now they want to beat the real big guy in the future with only 6 of them? Rubbish!

Wolverine has a better idea: go the past and prevent Ultron from being created in the first place. No idea why Invisible Woman decided to follow him. He killed Henry Pym before he created Ultron and then returned to the present time. Due to his action in the past, the present has been altered and the earth is in another doomsday scenario with it being taken over by Morgana Le Fay. So Wolverine returned to the past again to prevent himself from killing Henry Pym and asked him to prepare a code to disable Ultron, forget about it, and only remember it when the time comes. How on earth is that possible?

I shall stop here because I don't think I am writing coherently about the incoherent stories. In summary, Age of Ultron sucks: the story sucks, the battle sucks, the resolution sucks, and everything sucks. Looks like the announcement of the next Marvel Avengers movie to be titled Age of Ultron is just a marketing gimmick to boost of the sale of this utter rubbish. And for once, I find the side stories/related titles to be more engaging than the main plot. Not even the fact that Storm is one of the surviving superhero makes me like this book.

Let's travel back in time to discuss about the 2 books I bought in May but I never mentioned here. Lol..

I was reluctant to get it because of the ugly cover but Secret Invasion is a pleasure to read. The Skrulls are going to take over the earth. They infiltrate and disguise themselves as many of the superheroes. With no way to detect them (unless you knock them out and they revert to their green form), heroes are turned against heroes. It is fast-paced, action-packed, brilliantly written and executed, and I enjoy the fact that for once the good guys and the bad guys fight side-by-side to thwart the Skrull's thread. After all, "no more earth means no more business" for the baddies. Another masterpiece from Bendis which gave me a false hope for a good Age of Ultron.

Moving on to Fear Itself which I find even worse than Civil War which I hated. The synopsis and the setting are actually good. The Serpent finally broke free of Odin's bonds after thousands of years. To prepare for his return, he summoned 8 mystical hammers from outside Earth and whoever worthy to yield them becomes one of "The Worthy". They create havoc and cause people to fear and stronger the fear, the stronger the Serpent will be. Iron Man created 8 weapons, enchanted with Odin's blessings, so I was expecting that there would be an awesome 8-vs-8 fights.

Erm.. Nowhere near to what I expected. Odin knew that he would have to sacrifice Thor to win against the Serpent. So guess what did he decide? He will raze the earth together with the Serpent. Gosh!! And the other Asgardian gods just blindly follow him and support Thor to go alone to fight for the earth?? WTF??!! For goodness sake.. The gods are afraid of 8 superhumans who wield mystical hammers?? Does not make any sense to me.. There is no awesome 8-vs-8 fights too as Thor alone has managed to KO The Thing to revert him to normal and has kicked Hulk's butt to another planet.

Well, with Age of Ultron taking its place, Fear Itself is now the 2nd worse in my opinion :p

Bye bye boss :(

I shall take a break from posting about toys for awhile since it has been quite a few posts since my most recent rants about relapse. My relapse continued on :p With a combination of fatigue and bad weather, I have not been exercising :( Add on uncontrolled diet and snacking and there goes my diet. Not to mention that my honey diet does not seem to yield the good result I expected initially. Sigh..

I just had a company retreat today and yes it is a Sunday :( That makes me "work" for a consecutive 12 days. Sigh.. Sian.. Tired.. The most saddening thing is that my boss is transferred to another branch :( She is such a great leader and boss and it is really sad to see her go. Yesterday was her last day and I was her partner for Saturday duty. Every time someone went home and bid her farewell, I felt like crying. Ironic isn't it? It is not as if I am the one getting transferred :(

With her transfer, I am officially the second most "senior" staff and I dislike it. I think it is a sign that I just can't be bothered about work. Normally, people will feel that this is like an opportunity for them to progress in their career. I don't want to take more responsibility or rather, I am not ready for more responsibility as I am still learning and there are still tonnes of things which I don't know. If people ask questions or ask me to face FONs, I will still face difficulties. And ultimately, I am still a junior staff after all and no matter how much or how well I do things, my performance bonus will also be on the "small fry" scale so why should I work hard? Instead of feeling excited, I am feeling very worried about what tomorrow and the future will hold :(

My colleagues and I prepared a surprise for her today during the company retreat: a rather large gift hamper and a huge thank you card. Our aim was to make it "BIG" enough that other people would realise that we don't want her to go. We did not get what we wanted :( She happened to carry a large bag which is huge enough to put our big card and hamper in!! Awww...

Our plan to treat her for dinner also failed since she ended up paying for us.. Oh noo... Haha.. We had dinner at Tanuki at Orchard Central. It was quite expensive and I thought the food was only above average. I ordered Salmon Mentaiko Don which was rather small for $20. I also did not enjoy Trio Carpaccio which is basically salmon-tuna-swordfish sashimi. The salmon still had the silvery part which I hate. No complaints about tuna but I just don't like the swordfish. Another one that we ordered was fried oyster wrapped in bacon with mayo and/or wasabi dip and this was awesome.

We continued with dessert at Seventh Heaven and I returned to earth 2kg heavier. Lol. I ordered a chocolate mudpie coated with chocolate, topped with chocolate sauce, embedded with marshmallow, and had chocolate brownie as the base. It was damn huge!! The height was as tall as my Galaxy Note and it was thick. Lucky it was mostly ice cream and not brownie. Haha.. I managed to finish it except for the chocolate coat. My other 3 colleagues ordered a 12-scoop menu and they were quite terrible. The ice cream was melting halfway and we could not finish it because it became too yucky. The ice cream scoops were not fantastic to be honest so I don't think this place will last considering that it is located in the low-traffic shopping mall as well. However, I have to mention something interesting in their menu: $66.70 for 30 scoops of ice cream!! And if you can finish it in 25 minutes, you can have it for free XD

A brand new start tomorrow.. Dear God please bless me although I did not go to church this weekend :(

Harmony Kingdom Disney: Pinocchio's Great Adventure

Pinocchio's Great Adventure is the fifth figurine released from Harmony Kingdom Disney created by Robert King. It was released in 1999 with retail price of USD 75 and limited edition size of 3461. I find it peculiar that the preceding figurine (Snow White) -which was released in the same year- was made in England while Pinocchio has the honor to begin the trend of "Made in China" figurines :( The 4.01" x 1.81" x 3.54" figurine comes in a 5.05" (L) x 4.95" (W) x 4.9" (H) box.

Honestly, I am clueless about Pinocchio as I never watched the cartoon. I only know that he is a wooden doll created by Geppetto, he has Jiminy Cricket as companion, his nose will grow longer every time he lies, and his greatest adventure was being swallowed by Monstro the whale. I can't recognise the characters featured here and although they are sculpted beautifully, I have little sense of attachment to them. In addition, the figurine I got had a little chip on the head of the fish and missing green cloth at the base. Bleah..

No Certificate of Authenticity and Harmony Kingdom insert

Pinocchio, Geppetto, and Figaro

Blue Fairy who granted Pinocchio life

Alexander -the naughty boy who is turned into a donkey in Pleasure Island-
Initially I thought this is a rabbit! Lol..

Gideon -Honest John's partner in crime-

One of the antagonists: J. Worthington Foulfellow a.k.a Honest John
Wtf -__-"

Geppetto's pet fish, Cleo, and it's chipped head

Black spots :(

And the surprise is JIMINY CRICKET!! How can we forget about him when we talk about Pinocchio??

Considering the other Harmony Kingdom figurines has green velvety cloth covering the base, I think it is missing from this figurine!

At least this figurine forced me to find out more about Pinocchio to get information about the characters which I did not know. On top of that, I sort of know the story of the cartoon too. Hehe..

Harmony Kingdom Disney: Feisty Fellow

The next Harmony Kingdom Disney piece which I will be writing about is called Feisty Fellow. This piece shows the many faces of Donald Duck in his various appearances in the cartoon. I am not a fan of Donald Duck so I obviously am not too familiar and not bothered by him anyways. Lol. Feisty has positive and negative meanings and when we talk about Donald Duck, the negative meanings will come first because of his personality: grumpy, ill-tempered, a trouble maker and so on. However, I only see 1 grumpy face here and I believe Robert King intended on using the positive meanings of feisty i.e animated, full of energy, etc to describe Donald Duck.

This figurine was released in 2000 and the manufacturing site had moved to China :( Although there is not much difference in terms of quality, seeing "Made in China" triggers different emotions as compared to "Made in England". The edition size is 2028 and the issue price was USD 75. The 4.02" x 3.23" x 3.39" figurine comes in a box measuring 6.9" (L) x 5.9" (W) x 4.9" (H). I definitely prefer boxes to cylinders. 

I grow up in modern-era Donald Duck and I don't really quite like the old versions of Donald because he really looks like a duck (the animal) then with rather slim head and elongated neck. I am happy to see Huey, Dewey, and Louie being featured here and it would be even better to have Uncle Scrooge and Daisy here to make a complete duck family. Enough words and lets just enjoy the pictures.

The logo is on the lid of the box

The original price tag

Unfortunately, no Certificate of Authenticity or the Harmony Kingdom insert

Disney logo

Let's reveal the surprise

Harmony Kingdom logo

The disappointing surprise: a boat and a bag of coins.

Hmm what is so surprising about a boat?? If you realise, Donald Duck is wearing sailor's uniform and ships/boats are one of his favorite things. As Christmas is coming, it reminds me of Disney's Once Upon A Christmas in which Donald was given a snow boat, instead of sleigh, by his nephews as Christmas present. Lol. I believe it is a bag of coins above the boat. Having a rich but stingy uncle, Donald is often caught in get-rich-fast scheme in his cartoons and that explains the money bag here.

The bottom part is sort of peeling off :( And the whitish spots are due to the styrofoam internal packaging. They are not fungus! Lol.

Harmony Kingdom Disney: Lion King's Pride Rock

I am not a fan of Lion King but Lion King certainly has a special place in my heart and my childhood. After all, Lion King toys from Burger King are the very first thing that my family collected. While I was the one most eager for that, my sisters and my mum supported me and we displayed the full set on my mum's room. After renovation, I wonder where these toys are. Not sure if my mum just kept them somewhere of she threw them away. Sigh..

Anyway, apologies for the digress. This piece is the one catching my attention to the set of 6 which was put on sale. My heart broke when I found that the piece was broken to several small pieces during shipping. Some of the pieces were too small for me to stick them back while some, like the parts of Pumbaa, were totally missing. Haiz.. really sad.

Moving on to the figurine itself, it was released in 1998 and it was still made in England. Yay! The artist behind this masterpiece is Robert King and definitely I love his style much more than Theresa Miller. King used plenty of colors which made the figurine vibrant and alive as compared to Theresa Miller's rather lethargic and lacklustre colors. King also brought forward the unique personalities of each character and that is really a brilliant job! Thank goodness Group Hug was also made by this great guy. Haha.. The edition size was 5300 and its retail price was USD 95. The figurine measures 4.25" x 4.17" x 3.98". Hmm.. it seems that the pieces are getting bigger and better which is actually a good thing. Surprisingly, the cylinder packaging is smaller than Fabulous Five Out For A Drive at 5.6" diameter and 6.5" tall.

The only one out of 6 with a CoA in a perfect condition

Amazing, isn't it? All the main characters (except one, guss who?) are in!

Not only that, we even have the Hyenas at the back!!

Disney logo

Strong and powerful Mufasa

Calm and motherly Sarabi. Love the way she leans on Mufasa

Rafiki (my favourite!) looking rather young here :p

Young Nala..can't really tell that her ear was broken and glued back

Playful and naughty Young Simba

Cunning Scar is lurking

Timon or Pumbaa.. or rather Pumbaa and Timon

The only "miss" for this figurine as Timon does not look like this in the cartoon!

Can't be bothered to google the hyenas' names. Haha.. Evil faces..

That's the best I can do with the broken pieces :(

Wow.. Simba tree carving as the surprise.. Nice one!

The base

It was absolutely a bummer to have this in imperfect condition. And although I would like to rate this 10/10, I can't. Why? Because ZAZU IS MISSING!! Sigh.. How can Zazu be missed out :( I thought he would be inside as the surprise leh T_T