Not my choice

I was so sick on Sunday that I literally spent my whole day on bed and on toilet bowl. I suppose it was because I did not have any proper meal on Saturday. I actually only had a Starbucks beef pie as my meal for the whole day. I had Deliveroo to deliver my lunch and dinner for Sunday. I decided to take charcoal before bed as I did not want to take MC yet. However for some reason, I could not fall asleep at all. I was considering to take Anarex but I knew it was going to be useless with charcoal. So I still had the strength to work yesterday, I tried to have enough rest from 8pm last night, but this morning I simply could not take it anymore. I feel so lightheaded and 'flying'. It is as if my brain is trying to fly away and my skull is trying hard to prevent it.

If I have the same mental strength as yesterday, I would still force myself to work. But after what happened yesterday, sigh.., I decided to just slack today. I am so tired of the rat race, comparison, competition, awards, etc. Externally, I can project as if I do not give a damn about these things, that I just cannot be bothered, and that I just want to slack with my work. But deep inside me, a storm is raging. It is just part of me to always want to be the best and to put in the best in everything that I do. But what can I do about it? I am born this way. I am born with this personality.

Awards etc are usually intended to reward people who have done well. It is not meant to be a competition. Again, it is my problem who views them as goals to be achieved. Who else to blame but myself? My type A personality wires me to think and approach things this way. My mind creates own pressure and stress. When I don't get it, I start cursing myself: why am I so stupid? why am I so lousy? why are others better than me?

Last year I nominated my staff and she won it. This year I could not find any deserving staff so I nominated myself. Yes, I am shameless to admit that I am expecting myself to win. I even made changes to my plans so that I can be present on Thursday because it would be awkward not to be there to receive. Now I am just left with bruised ego and disappointment. Sigh.. fml.. It is actually just a simple thing. Nobody will care whether I get it or not not. There is not any money anyway. But again, that competitive drive is what ultimately will destroy me slowly.

What a sad valentine's day when I even hate myself. I do not choose to be born this way. I do not choose to be this way. Even if I try to choose my words and actions, I cannot choose and stop all these thoughts appearing in my mind. I am so tired and sick of myself. Don't even think about loving other human when I can't even love myself.

Photobookworldwide.com (review)

I started using this since January 2016 but I am procrastinating to write my opinions about this. I am just done settling the photos that arrived last week so now I am ready to write this. I came to know this when I saw discount codes at groupon. At first glance, the prices look crazy without the discount codes. However, after using it for the past 1 year, I think those prices are a gimmick because throughout the year, there are always discounts at the range of 65-80%. After buying, they will send the codes and usually the expiry is still many months ahead. That will give ample time to design the photobooks.

Photobooks can be created online or offline. I have never tried the online version so I can only comment on the offline method whereby I had to download their program first. The size of the program is quite big because there are many other products other than photobooks. We are allowed to choose which ones to be downloaded. The application is very user friendly and idiot-proof. Perhaps the only issue I have is the names of the products in the application may not exactly the same as the names in the website.

The application allows a limitless personalisation. I can make everything from scratch or I can use existing templates. Even when templates are chosen, I can still play around and edit the templates. There are a lot backgrounds, scrapbook elements, borders, and special effects too play around. However, considering they have a 40 and 80-page photobooks, the amount of variety is still not enough.

There are 2 problems with the designer which are not up to my expectations. First is about sizing which uses proportion for cropping. So let's say the original size of the photo is 12 x 16 pixels (just for ease of description) or 3:4 ratio but the size of photo field is 8 x 10 pixels or 4:5, the max area of the photo that I can put is only 8 x 10 pixels and there is no way I can fit the whole photo. If I want to have the photo fully in, I have to have resize the field with a 3:4 ratio which I find so tedious. I am expecting that the photos will be 'squeezed'to whatever shape and size of the photo fields that I choose and then I will be given the opportunity to crop if I want. Sadly, there is no get around for this proportion thing when it comes to resizing the scrapbook items. Second is the border. When border effect is added, the border is not added outside the photo field but it is put inside the photo field i.e the border will cover the photo. That really limits the usefulness of the borders.

Moving on the products now. I have ordered photobooks, photo prints, and insta cards (I got the insta cards free when I bought the photo prints). I am very pleased with the large landscape photobooks: the paper quality is acceptable and the print quality is as of what I see in my computer. I got the 80-page and 2 of the 40-page photobooks much earlier (at separate 3 ocassions) than the free 6" x 6" photobook which was given for free as 2016 New Year's gift. There was no problem with them but I lose faith in their quality control after the 6" x 6" photobook.

In the application, each page has an outer blue and an inner red border. They state that the pages may be cut until the red border but all the bigger photobooks that I ordered earlier were printed until the blue border. Sadly, it is not only a warning since the small photobook was printed until the red border! Obviously all of my pictures at the edges were cut and everything seemed to be off-center. They say that the pages may be cut until the red border. The problem is the gap between the blue and red border can be up to 3mm. It sounds like a small matter but when you have a photo, being cut off 3mm is a BIG DEAL! If I put everything within the red border and the product is printed until the blue border, the end product will have a 3mm blank around the edges. But if I put everything until the blue border and the product is printed until the red border, the end product will be cut off 3mm around the edges. I find it unreliable and unacceptable since ultimately the book can be printed with that much variation at the edges.

I would recommend avoiding the photo prints and insta cards as the paper quality sucks. It is not a photo paper quality. For the insta cards, the website mentions 270 gsm paper. So fair enough that the end product is not a card material, despite naming the product with the word cards, since they already state 270 gsm paper. For photo prints, however, the website only mentions glossy or matte photo paper (nothing about the gsm whatsoever) so obviously I am expecting it to be the usual photo paper. It turns out to be of a similar quality to the insta cards so I suppose it is also 270 gsm paper. It is thin and even when I leave them in my drawer for few days, the corners start to 'bend' upwards. No issue with print quality as I got what I saw on my computer screen.

Moving on to packaging and shipping now. Packaging is poor, terribly poor. They put the photos or books inside their blue carton envelope and that's it! There is no padding whatsover which obviously results in all the corners crumpled at arrival. When discount codes are used, they do not allow combined shipping which is a waste of customers' money when we want to buy multiple products at the same time. It is not convenient too like for example when my last purchase was 3x 500pcs photo prints and the bonus instacards, I had to pay 4x $10 for shipping and I received 4 DHL tracking numbers. Thank goodness DHL noticed all 4 items have the same address and they were delivered as a bundle. I would be so irritated if I had to wait for 4 different couriers.

Customer service is a hit or miss. Their customer service email sucks but their facebook customer service is very responsive. When I complained about my small photobook, they allowed me to reprint it if I shifted all my items to be within the red lines. They would give 80% off but I still had to pay for shipping. Sounds good, doesn't it? Nope.. to edit 1 photobook will cost me at least 1-2 weeks and that is a waste of time. 80% off sounds cheap but it is the shipping that costs a bomb. So basically, it is still a bad service recovery.

After all these, I am going to find another online photo book service provider the next time I am going to print my holiday pictures. I have not had any holiday yet so I have yet to search. Having said that, I may still consider photobookworldwide for their other gift products. Anything except for the photobooks and the photo prints. Lol.

Bye $12m T_T

Gambling is bad. But gambling for fun is okay lol. I usually only buy numbers when friends are getting excited with big jackpot. 2017's jackpot is $12 million! I was already dreaming of having undefined unpaid leave and I would return to work when I spend finish my winning. Now I end up with a shattered dream, $13 poorer, and disappointed with the fact that I gotta be back in office on Monday. Sigh..

Out of 7 numbers, I only got 1 number correct. Haiz... That is how poor my luck is. On top of that, I received an sms alerting me that I have used 100% of my mobile data bundle. But when I checked my data usage, it showed me 3.01 GB. What the heck! Why am I being informed about 100% usage when the actual usage has already exceeded that! I am so bloody irritated with this. In addition, I set my phone to warn me when my data usage has reached 2.8GB but for no reason, the warning never appeared. Damn!

I want to be happy. I want to be positive. But I can't when everything and everyday is going badly.

Eff you all!

It has not even been 15 freaking days from CNY and shitty luck still continues. The first thing is about the photos that I printed online. They arrived more quickly than expected but the quality was shitty. The paper material is not even a photo paper. Sigh..

I am doing closing shift this week. On Tuesday, I had meeting in the morning and I also had annual health screening. I had to wake up at 5am so that I could finish my health screening quickly and then not be late for meeting at Clementi. The previous day was so busy that I had no time to take my blood pressure. I reached at about 7am and the BP stations were not ready yet. Obviously the staff were all upstairs for health screening too. I was not allowed to have my blood drawn unless I had my BP readings. I understand that the people doing the screening were just doing their job but I could help but being an asshole to them. I already told them that BP stations were not open yet and they still did not let me do my blood withdrawal first.

And because of that slight delay, I ended up with a fucked up taxi driver. Not only he was vulgar, he was also the typical self-entitled citizens who thought that the country and government owed him a living. I really hate this kind of people. Complain so much about not having money and why everything is so expensive bla bla bla. If everything must be as cheap as what you want, then what do you think the other people will have money? Jeez.. Anyway what made me really angry was he double charged me. Fucker.. The credit card transaction was approved but because the receipt was not printed, he said it was not approved. He asked me to pay cash and contact the company for receipt bla bla bla. I checked my credit card today and really that transaction went through. ComfortDelGro automated reply says reply will be within 3 working days so tomorrow I will call them and be an asshole again. After all this is about money.

I am glad that I was not tempted to buy photo albums online as I found albums with nicer covers and comparable price at Popular. There was buy 1 for 1 promotion as well but it was not mentioned anywhere. I only realised it at home when I scanned the receipt for CapitaStar. The cashier also did not ask me anything when doing the scanning though I bought an odd quantity. Perhaps he also never saw it on his till. I emailed them and luckily they allowed me to take 1 more album hehe.. 

KFC released new menu Chizza yesterday. As the name suggests, it is supposed to be a pizza but the dough is replaced with chicken. The picture looks yummy but sadly promo picture is always different from actual product. Haha.. I bought ala carte for $5.10 and I think it is overhyped. I don't know if I am not impressed because I had it as a take-away and the chicken was already somewhat cold by the time I reach home.

Today is another bad day because of 2 fucktards. Another self-entitled old man never asked plaster yesterday but expected that doctor would always give at each visit. For goodness sake, it is his own problem and he was damn bloody rude to ask me to call the doctor. Seriously, if this is my own company, I would just get you to fuck off. In the evening, I already did not feel like having dinner but I decided to accompany my friend. I accidentally dropped the beeper and the person was like a fuck face. I already said sorry so what else he wanted sia. If your stall is prepared to use beeper, then be prepared for patrons to accidentally drop it or lose it. My friend went to collect the food when it was ready and he was scolded by a different staff. I think perhaps they also spit on our food or something. It is one of the western stalls at Holland Village food center. Just find the one that looks brighter, more crowded, and fuck faces manning the stall.

Oh well, whatever it is, to these people who had made my life sucky for this week, I wish you all the worst. Go fuck yourself, go die, or go bankrupt.

Gundam Build Fighters Try; Gundam Build Fighters Try Island Wars

Gundam Build Fighters Try is a 'loose' sequel of Gundam Build Fighters (which I wrote about here). Taking place 7 years after the original series, Seiho Academy (the school Sei comes from) fails to continue on his success and the Gunpla battle club is left with one member Fumina Hoshino. That is a problem because now Gunpla battle has become a 3-on-3 team battle and there is no way Fumina can join competition alone. Until one day a transfer student, Sekai Kamiki, appears and Fumina is desperate enough to get anyone to join her club. Lucky for her, despite being a total beginner to Gunpla, Sekai who is good in martial arts fall in love with Gunpla as he can use his martial arts skills there. With that, Fumina also convinces Yuuma Kousaka to return to Gunpla battling. Together, they form 'Try Fighters' team and aim to compete in the national competition.

I say it is a loose sequel because GBFT (to make it shorter to type) tries to be a stand alone series and avoid too many references to GBF. Yuuma is younger brother of China Kousaka (the main girl from GBF), Sekai's Gunpla is actually built by Sei and hidden behind the World Championship Cup in Seiho's Gunpla clubroom in hope of Reiji's return some day, Nils Nielsen has become a scientist in Yajima Trading which invented a way to still play Gunpla battle after the event at the end of GBF, Gyanko is a sister Suzumu Nazaki, Minato Sakai comes form the same Gunpla school that Mao came from, Lucas Nemesis turns out to be the grandson of Finnish's Gunpla team owner which invested in Aila to win the World Chammpionship. For the GBF characters, Mr Ral comes back as the coach for Try Fighters, Tatsuya Yuuki (as Meijin Kawaguchi) appears a lot as observer of the battles, Allan Adams become the coach for the Gunpla Academy team, China appeared for a few times, and Sei is mentioned a few times and his (half) face only appears once.

Sadly, this GBFT seems to be avoiding all the good things that make GBF fresh. In GBF, we are in World Championship so who will give a shit about school and national championship in GBFT. Pfft... The battles no longer show something original and exciting. The 3-on-3 format does not offer a better dynamic in the battles as most of the time it will still be a 1 vs 1 between the Gundams instead of a team effort. GBF still kinda makes sense with the fighters trying to add features to their Gundams etc but in GBFT this aspect is almost gone completely. It is mostly about raw power: whoever can shoot bigger beams and flashiest light effects will win -which is kinda WTF.

Sekai keeps repeating the same moveset right from beginning of the show and those get old pretty quick. That makes him quite unexciting as the main character. Thank goodness we have Fumina. Fumina seems to be the only one to put in more tactics/strategies with her Winning and Star Winning Gundam as well as how hers help Sekai's Build Burning and Yuuma's Lightning (at least that shows a teamwork). The only one that deserves special mention is Tendaiji's school Tryon-3 which reminds me of power rangers with combining of 3 Gundams into 1. But then, the marvel stops there because Tryon-3 is all about raw fire power as well. No strategy whatsover, just shoot those beams.

With 3-on-3 format, we are dealing with more characters in the series and that becomes a problem with the character development. Many characters are forgettable and "You are my rival" are spewed so frequently that it lacks the impact of what it means to be rivals.

In terms of the story, unlike GBF, there is nothing really Gundam-y this time as there isn't really any enemy or antagonist or even conflict. It feels like a school J-dorama of school kids achieving success in their youth and club activities. Perhaps that explains why the characters development and interactions are as what I mention in the paragraph above. The good thing about the J-dorama feels is the comedy (I must say that this is more hilarious than GBF) and all the friendship (I suck for this kind of thing and I cried a lot when friends sacrifice to help one another that kind of bullcrap haha...).

Gundam Build Fighters Try is basically another example of a sequel going bonkers which tries too hard to distant itself from the original series and ends up without all the good things that make the original series work and end up with all the unexciting things. There is not many easter eggs and references to other Gundam series here although the big surprise is revealed at the end that Jigen Haoh School's master is Domon Kasshu, the main character in G Gundam!!

Gundam Build Fighters Try Island Wars is a special episode which is considered a sequel of GBFT. Nils Yajima improves on Plavsky Particle and is experimenting to use it to enhance the Gunpla battle system. Several characters are invited to try on this new battle system. However, things go out of control which reminds us of the final event in GBF. The particles go out of control because of the presence of Arista crystal which belongs to a mysterious girl who at the end of the show is revealed to be Reiji and Aila's daughter.

I consider Island Wars to be a filler episode, rather than a sequel, due to the lack of plot and it is mostly just comedy for fun. It is like GBFT characters put together in an island for a holiday and having fun together. The battle tries to copy the epic finale of GBF with no originality and minus the excitement or the emotion. It is kinda rubbish if you consider this a sequel but it is kinda okay if you just consider this as a filler episode.

Gundam Build Fighters Try is a fun show but with its placement as a sequel of Gundam Build Fighters, I think it fails big time because I am honestly more interested in knowing what happen to Sei, Reiji, Aila, and other characters from the original series rather than the new characters.

Streak of bad luck

My streak of bad luck still continues today. After losing $185 from the plane ticket, multiply that number several times today as one of my crowdfunding investment is officially declared default as the company is officially declared bankrupt. Sigh.. Ironically, this is the FIRST company that I invested in and from the projects that they had done when I did the research prior to investing, I would never expect that it would ever go bust.

What to do? That is the nature of investment. The promise of high return is also associated with high risk. I invested $12k in crowdfunding and I think even if the rest of the investment had no problem, I would just break even considering this failed one. Sigh.. If there is any more company that goes bust, I will be in the red. Ironically, I felt more emo over my duplicate plane ticket than over this. This is because I am prepared to 'lose' those $12k before deciding to try the whole crowdfunding thing. I may not really have the stomach for investing but with the mindset of only investing what I can afford to lose really minimises the disappointment and sadness.

Suddenly I had a headache from 4pm onwards and I decided not to go gym today. What a waste. I wanted to quickly go home and 2 bus stops later, I realised that I forgot to bring home the electric heatpad that my landlord asked me to buy. Sigh.. I had to walk back to take it.

And to make the whole day completely ruined, I received a phone call that freezer alarm was triggered. I am damn pissed because I am in the middle of uploading files for my photo prints. Sigh. I am also the last in the list of the keyholders so why I had to be the suay one to answer the phone call. I knew it was bad but I could help but to vent at the vendor. What kind of shit that you could not even advise me if the alarm was false despite the fact that the alarm was triggered before shortly get restored? I returned to office and I was caught in the middle. The alarm vendor asked technician to check the electricity and there was no issue. So the technician suspected something was wrong with the alarm signalling. But all the alarm vendor can say is that he knows no shit about this. His job is just to inform that an alarm signal is triggered and it is our job to find out what's wrong. Seriously what's the fuck?

I can also throw you the same attitude. What's the point of having your service if the only thing you can inform me is I received a signal bla bla bla but then you cannot advise me what happen and what I need to do. Lucky I never held back last year during the end of the year service survey even when dunno which supervisor came down. This year, I will repeat the same roasting. Bleah!