Avengers: Infinity War

After many months, the hype is real and the wait is finally over. It is quite amazing that I managed to restrain myself from watching on the premiere day and it was a mistake. I felt so miserable for the few days as my plan was to watch the movie today with few colleagues. I ran out of patience and today was my second time watching lol. I decided to watch it first yesterday hahaha..

I am so glad that Avengers: Infinity War is not an overhype since it lives to the hype. There are so many surprises which are completely different from what fans have been theorizing and guessing all these few months. While there are homages to the Infinity Gauntlet comic, a lot of things are not identical to the comic which makes the movie still exciting to fans.

With so many characters and side stories of what each of them is doing, time is not in their favour. The story is way too big even with splitting the story into 2 movies and the first movie is already running for more than 2.5 hours. The movie still feels too short. With all the hoo hah with Thanos, I am expecting more scenes to show his power and might like how he destroys Xandar and Knowhere to get the Infinity Stones instead of simply showing the 'aftermath'. Similarly the movie opens with Asgardian's ship already in crap instead of showing more action. The movie successfully depicts Thanos as an enemy with a 'noble' aim instead of typical antagonists who kill for the sake of killing. The movie could have spent more time giving more back story for Thanos to give him more relatable and understandable personality. 

The fights are still exciting and the characters interactions are still amusing. However as the movie progresses to introduce more people and stories, it gets more and more choppy and jumpy and that is one thing that I think is not well done. The fight at Titan and at Wakanda can be considered the climax and because of the constant scene jumping, both just lose their climatic feel and the fights do not give the same satisfaction as the previous Avengers movies.

A major plot hole is with the relative strengths of the characters. With Thanos so strong and in possession of few Infinity Stones, why would not he simply use their power and kill everyone? Why is he still bothered to entertain fist-to-fist combats? Vision is reduced to some lousy android but hey he owns the Mind Stone, man! In the Age of Ultron movie and in the comics, Vision is one of the more powerful superheroes. Scarlet Witch is another character that suffers from this power scale inconsistency. Remember what she can do in Age of Ultron and if she has the power to destroy the Mind Stone at the same time with resisting Thanos who is already wielding te other 5 Stones, what she is doing in the whole movie is best summarised with what Okoye says: what was she up there (in the lab) all this time (instead of fighting)?

I feel that Marvel is good only with war with faceless armies. I expect the Black Order to be formidable enemies worth of treating us great fights with the superheroes. Yet they all get a pathetic CGI deaths (sucked up into space, mangled by a giant wheel machine, destroyed by Wakanda barrier, etc) instead of from a proper and memorable fights with the superheroes. The initial fight at New York and Scotland are actually great so it is a waste that the subsequent fights with the Black Order is not of this greatness. Similarly the tag team vs Thanos at Titan is actually amazing. Yet when he goes to Wakanda, it seems that the movie maker is simply to lazy: let's make each hero run to him one at a time and ground them with some CGI. Seriously there are more superheroes at Wakanda than at Titan, they could have make the battle there more epic.

Sorry for nitpicking on the fights so much. This is an action superheroes movie genre overall so the action scenes should be the main offering. I am not saying that the fights are not great but they can be even more epic.

I am usually quite a cry baby for movies so it is quite surprising that I did not cry at all despite the so many deaths (I shed tears when Quicksilver is dead at the Age of Ultron). There are a lot of chances to make the deaths more emotional yet they are not explored and built up further. Even the finger snap death has no dramatic effect, except perhaps for Spiderman who is really scared of death and is almost crying to Tony. He is still a teen boy after all.

Similar to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows which is split to 2 movies, the first half always leaves a hanging and emo feeling. It will be nicer if the ending can give a more anticipatory and "I cannot wait for the sequel" kind of feeling. Nonetheless, this Avengers: Infinity War is already a great and amazing movie (which still got room to be even better but perhaps that is just fans' impossible-to-meet expectations).

Pleasant to peasant

2 weeks are over and here I am now back to my peasant life. As always the last 2 days are always reserved for tidying up my comic cupboard and figurine cabinet. I always dread the anticipation but I always feel the joy in the midst and after doing it. After all it feels like the only time for me to get closer and pay attention to my stuff. Otherwise they just feel like "stuff" and I am a hoarder who just buy and put things aside. I spent a significant amount of time playing Tsum Tsum and the new Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery game or else I would have more time flipping through my anime artbooks. The past few days had been tiring as hell as well since I found a Youtube webseries and I was catching up until 3am. Never would I imagine myself watching a Mandarin series lol. Sadly the series is banned and hence is just left 'hanging' after 15 episodes.

I am just done unpacking my luggage and tidying up my clothes. I took this opportunity to sort out some clothes to be given away. I got a new bedsheet as birthday present so I have decided to donate away my old one as I do not want to keep more than 2 bedsheets. Then I realised that my very first bedsheet was still in the cupboard. It is not nice to donate clothings once they are torn or not wear-able anymore. Some of my clothes are more than a decade old but they are still in very nice conditions. I still wear them even when I am travelling overseas. With all the memories and nostalgia, it is very difficult to decide but in the end I decide that there is no point I am keeping so many t-shirts. Even if I rotate them regularly every weekends, each piece may only be worn 3-4x a year at most.

After a few emails with SQ, I finally got a confirmation that I still have reserved seats with Business Class while on waiting list for First Class so at least my holiday in May is confirmed. I should make a decision soon if I should just call and cancel the waiting list since it does not make sense to pay an extra night. I shall wait until I check the hotel rate if it is >$200 then I shall just settle with the red eye flight :(

Haiz I am dreadful to come back but at least I have another 2 days delay with the course tomorrow and the day after.

Weekend at Pontianak

Last December, I had a thought of spending a weekend during this April holiday at Pontianak since I will be taking 2 weeks of leave. The idea was short of shelved as I had the idea of spending a week escaping to Japan. When I came back, my dad asked me if I wanted to go over the weekend. I dislike going to Pontianak but I am okay if it is just for one night.

I heard my grandma has been in declining health for the past 3 weeks. I saw the blood test results and I personally feel that my uncle and aunties are just making a big fuss. Humans are just no numbers. She has not been eating well so it is not unexpected that the albumin is lower than normal. Liver function tests show elevation but as long as not >3x upper normal limit, usually there is nothing much to worry. I do not how a d-dimer test was done and that becomes the main problem. The elevated number suggests risk of clot but as far as I know d-dimer is used to confirm any embolism / DVT / clotting events or DIC and not to be used to say "Oh high d-dimer means blood is thick and needs a blood thinner". I can understand people are concerned etc so perhaps I am a bit heartless here having met and reviewed a lot of elderly at work: my grandma is 101 years old this year, the purpose should be palliative and to ensure good quality of life until the end. We should expect that all humans eventually die and I do not like to see her being "tortured" in the sense that being forced to eat and drink. I heard she was given clopidogrel once and the next day the blood test showed even higher d-dimer so everyone was even more scared. Haiz.. don't play with drugs lah.

On Saturday, my grandma condition was as usual: one moment she remembered me and the next moment she forgot. One reason I hate going to see her is because of this. I do not know if I am there is making her more stressed trying to remember who I am. I do not know if she is hard of hearing or she cannot understand when she does not respond.

On Sunday, for the first time it seemed that she was temporarily back to her old self before the dementia is as bad as now. Not only she remembered me, she could speak like the olden days: she was telling all of us could go out for dinner and she would take care of the house, she said she liked bakkwa that I usually bring from Singapore, and she even gave me angpau. It has been years since I saw her like this so it was very nice. Previously she always cried when we wanted to go back to airport as she felt people were leaving her. This time, she was like her old self as she knows that we do not live there and we will definitely go back home after a few days there. I do not know if this would be my last memory with her but if it is, at least it is a happy one. I did not even bother when my uncle and my dad were recording my interaction with her.

At this age I really feel like I just want to be a hermit. I am lazy to entertain those questions about girlfriend, wedding, future, etc. Deep inside I don't have any willingness to live long. I am so tired of living and that is why I am so lazy to commit myself to long term stuff. Not to mention that obviously I am still having a childish and egoistical thoughts of thinking only about myself. Like that how to even have the heart to care for others.. Haiz.. thinking about these things only make me more emo.

31

Well it is official. I am old. Birthday is no longer a happy occasion and in fact internally I cannot be bothered about birthday anymore. It no longer bothers me if noone wishes me birthday on facebook and I find it irritating having to reply those whatsapp messages. The only unchanged thing is my self-treat for a dessert on birthday lol. This year I tried Pablo because I am curious of all the hypes surrounding it. The cheese tart is good but the matcha and chocolate versions are disappointing. I thought the matcha and chocolate versions are the same cheese cream mixed with matcha and chocolate respectively. They turn out to be like a matcha cake and chocolate cake and that is why they are not as nice as the cheese version. The cheese cake smoothies also does not really taste like cheese cake which disappointed me because it was extra calories for nothing great. Lol.

Birthday wallpaper from AAA global fanclub. Definitely a nicer design than last year.

Before this holiday, I still had thoughts of secretly finding a cheap air tickets to spend a week in Japan. I have a complete change of mind now haha.. I do not even find any tickets as I am enjoying my room and my home that much. Yes nothing can beat the "coming home" feeling as a holiday. I have 1 year worth of manga to read and honestly I feel like giving up Kuroko no Basket and Ace of Diamond. I am not saying that they are not nice but the Indonesian manga version is waaay to slow and having watched the anime series till the end, reading the manga is not that exciting.

I received a sad birthday present from SQ. There is an aircraft change for my May flight to Japan. I have a First Class redemption and now the aircraft is changed to the new B787 which does not have First Class. Haiz.. I am not going to spend money for an international call so I shall sort it out once I am back in Singapore. It is a pain to contact SQ with facebook page messaging is answered by bot and there is no dedicated email address for reservation. I sent an email to generic address and the automated reply says 3 business days to be expected for a reply. Sigh.. what a pathetic customer service for the so-called world class airline.

After 1 year

Wow.. the unlucky streak from last week continued this week. I sacrificed my time to arrange staff interview on my own and yet I could not hire them. One is because he is a foreigner. I did not know that we cannot hire foreigners anymore. Sigh.. I was so damn bloody pissed with HR. It has been so many months and there are not many candidates sent to me. Among the few sent, more than half were rubbish quality. Now that my colleague tried to source candidates on our own and we got a good one, everything was just shot down easily.

I am pissed with the other one because in the evening after the interview and I told HR that I wanted, the person who recommended me the candidate 2 weeks ago said that she had second thoughts about the candidate. Kns! Okay I should not be that ungrateful because at least initially she wanted to help but hey this was the second time she recommended someone "good" which turned out to be quite rubbish. To be fair, I usually do not do reference check and I tend to be too nice and trusting. But for this time since I had to inform HR to cancel my offer, I asked another friend for cross reference to confirm that this candidate might not be so good. The worst part is she lied. Well everyone lies during interview but I hate liars. So after what I thought to be the end of the tough manpower situation at work turned out to be back to square one all over again.

Anyway I had my sweet "revenge" during the session with the big boss on Thursday. Hehe the HQ people were shocked with the kinds of questions that my staff asked: more leave, more time off, comfortable shoes, and so on. I hope that lets gives them a reality check that there are so many shit staff who do not give a damn about work and how we are all burning at the ground having to manage them.

I did last minute packing this time around as I did not bring any toys at home: partly due to rumours of more irritating customs at the airport and also because my room at home is also already full of things. Sadly things were not peaceful as on the last minute, my aunt asked me to get Lim Chee Guan. The thing was she only sent me a picture of the packaging which stated the brand name but not the exact item that she wanted.

I was very restless at work today as time was tight until my flight and I still had to do some shopping. Luckily today ended relatively early and at about 115pm I could not be bothered and took my leave already. It was raining so heavily so it was a constant adrenaline rush. Thankfully everything was great and I was not late. In the airport, I still had to find a wine that my dad asked. I was lucky to find Guardian to get my Metronidazole gel there. I wanted to get it at Junction 8 but it was the lunch time for the pharmacists. Lucky I did not wait another 20 minutes until the end of the lunch time otherwise definitely I would be late.

Finally I am home now for the holiday I have been waiting for and looking forward to. Since I went to Japan during December holiday, I did not really spend time home so this is like a holiday home after 1 year.

When things go wrong from all sides

Work has been so shit lately and that makes the wait for the trip home this time even more unbearable. I just want to go home and leave everything about work behind.

After a few months of silence and relative peace, suddenly the topic of my project surfaced again. Not only sudden, everything also happened fast and furiously. I had people suddenly emailing and calling me to urgently schedule a meeting to get the project going again and I had people chasing after my reference table. So it is officially that I have re-do this project and the most irritating thing is the fact that my interventions have already been adopted and spread for the use organisation-wide. I got bombarded like shit, I had to re-do, and yet I am considered failed and I have to re-do the whole thing.

Manpower situation at work is also shit and someone made a complaint about empty counter. Honestly I cannot be fucking be bothered about the asshole and I was glad that he asked for a written reply so that was for my HQ to settle. I really hate this kind of self-entitled people. If you think you are so damn good and capable, come and apply work in this company (provided you can be accepted in the first place).

A colleague left to return to the Philippines last week. It was a bitter sweet farewell. As a foreigner, I am quite happy (and envious) that he is able to chase after his other dreams instead of getting stuck here. It is still sad because I have known him since the first day of work here. Though I managed to tahan in front of him, I almost teared on the bus on my way home. I am soft in the heart after all.

During farewell dinner, I had a good chat with staff and ignorance is bliss. Sigh.. now I know how much shit is going on among staff or even with colleagues. I think one thing that I need to learn is that I am not responsible and not in control of every single thing that is happening at work so I should learn not to get too bothered with all of these things. I have enough shit going on for myself.

I went to church for Easter mass today and perhaps the push was partly due to all the shit in my life currently. I do not think that the mass did much good anyway because I was surrounded by other people who drove me mad and I had to keep reminding myself that that church is full of sinners (including myself) so I should not be too upset with the inconsiderate people around.