Doctor Strange

In the world of Marvel superheroes, Doctor Strange stands out as one of the more interesting characters with magic-based superpowers in the midst of all others physical or scientific based superpowers. I am excited when it is going to be made into movies but I am not really into Benedict Cumberbatch. Haha..

My biggest worry was that the magic-based superpowers will appear rather lame on screen with all the CGIs. I think Marvel does pretty well with the fighting CGI scenes. The blend between the magical and physical realms look believable enough and is not too cartoonish. The fights are enjoyable although do not exactly meet my expectations. Considering that this is an introductory movie, perhaps I am expecting too much that there will be more spells and incantations that Doctor Strange uses in the comics. But hey, after all those things are what makes Doctor Strange unique.

Marvel retains all the elements that makes their movies successful so far: quite linear and simplistic story line (not sure if everyone will agree that this is a strength) and the sense of humour. There are a lot of references to current real life situations for the humour such as the mention of Beyonce and the funniest bit about the Wi-Fi password at Kamar-Taj.

One bit that I think lacking is that there is not enough reason to explain why Doctor Strange chooses to be a Sorcerer Supreme instead of having his brilliant life as a surgeon back. After all, he is depicted as being an arrogant and proud man at the beginning. Again, it is an introductory superhero movie so this sort of 'deficiency' is expected. The Ancient One reprimanding Strange for his aloofness and pride strikes a chord with me. I am also a proud person who look down at other people and it is often said that pride is the most difficult to overcome out of the 7 deadly sins. Hence, I cannot fathom why Strange chooses to forgo his surgeon life.

I hate my job. If I have the option to be healthy or to be a sorcerer, I will definitely choose the latter one and get out of my job. But hey, Stephen Strange loves his job! That's another reason for me to question why he chooses to be a sorcerer.

I also notice that the Marvel opening scene for the movie has changed! Usually it is the flipping pages of Marvel comics but now it is scenes from the previous Marvel studios movies!! Yup, that is a nod to how big Marvel movie universe has become and I hope they will continue with their fantastic superheroes movies in many years to come.

14 years later

That day of the year comes again.. 14 years being independent, sacrificing my youth, happiness, and humanity, and what do I get in return? I am becoming more ruthless, selfish, and unfeeling. I doubt that I can ever have a girlfriend, wife, or family. I don't think I can ever love others except for myself.

The only consolation to sustain me is the acknowledgement that I would never become a Catholic if I never left home. It seems that thought is unable to sustain me anymore. I simply cannot be bothered about my life anymore. I have had enough and I really don't mind dying now. No guarantee that I will end up in heaven with the kind of life I live, but I am so sick of my current life. Anyway, I am not being suicidal. I am just prepared and hoping to die, rather than to live. Now that the words from a responsial psalm completely makes sense: 

"Oh that today you would listen to His voice, harden not our hearts."

Yes, I really feel that my heart is hardened now. There is no point living in the past and thinking of 'what if's and 'what could have been's but that is the only thing that can make me going for now.

Today was not as bad as I expected as work was unexpectedly not crowded and my movie kakis suddenly wanted to watch Dr Strange. Usually they are price-sensitive but the pre-holiday mood and the overall slack feeling made them okay to pay almost double of the usual Tuesday rate. Haha.. I shall write about the movie tomorrow. Now my gastric is acting badly and it really reminds me of my hernia episode 2 years ago :(

Another disappointment

After waiting for 2 weeks, I finally got the chance to get more information about my plan B. Yet it turned out to be another disappointment. With no inpatient experience, it is basically out of my reach as I will not have the insight gained from working experience to be able to do the work effectively. Am I disappointed? Well, I feel more cheated than disappointed because there is no mention about inpatient experience in the job advertisement. If it is mentioned, at least I will not even consider this in the first place. I think it is almost a month since the first time the ad was published and it is still being renewed weekly. Hmm.. I am hoping that the post cannot be filled and then they contact me? Lol.. Better to have someone imperfect than noone at all right?

I have found the next one to try. Lol. This time is about safety and quality improvement. At least something that I am quite interested in. However, according to my ex-colleague, statistics knowledge maybe required. I don't know if I should be thick skin to just send my resume to try. I shall think about it over the weekend.

Honestly, this job search really sucks. In the newspapers, it is very common to see reports about job seekers being too picky bla bla bla. In reality, it is even more common to see employers being to picky. Where on earth can you find someone with only 2 years of working experience but in areas A and/or B and/or C? 2 years working at a place is still like an orientation and how do you expect someone to be experienced in so many things.

Since I am most likely stuck in my current condition, I decided to be true to my bitch self today. I have to admit that I am naturally a bitchy person and pretending to be good is just tiring. It is so relaxing today to just blurt out everything to my in-charge. Yes, I am not gonna be the only one to work my ass off. I want everyone to be rostered and hence forced to work their asses off as well. I can't be bothered if there is any negative feelings. Work is work.

Android Final Fantasy

Dissidia is the last Final Fantasy game that I play in console. And that was so many years ago. With the rise of mobile gaming, it is just a matter of time before Final Fantasy joins the bandwagon. I am not interested in port version of the old games while spin off Final Fantasy titles tend to be rather bullshit. Surprisingly, currently there are 3 Final Fantasy games that I am (still) playing. I will just talk briefly about each of them.

1. Final Fantasy Record Keeper

I have been playing this for more than a year. I almost quit at one point but surprisingly, I am still playing it now. The game introduces a new character, Tyro, from a kingdom which keeps paintings of events from various Final Fantasy series to inspire peace and heroism to its citizens. Darkness falls upon the kingdom and the picture from these paintings start to fade. Tyro has to 'go' into the painting to take parts of the various events to restore the paintings. That is the background story.

The gameplay, however, has very little RPG aspect. The focus is on turn-based fights with characters from various Final Fantasy series to be used as the characters. The challenge, however, each character in the fight can only bring 2 skills with them. It is like a 'limit' that makes the game difficult but at the same time, it makes the challenge of the game is the strategising part: which characters to bring and which skills to equip. I personally see the game just to collect the characters while at the same time get strong equipments, play the missions and events, etc. Passing or failing or even skipping the events has no bearings whatsoever to the story. So it is really a casual game for fun.

The RNG for the strong weapons is shit as I keep getting shit and that is the thing that makes me wanna quit at times. However, the game is pretty generous with mythril (which is the currency to draw the random weapons) and I have yet to spend any real money. The game difficulty is quite steep at the high end as even having the maxed out characters and their unique weapons may not guarantee you to beat the strong bosses.

Tyro is mediocre: average on all stats but yet able to equip all weapons and all skills. While he may be easily overshadowed by native FF characters, he carries the most useful skills, Sentinel's Grimoire, which makes him still relevant character. That is one thing that I think the game does well. Tyro is not neglected while they continue to milk from nostalgia of the other FF characters.

2. Final Fantasy Brave Exvius

Final Fantasy Brave Exvius introduces 3 main characters: Rain, Laswell, and Fina. It has a nice CGI render of these characters and I am a sucker of eye-catching graphics. This really feels like an RPG as it includes travelling at the world map, at the dungeons, on top of the battling. Despite the emo faces at the CGI images, these 3 characters are actually big jokers. Their interactions in the game are very funny, ridiculous, and tend to be silly which make the overall feel of the story somewhat light hearted. That's a good job to deviate from the typical emo and brooding FF characters.

The turn-based battle is also more true to typical FF as each characters will get stronger and learn more skills as they level up. Sadly, the game maker seems to be more eager to cash in from the characters from other FF series. Rain, Laswell, and Fina are significantly more useless than the native FF characters and you may end up with a party of native FF characters and completely forget that you are playing a different game altogether. What a waste since they have 3 interesting original characters already.

The progress with the story is rather slow so the gamemaker try to make us busy with side quests which are not relevant to the main story. It gets grindy and repetitive to repeat the same dungeons all over again just to collect x number if items or to defeat x number of enemies.

I have stopped playing this although I have not deleted it from my tablet. At the beginning, I enjoy the dungeon exploration as it really reminds of me of the traditional RPG games in which I can control the characters to move to which direction etc. However, due to the grindy nature, I find it too time consuming. Perhaps I am also getting old and getting shorter attention span that I prefer playing something that I don't need to stare so much on the screen. I feel quite sad for this game because I think it has a lot of potential as an original standalone FF game but yet it falls into the trap of being cash machine milking native FF characters and neglect everything original from this game.

3. Final Fantasy Mobius

Final Fantasy Mobius introduces Wol in the world called Palamecia (no idea why they choose the name of the empire in FF 2). The world is in the verge of destruction by Chaos and Wol goes on to a journey to fulfill the prophecy to be the Warrior of Light to save this world (sounds similar to FF 1).

I am enthralled with this as the graphics are insanely awesome for a mobile game although on the negative side is that it is draining the battery. Although it is an RPG, the focus is more on the fighting and strategising as the story is quite linear and the exploration of the map only involves clicking from one point to the next.

The battle system is confusing at start but once I get the hang of it, it is quite enjoyable. The battle system stems from Final Fantasy job system. There are 3 basic jobs: warrior-type (strength or defense type), mage-type (magic type), and ranger-type (agility or critical damage type) and all the more advanced jobs are based on any one of these. Each job can wield 3 elements and only skills belonging to the elements can be used, rather than the job type i.e if your job can wield fire element, you basically can use all types of fire cards.

The battle is action-based which is interesting at the start but get boring with the same grunting sound effects. That 'auto' function is a blessings as the AI is damn smart. Does it make the game boring? Not really. Because for some of the more difficult battles, controlling Wol manually may still be preferred. Yep, no matter what AI still cannot beat human intelligence.

I honestly got bored of this game quite quickly but recently Mobius becomes my favourite. It is frustrating if you are a completionist because there are so many jobs and so many skill cards but the resources to have them all is very limited. Having said that, there is no necessity to become a completionist. I am still playing with the ranger basic job and I am still doing fine. My cards are mediocre too.

But I am such a sucker for graphics, seriously. Different jobs have different costumes and I like this gimmicks. Lol. Mobius is really crazy in the sense that even for the event scenes, what Wol wears depends on the job that you currently equips. It is that 'personalised' instead of using a standard template. Haha.. Although usually I like magic type of characters, I hate mage jobs here as they all wear mask and I can't see the face. I like ranger best as the clothes are the skimpiest. Haha.. When the game was announced, it created quite a ruckus about how sexy Wol is. Yes, the warrior and ranger clothes are too skimpy and not battle-proof. The warrior wear heavy armors but their back is exposed (silly right?) while the ranger has exposed torso.

Multiplayer mode was introduced about 3 weeks ago and I am impressed even when I lose my connection, when I login back to the game again, I can still go back to the the real-time battle. Usually for internet based multiplayer games, once a player is disconnected, that's it.

That's all from me :) It is pretty clear that currently Mobius is my favourite and I hope the developer can keep it at the right track.

Plan B... start!

The rejection email finally came :( Sigh.. as nice as it is being worded, rejection still hurts. I wish they could have been more honest to just state whether I am rejected because my expected pay is indeed to high, or simply because I suck for the job. Gotta admit that I got my ego bruised and pretty upset about it. Haiz.. But after a good nap, I woke up feeling better.

Lucky I trust my gut feel and I already started my plan B this morning. I thought I could get more information about this first before updating my CV but the person asked for my CV as well. I did it last night and today I finally asked him. I am glad that I got a response for further discussion for me to find out more about the job.

It is pretty obvious that I have lowered my expectations from 'I want to change a job with an increased pay' to 'Never mind to change to something with the same pay'. If I fail again, I think I don't mind finding something else even with a pay cut. I am at my breaking point with my colleagues. Sigh.. Every morning I pray for humility and patience but every day I go home feeling upset and angry. I can't simply continue this any longer. I just want to do something for myself. There is no point working hard for everyone's goal when everyone else is slacking. I am tired being the 20% that contributes to the 80%. I want to be part of the 80% who only does 20% of the work.

30 September is the feast day of my chosen patron saint, Saint Jerome, and I had a good day. I won a car air purifier which absolutely has no use for me as I don't own a car. But hey, considering my usual luck, winning something at a lucky draw is considered something awesome. I am also surprised that I actually feel quite at peace despite not getting the lecturing job I tried for a few weeks ago. They have not informed me anything but oh well, no news means rejection. That is how usually working life works.

I saw a new job posting at JobsDB posted on 30 September and after doing some detective work, it is actually the same ad that I saw at Jobstreet last month: it is for an opening at P&T office at where I am working right now. Looks like this is going to be my next attempt to change job. I spoke about my intention of changing job to my workgroup leader when we went for the international forum this week. She also mentioned about this P&T office so she is my source of information if I am really going to do this. Sadly, even if I apply through 'outside' way, it will eventually be an internal transfer once they realise where I am working now. So perhaps I should just apply through internal way although it is not going to be something easy also as my current boss must agree to release me in the first place. Sigh.. At this point, it is like jumping the gun as I don't even know if the other side wants to take me but I will speak to my boss this coming week.

I went to repair my filling yesterday. It made me rather emo. It dawns upon me that I am not different from let's say, a car. As age catches up, I need my spare parts etc and seriously I don't want to grow old. I just want to die young. My emo-ness also comes from the fact that the affected tooth becomes this way because of the position. So it is like I am born this way and I can't help it no matter how diligent I am with my mouth hygiene.

I went to Bandai and Takara Tomy warehouse sale after my friend sent me tempting pictures. I went to such sale once and after going for this one, I am reminded again why I only went once. Lol.. Seriously I had nothing to buy. No Gundam Wing stuff on sale. When my friend sent me the picture, I saw Saint Seiya Myth Cloth Display Set for $10. Kns!! I bought 2 for $40 each a few months back and last year I missed a sale at Hobby Link Japan for 1200 JPY each. When I went there, it was completely sold out o_0

Anyway September was over and I only spent $50 for my anime/manga stuff. That is the first time it happened since mid-2012 and I am quite proud of it. Hehe :) I hope I can continue the trend although I admit it is going to be tough since at the back of my mind, there are few pending things to buy T_T The spending that I must put a rein on is for food. My food spending for the past few months has been 1.5x of my normal. Obviously I am more concerned about the effects on health than on wallet per se. Haha..

Game over

1 week is up.. my gut feeling is right.. and it is game over for me. It is time for me to wake up from my dream of changing job, accept that I will be stuck here, and prepare for plan B: choose a Masters programme and think of a project to do. Life goes on..

Surprisingly I was not too upset about it. Perhaps because for the last 2 days, I am not in office. Hehe.. I am attending an international forum but it is not overseas :( I am arrowed to do a poster presentation since the doctor in charge had presented the project last year. Anyway the so called 'presentation' session was so disorganised and not like what I expected. But whatever it is, I got to skip work for 2 days and I got 8 CE points so I have nothing to complain. Lol.

I took a picture next to the poster and surprisingly it got liked by almost 10% of my facebook friends. Wow.. I am honestly shocked that people appreciate this kind of thing better than my holiday or my studio photos. Lol. I have to be honest and actually I kinda happy with all the likes. Lol.. Lai lai lai give me more projects so that I can 'shine' this way more.

Haiz.. back to normal work tomorrow.. sianz..

Hobby contradictions

I just spent 7+ hours cleaning my toy display cabinets, dusting my figures, and changing some of the figurines to be displayed. This hobby really makes me confused. When I see the amount I spent and when I see the amount of boxes I have in my room, it makes me very frustrated. When I see the amount of dust (which is a signal that I should be cleaning), I get upset. But when I start cleaning, I kinda enjoy it. Some figures make me think why I bought them in the first place, especially those I choose to keep in their boxes. But when it is time to display them, I am glad I bought them in the first place. Some figures really make me happy and I am glad that I own them.

Despite all that, it is fact that the amount I have spent is astronomical and I am running out of space. I try very hard to cut down this year and it is very hard. I have sort of completed getting old merchandises from the 90s but I still have new pre-orders trickling. This month has been a record as I only spent $50 so far to pre-order 1 figurine. I am so tempted to get the new Clow Card sets but I keep telling myself to wait until next month. At least let October be an accomplishment for me to spend that little. Hopefully in November, the Clow Cards are sold out or my interest will dissipate.

Food is something that I am struggling with recently. Is it because of the stress? Sigh.. I don't know. I know I am supposed to avoid chili, butter, and egg and I have been eating food containing them like noone's business. I looked at one of my photos from last year when my acne was uncontrolled and it serves as a wake up call. I definitely do not want to go back to those days :( Sigh.. but the new McDonald's ebi burger and fish dipper look so appetising. I still have not tried their bacon cheese 'átas' one. And KFC's chicken strips are so addicting just like Kettle's potato chips. My goodness :(

Karma

It has been a frustrating and torturing 3 months. Many times I am tempted to pour out my feelings and thought here but I restrain myself. Now that it is over (for now), I hope I am able to assess and reflect everything with my head in a cooler state.

I always think one cool aspect of my profession is to be a preceptor to nurture future generations of pharmacists. I always want to be one and the chance only came this year when I am no longer interested. I did not exactly have a wonderful experience with the 2 NUS students that I had a few years back so I know this is going to be tough. I was wrong. Those 2 students are considered good compared to the current one I have. In fact, the one that I thought was giving me a hard time and I was also giving a hard time in return 2 days ago still gave me a full marks for her feedback.

Ground rules and expectations were set on the first day but it was just a formality. Bumpy road ahead when the preceptee's expectation is that this is a school whereby lessons will be taught, answers will be given, and just follow my style to get good grades. Sorry but this is a professional training and the stake is much higher than mere grades. I hate to use the term ''spoonfeeding" and ashamedly, I did use it a few times. Preceptee's are responsible for the book knowledge. My role is to help you reach an answer/conclusion based on the theory. It is all about thinking, analysing, and applying knowledge which I cannot proceed if the expectation is for me to give everything. The ultimate goal is to be an independent pharmacist by the profession's standard, not by my standard. My style may be different from others and by simply following what I say, there is no guarantee that other pharmacists will consider it acceptable as they also have different styles. My role is to guide and develop you and not to make a copy cat of myself.

Going through assignments is a nightmare. The questions are supposed to facilitate discussions on particular topics. She is completely missing the point when she is doing it as if doing a school assignment. She will argue that school taught her that way, what is the correct answer, etc. Haiz.. I don't care what school taught you. What I care is what you think about what school has taught you. If you do not want to think when I try to help you connecting the dots, we are going nowhere. If your focus on getting the correct answer, we are going nowhere because in real life, there is no right or wrong answers. Everything has pros and cons and 'answers' always change depending on the situations and patients' conditions. The focus is on concepts and understanding which you can apply in various situations and we can't go there if you are so stuck on getting that 1 bloody question right.

Right from the start, I mentioned that I will not give deadlines as she has to learn to manage her own time and plan her learning. I will only set deadlines when her pace is too slow and we are running out of time. I wait for her to be ready before going through topics so that she can be well prepared but every time she says ready, she is not really ready. So imagine my anger when she said she prefers me to set deadlines. She already takes that much time to be 'ready' and yet still not ready. Imagine if I set deadlines which will be definitely a shorter period of time, definitely she will not be ready! Pui! Next time, your boss will not set deadlines for you. Anyway, on occasions when deadlines were set, she still could not meet them. And then she would say: but you told me to prioritise things. Seriously, fuck it la. Stop blaming others and start taking own responsibility on your own learning.

Feedback is given every week but is often ignored. I am so sick of repeating the same feedback week after week. She may think that I am biased and whatever but that is for her ownself. Other people (who are not her preceptors) can afford to say all the nice things but in the end have the same feedback that I have. I cannot as I have the responsibility to sign you off. To makes things worse, she can't self reflect and always refuses to give her opinions and feedback so no matter what, I don't know how to help. And no, crying does not help. I don't give a shit with you crying. I don't care how much effort you put in, what ultimately counts is the end product that others can see. Even if you think you are already doing your best, if others think you suck, you suck. Sorry but that's the reality of working world and that's what I am preparing for

Many times I wonder if I am at fault. Am I too strict? Am I too fierce? Have I made the whole learning experience so unsafe psychologically for her that she is afraid to speak up? I have taken many students and they all agree that I can be flexible from being super nice and patient all the way to being super strict and fierce depending on the circumstances. This is the first time that I had to be strict/fierce for 90% of the time. Why can't I be nice? I can't imagine if anything good will happen if I am nice when this is what I have and how she behaves with me being strict.. In addition, there are other people who bring her for rotation and they all range from nice to very nice. After a few sessions, even these nice and very nice people grow impatient. In the end, no improvement from her and I get the same feedback. Haiz. I can simply be 'nice' and just follow her wants: just give her the answers and set deadlines but again what's the point? That's now how working life work and for the sake of her future, I should not do those for easier life now. I tried that for P-sales to let her try doing followed by a debrief. It did not work. She did not improve on her basics and simply doing to experience. Again, this is not student attachment opportunity with the purpose of experiencing things. This is a pre-reg training with the ultimate goal to be an independent one. I had to bar her from doing and to get the basics right first. Only that serves as a wake up call but still at the end of the whole rotation, she still cannot do.

I had bad blood with my year 3 preceptor and as I read my old blog posts during that attachment period, I wonder if I have become similar to that evil biatch. Is this karma? Was I also that bad that time to force her to be that crazy towards me?

Anyway I cannot be bothered since others also share the same feedback as me. I don't have anything to lose. The worst that can happen is I don't get any more future students which I honestly don't mind if all their qualities are like this. So please, I am more than happy that she is assigned to others. I am never deemed worthy to get any teaching awards after all. Yeah I am still bitter with how this place treats me and I really hope that I can leave :(

Squandered my chance

I had my second interview on Tuesday and if the decision to hire has been made, I don't think I will secure a good pay offer or if the decision to hire has yet to made, I may have missed my chance to get an offer. I usually trust my gut feel and this time my gut feel after the interview was not positive :( Sigh.. 

I think honesty is a virtue not appreciated in real word. Honestly, I don't even prepare for the second interview. Generic questions such as "What is your aspiration?", "What makes you think you are suitable to be a teacher?" etc are expected. Since I did not make any preparation, I had no model answer and I just answered honestly and be myself. People will think I am dumb to say "I like teaching but I have no teaching experience so I really have no idea if I will make a good teacher.". At the end of the day, I can lie to others but I can never lie to myself. I have to admit that I feel emo (and that's why I can only blog about this now 2 days later) but I am pretty happy and relieved that I am being truthful about myself. Whatever the outcome is, it is just a reflection of myself. If I get offered, it means that others also feel that I have the potential. If I don't get, it means that I really don't have what it takes to be a teacher.

Results will be out in a week and I don't know how I am feeling towards it. I am not really bothered about it since it is not a matter of life or death. Lol. At this point of time, I am honestly more scared to get out of my comfort zone and I rely on God to tell me and guide me to my future. If I don't get the offer or I am offered with a lower pay, it is a sign for me to stay where I am. If I am offered with a pay increase, it is a sign for me to move over. I am more concerned if I get offered with matched pay :( because it means I really have to think and weigh the pros and cons.

It is going to be a loooong 1 week wait