Ups and downs

Things changed so quickly yesterday. When I bought snacks at lunch time, the mini market uncle asked if I was studying here. Hehe.. Maybe the mask helps. Or perhaps my voice is simply like girls voice because in the evening, someone called me as SISTER! Ouch.. Sadly the 'astronaut suit' PPE was not available so I chose blue that I never tried before. I blamed it on the blue PPE because previously in all the time I was in yellow one, I was always a mister. Haha..

It was my first time volunteering again since CB ended so it took quite awhile to adapt to the breathing through N95. It was not as terrible as the very first time for the breathing but my skin is still as sensitive. I have maskne (mask acne) around the cheeks and chin already. Bleah.. I was also not as impatient as previously although ironically, I lost my cool right at the first patient. Lol. Other than him, I was ok for the rest yesterday. I lost my cool because this person kept cutting me, instead of letting me finish first, even after I said to wait until I finished then I would address his concern. He kept asking about the insulin needles when I already said later I would go back in the clinic and bring the needles for him. I was even sarcastic, "I am out here and the needles are inside. They will not magically appear here." before I went in to look for the needles.

Today is the last day of the Novena in honour of Assumption of Mary. Although I started on it grudgingly because I find it rather sian having to follow daily mass, some homilies for this week are quite relevant for me. The most memorable one is on how seeing Christ in others. It is a reminder for me during volunteering to not just focus on the 'clearing crowd' part. I know I am there for my professional role but I am also there to volunteer so I should not forget about the volunteerism spirit. Perhaps this helped me to be calmer yesterday until got mistaken as a sister (which is how we call nurses) for the care and concern. Lol... Or perhaps it was because the weather was cooler and it also had been quite sometime since my last duty so I was not so agitated.

My mum and younger sister received their baptism yesterday morning. Sadly, the family whatsapp group turned 180 degrees south in the evening as a cousin of mine delivered her baby prematurely. The baby only survived for a few hours. I have been tempted to leave the group since last week and now the push is getting stronger. For no reason, I am quite pissed with the congratulatory messages when it was already said that the baby was premature. Someone asked the weight and the baby was only 700gr as she was still in the 2nd trimester. I have no children but I know usual birth weight is around 3kg. These people who said 'congratulations' are mothers themselves. Either they did not read or they could not be bothered or what.

At the start of this month, I bought Aladdin 'Group Hug' figurine from Enesco from a dodgy website (www.shop4sg.com). I never saw this website before and its facebook page is full of stupid memes, instead of looking like a proper shop. But since its price is the cheapest (SGD 93 with free shipping vs elsewhere is all above USD 100), I decided to buy after checking that their address can at least be googled. Haha.. They accept PayPal so if it turns out to be a scam, at least I am protected.

The shop is legit and I received the item earlier this week but they sent me a damaged item. Sigh.. On the bright side, at least their live chat is responsive but that is the only good words I have. I was only given the options of 25% partial refund or return for full refund. The person LIED that there was no replacement stock. When I told her that the website still showed available stock, she said that the stock is not in the warehouse so she cannot arrange a replacement. Fuck! Is that even my problem? That is the shop problem. Really a stupid reason. The packaging box came super crushed and I could not re-use it to ship back. With the COVID, there is no way I am going to take all the trouble to ship just for a refund. I will be in worse state than before I even bought this: I will be back to square one (have my money and no item) but spend extra hassle to arrange for return shipping. I made the correct choice to make this purchase as guest since there is no way I will buy from this website again.

Miserable weekend

I successfully did not order lunch over this weekend but I feel miserable. As it was my first time not ordering delivery on weekends, I just find out that most of the eateries at Midview City are closed on Sundays. To avoid boredom, my plan is to have bit more 'extravagant' for lunch on weekends even if I am still buying them from the same place as weekdays lunch. Looks like it is not going to happen. In the hawker center, only Thai and Indian food stalls are open. I initially wanted to have Shan Cheng for lunch but it is also not open on Sundays. So there goes my plan of having something plus fried dumplings for weekends. It seems I can only do that on Saturdays as what I did yesterday. Even more shocking is the nearby mini mart is also not open on Sundays. Sigh.. I have enough coins and I was craving for a cold drinks just now. Aaargh...

While my wish is granted to save on money and calories, I feel life is meaningless this way. Haiz... Patience patience... 5kg more and that's it..

Diet frustration

It is so frustrating when you already set your mind on something but your body simply does not allow you to do that. Starting this week, my goal is to cut down on the unnecessary snack and bottled milk tea as I am running out of ideas on what to do to continue with my weight loss. Last weekend I only bought 2 bottles of milk tea with the intention of at least halving my daily intake to alternate day. Well it was partly because of the guilt of failing to resist the temptation of potato chips. I am also restricting the potato chips I buy from the mini mart near my place to only when I have enough leftover coins from lunch. This whole week I have been feeling slightly giddy in the morning and after work which make me suspect that I am going hypoglycaemic. My nap was just disrupted earlier since I was so hungry and I decided to skip the diet for tonight.

Since I have to withdraw money for my rental payment, I decided to do it today and grab something from the bakery nearby. There were only leftover breads so I only bought 1 and then I bought potato chips from the mini mart. Haiz...I don't know if these things are indeed better than the original temptation to just order delivery. Bleah... Please just let me lose the final 5kg and I can get over and done with all these self-inflicted torture.

I decided to take a break from watching dramas for now and I want to focus on creating photobooks for the 7 holidays that I have not done so. It is not easy for my eyes too and at most I can only do 3 pages a day. Maybe my giddiness is also due to eye strain? I don't know.. The last drama I finished over the National Day weekend is called Who Are You. It is a remake of a Korean drama with the same title. I think the theme of twins swapping place is not that original but somehow I am pretty hooked with this that I wanted to complete the 18 episodes as quick as possible. Haha.. So far I am able to resist picking up new titles and I have only been doing photobooks this week.

With the National Day over, there is no more public holiday until Christmas. With the lockdown still going on, I am emo when I realise that I have not even used finish the leave balance from last week. If I do not use finish them by this year, they will go wasted. I still have not touched compassionate leave (3 days) for my dad's death as I initially plan to fly home and use the leave. If I still cannot travel by Christmas, these 3 days are wasted too.

Meanwhile I will be back to frustration over diet again this coming weekend as I aim not to order delivery for lunch even on the weekends. Hehe.. yeah it is time to just eat simply from hawker centre everyday. I also will stop going to FairPrice to get fruits since my diet cereal is expiring in November so I should start finishing them first before returning to my banana and red dragonfruits.

Old records

I am reminded of my later father again. My Gundam Wing comics have been sitting on top of a box since I finished reading them and I finally decided to check my plastic container box where the other Gundam Wing comics are to see if I had space. They are now well protected in the box at the expense of the DVDs of Japanese dramas and movies. Aaah.. what a trip down the memory lane as these DVDs were from more than a decade old. I bought them to kill time during the half a year break between the end of JC and the start of university.

The most surprising finding is the first M1 contract when I started my post-paid number. It was such a coincidence that the date was 02/08/08, exactly 12 years ago, although I did not blog about it on the same date. With the contract, I got a $0 Sony Ericsson K660i which I gave to my father. I remembered signing this contract at Changi Airport while waiting for my dad and sister to take the plane back home. They got worried as I was taking too long and I spent more than half an hour to choose a 'nice' number haha.. Sigh.. how sad to think that my dad who still had fighting and living spirit had passed away while myself who has been wanting to die is still forced to live. Anyway, despite the 'sentimental' value whatsoever, I still threw away the papers hahaha...

Another surprise from that box is the annual health screening slips from NUS. Haha.. So it is not my delusion that I was not as fat as now a decade ago. Lol. The journey for weight loss continues as I started to exercise again since I stopped around a month ago because of the hernia scare. Everything feels good for today. Food-wise, I just realised that Deliveroo quietly increased minimum order fee to $12. The usual Thai food that I order is just nice at $10.80 (when the previous minimum order fee was $10). While the $1.20 is small, it is not worth forcing the extra calories by ordering something extra to meet the minimum. Looks like I have to start buying from hawker center daily now hehe.. Or perhaps I can start by cutting down the Deliveroo to once a week instead of every weekend. Stupid Deliveroo because in the end I will just order less frequently from them and they will be collecting less fees.

At least now I am back to these numbers, thanks to COVID

I am still emo about my laptop and I am still waiting until the uncle comes tonight. I hope he does not come at 1am again like in April. I ran Dell diagnostics and it did not give the same error message like previously when the HDD was dead. So likely this time the Windows is the issue. Haiz.. I wonder if I should invest in a Windows installation CD or create an installation file in a thumbdrive. Previously I hate myself for never be bothered about creating system restore point. Now there are 2 (from a week ago and from two weeks ago) and yet even after successful back up in the Advanced Troubleshooting, I still cannot go back to Windows upon restarting. Same thing with the Reset this PC. Bleah... Previously during the HDD death, the reset was not successful.

Sad how my living spirit is determined by the life of my laptop. Without laptop, I simply have nothing to do so what is the point of living. Bleah.. That's why I keep saying that I am satisfied with my life already and I don't know what I still want to do anymore that I do not see any value of living with no more good things that I aspire and only bad things that happen.

Disney Enchanting Collection (Enesco): Mischievous Thief (Abu)

This Abu figurine is from Enesco's Disney Enchanting Collection. It is quite small at less than 9cm (until the top of Abu's head) or around 10.5cm (until the top of the magic lamp). The box size is 14.5cm (L) x 18.5cm (H) x 8.5cm (W) with quality as bad as Jasmine and Aladdin's figurine. Considering its size, I think this is quite expensive at USD 33.80 (SGD 48.52).

Sorry Abu but I really think your face is ugly even in the cartoon

It is a miracle that his tail arrived intact with such little contact at the attachment with the body

This figurine is quite slim with its depth

Instead of showing the details of the lamp, these pictures are highlighting more of the poor paint job

I took this photo upside down and rotated it because I was worried of breaking Abu's tail if I placed it the other way around

I usually space apart the dates of my posts since I dislike how same date posts look on the blog. Thanks to my stupid laptop, I am blogging using my work laptop and the photos are from thumbdrive so I just want to complete this as soon as possible and keep the thumbdrive. Wow... so 5 posts today and this is the last. Good night.

Disney Enchanting Collection (Enesco): A Whole New World (Jasmine and Aladdin)

This is a follow up post after 2 years. Lol. Previously my whole order went missing and I got a refund. I re-ordered in July 2018 but Jafar was not available so I only got this and Abu. Sadly this arrived broken and that was the reason why I did not bother to mention about this anymore. For that, I got a full refund or else this would cost me USD 87.69.

I know Enesco from Jim Shore collections and thus I was quite excited with this Disney Enchanting Collection. Sadly, Enesco is just a distributor or something because the quality of this Enchanting Collection is so far worse than Jim Shore collections. Right from the packaging, the box is thin and flimsy. It is plain and only has a sticker to label the content of the box. The styrofoam is so fragile and flakes off so easily that taking out and placing back inside the box is challenging. The worst is yet to come: the orientation of the figurine inside the box is not upright according to the box orientation o_0 The box has to be rotated 90 degrees (i.e. the lid is sideways) so that the figurine inside is standing up. The figurine itself is lacklustre with shoddy paint jobs and glitters which are coming off.

The design is so similar to previous figurines (such as WDCC and Disney Traditions) which is quite boring but unavoidable since A Whole New World is the only scene in which Jasmine and Aladdin (in Prince Ali outfit) are together. With the similar design, it is not a surprise that this one also shares the same fate of arriving with a broken tassel too. Not to mention the box orientation issue earlier which I am sure contributed to how the tassel ended up damaged. Haiz.. I did not write in previous post but even the WDCC has one broken tassel which I only realised many years after as the crack line is so fine.

The box measures 26.5cm (L) x 28.5cm (H) x 22.5cm (W) and the figure is 21.5cm tall.

The packaging is simply a blue box with a sticker -_-"

The broken tassel at the back :(

The sculpts for the face is pretty but Aladdin looks like having sore eyes

Jasmine is pretty

From this angle, the sore eyes look even worse

The following pictures are to show the lousy quality more obviously.

Shoddy paint job on Jasmine's pants

Shoddy paint job is so apparent on Aladdin's shoulder. Gosh someone please give him eyedrops!

They are lazy to design Carpet and just add glitters which turn out to be an epic fail because they are flaking off

The funny thing about the broken tassel is a protruding wire. Naturally I thought the wire is supposed to go in to the part where it breaks so I could avoid gluing. Strangely, there is no 'hole' for the wire to go in. I never fix this part as I have no space to display this. I think it will break again if I keep it in the box after gluing. Anyway, I think I will cut off the wire when I need to glue it since the wire is preventing complete contact of the broken surfaces.

If you notice, I never took a photo to put all 3 'A Whole New World' figurines side by side. It is not that I hate this figurine. I am simply running out of space. I do not even have a space to put all 3 together to take a photo.

Schmid Aladdin figurine

I have never heard of Schmid brand before but it seems to have a quite long history in porcelain industry. I came across of this figurine while searching for Aladdin 20th Anniversary figurine by Costa Alavezos that I missed buying and never come across since then. That was in 2013 but I only bought this Schmid figurine in 2018. Honestly, the face is ugly. The reason for finally buying this was because I bought other Aladdin porcelain figurines during my Japan trip in September 2018. Perhaps after that I sort of could tolerate ugly faces. Haha...

I think these are handpainted because the images online are not identical. I do not know when this was produced but there seems to be a never ending listing in eBay. I see some listings have more acceptable faces than mine. Lol. Anyway I bought 2 of this since the shipping fee (USD 19.08) was double of the price of the figurine itself (USD 9.50). So in total I paid USD 38.08 (SGD 53.50) for two. The box measures 13.2cm (L) x 19cm (H) x 9.3cm (W) and the figurine itself is around 18cm.

The print quality of the images and text on the box is so bad that perhaps these are not originals? I don't know..

Aladdin in one of his signature poses (the other is hands folded across the chest)

The paint job is actually pretty good. Just that for this piece, the eyeballs are too 'far' out

A random basket which is definitely to ensure that the figurine is stable

Another mark of 'uniqueness' of each figurine, the 'hole' on the foot always looks different in various photos I see on eBay.

Although I have 2, I am too lazy to take both for a side by side comparison. 

'Mysterious' Aladdin porcelain figurine

I say this is mysterious because I really cannot find any information about this figurine. I own it without its original packaging so the only information I have that this was from Tokyo Disneyland according to the marking at the base of the figurine, I am unable to find any other information or picture of this item online. To make it even more mysterious, I cannot even remember if I bought this online or I found this at Mandarake when I visited Tokyo. Without its original box, it is unlikely that I bought this online. However, if I found this in person, it is quite peculiar that I did not write anything about this earlier. With that, I cannot remember how much I bought this for and the only information I can share about this is the height of around 13 cm.

This figurine does not age well and it has a lot of yellow discolouration. That did not stop me from buying since Aladdin merchandises are rare after all. Hehe.. Picture time.

The yellowing on Genie's smoke

Yellow and white discolourations on Genie :(

The face sculpt is actually not too horrible

Aging signs are also visible on Aladdin's skin and hair

There is no mention of even the year

Again???

Just when I thought my mood is getting better and I am recovering from work stuff last week, it is my personal life that turns shitty this week. I am happy with my savings on June and I feel quite emo that I cannot replicate that for July. Things will not be better for August as there are so many things that I want to buy already.

Singapore Mint just sent a mailer this week and I will definitely get the Mickey Loves Singapore medallions. I am on the fence for the Disney Year of the Mouse 2020 coins from Niue. When I checked online, I found that New Zealand Mint is selling them cheaper because of its free international delivery fee. The 'Good Fortune' was already low stock two days ago. I wanted to check my current coin collections to decide if it is going to be worth buying since there are four. I did that yesterday and I made my mind to buy since I can earn money back but year 2020 and the Chinese New Year design with Mickey and Minnie will not happen again. This morning it already went out of stock and there is no where else I can buy it with free shipping. Bleah..

My sister sent me a random message about some Aladdin figures from Enesco. Although there is no Aladdin in the photo she sent me, I decided to have itchy finger and kaypoh online. I found there is one Aladdin figure (Group Hug) that was out last year that I was not aware of. Of course I will buy it but I am waiting for tomorrow in order to meet credit card minimum spending for August. As I was googling, another figure caught my attention. I had a feeling that I bought it before but I could not remember. Yep.. I have too many things already. So I dug my eBay history, my blog posts and my room and yes I already had it. It has been so long since I took photos and wrote about toys so I decided to do that this morning.

Here comes the bad news. My laptop was working fine so far and there was no slowness whatsoever. After transferring the photos, I saw that Avast required an update. After restarting after the update, my laptop just died. Aaaargh!!! I think the SSD died since the reset as well as restore from the Advanced Troubleshooting were successful but upon restarting, the laptop will just keep on going to Automatic Repair. This shit just happened 3 months ago. Either I got a shitty SSD or my laptop is really shit that it keeps killing HDD and SSD. This SSD is on a 1 year warranty so I am waiting for the person that I got it from to reply. Haiz.. He was last online at 730am and I am still waiting for any reply.

This really screws up my long weekend. I thought I would be having fun editing photos and writing about my toys...

Need to stop but cannot stop

One and a half month ago, I thought completing a series in 3 days would be the fastest I can do. After all, that series is about school and comedy which are the combination of themes that I like. On Saturday, I broke the record with completing another series in 2 days. I am quite surprised that I was quite hooked with the mystery and adventure theme. The dystopian setting is not unique or new but I really enjoy the plot twists and mind games that happen even until the last episode. Well this was broken on Sunday when I finished another series in 1 day. Although this series only has 8 episodes, they are an hour each which is almost the same to 12-episode series with 45 minutes per episode.

The series is not available in Youtube so I watched it at kissasian. Initially my intention of rushing was because I think I cannot access the streaming website using my work laptop. So if I had to continue it today, I would not be able to watch it during lunch time. End up I was not rushing but I was simply hooked. It feels like a dejavu because the theme is so similar to the series I completed 1.5 weeks ago. The previous one is about reincarnation and the reincarnated version of the characters are still somehow related to the families of their past selves and towards the end, they are trying to find out and find closure to what happened with their past selves. The series I just finished yesterday is about a spirit who cannot be reincarnated and can only reincarnate if he knows what caused his death. He meets a boy who can see spirit and eventually helps him to find out and find closure.

I completed the series within a day despite a 2 hour break when my friend helped me to transfer my toy box to my storage area. I was not expecting that he would be driving somewhere near my place yesterday hehe.. The box for Tsume Cancer Deathmask is too big even for the car boot. It had to be squashed a bit but I had no other choice. If I were to grab or book a taxi, perhaps the car boots also could not fit. With this, my extra storage space is officially full. Sigh.. I have to rent additional space when Tsume Aquarius and Prime 1 Ikki arrive. I hope they will be delayed because of COVID. Huhuhu... This love-hate relationship with collecting toys is always ongoing. I am excited to buy but then emo when they arrive because I am homeless and only have limited storage space. But that will not stop me from buying again and so on.

I think I have to try restarting my exercise again tomorrow to prevent the inertia and laziness from growing even bigger. I need to get my discipline back with diet too as now I am eating potato chips almost daily sigh.. With a limitation of going out once a week, I think I will not sacrifice bubble tea but I have to stop the potato chips part.

Oh ya I just went for my dental cleaning on Saturday and discovered another benefit of working from home arrangement. I have less staining because I drink more water and less tea or coffee. Hehe.. Aih.. that reminds me of the bottled milk teas that nowadays I regularly drink. I should stop these as well :(