Good Morning Tuesday

I woke this morning feeling not so great, looking at the days ahead of me just felt really bleak, like there was nothing but an endless repeat of the same thing, so the mood was pretty terrible.

Headed into the office and tried to get work done, but really didn't have any mood or motivation to do anything, so after barely updating the drawings, I found myself just surfing the internet and watching some videos that I really had no interest in, I needed sound because the office was so quiet, there was no one but me and that silence was deafening, it made me think about a lot of things, which made me really depress.

Didn't have too much of an appetite, so I ended up getting 2 sandwiches from the nearby foodcourt and a madeleine before I went to attend a job interview that a recruitment agency had set up for me.

The role was for an Events and Exhibition Designer, which I thought sounded like a fun job that I could tackle, because I am beginning to get tired of doing Interior Design, but as I was talking to the interviewer, who was the boss of that company, he was asking me a bunch of questions related to my software skills and I slowly started to realize I was definitely not the right person for the job.

Instead of asking about skills that I am strong at, which is SketchUp, he was asking me about Photoshop, which I know how to use, but only at the base level, then he started asking about my graphic design skills, which I have none of. The talk about how the job will be very different from what I am doing was also definitely something that made me lose interest in the role immediately, such as the expectation to churn out drawings within 2-3 days when I will usually take 1 - 2 weeks as an Interior Designer, I honestly just wanted to end the interview mid-way through because I knew right then that I was not an ideal candidate and didn't want to waste the guy's time anymore, but we sort of powered through it and by the end, he asked me if I had any questions, to which I just told him I didn't, which should be pretty clear that I am really not interested in the role anymore.

It was nice to have imagined I could have switched to a different company and be surrounded with more colleagues and command a slightly higher pay, but I think expectation definitely didn't match reality, now I really have nothing much to look forward to anymore.

Once the meeting was over, I was once again reminded of how alone I was in the office, there was no one else there, it was just me, the sound of the air-conditioner running, and construction noise from outside. I just sat there, on my desk and started feeling really empty, I really had zero motivation to do anything, so I got up and started pacing around the office and was actively just talking to myself out loud, my boss texted me at one point and ask me how I was holding up, because he knew I had visited the doctor over the weekend for anti-depressant pills, so I told him I probably needed to go take a walk because I wasn't doing too well mentally, to which he agreed and urged me to.

I stepped out of the office, and I remember it was drizzling,, I headed over to the mall nearby because I really needed to be surrounded by people, and when I headed in and heard all the sounds of life, children playing, customers chatting, people walking around, the sound of movie trailers playing from the large TV in the atrium, I just immediately felt better, it's like all that noise just started filled up and drowned out this deafening silence in my head. 

I did more walking, visited some shops to get some essential items I needed, and then got myself a drink from coffee bean and just chilled at the cafe and started people watching, all that noise just made me feel sane, I had planned to just zone out at the cafe for an hour before heading back to the office, but after about 30 minutes, I think I had enough zoning and went back, I was in a much better headspace after that.

Texted a friend and asked if he was free and would like to meet for dinner, he was down for it, so I ended up meeting him over an ION Orchard, whilst I was there, I decided to pop by the old furniture store I had worked at and I found my ex-colleague on duty today, caught up with him and kinda walked around the showroom to see how everything looked, it was pretty nice and I felt really energized after that, I will be meeting him again next week with my ex-Manager for a meal, so that's something to look forward to.

My friend arrives like 10 minutes later and we headed to get our dinner. 

Had a really good catch up over a meal at Itacho Sushi, shared with him about what has been happening with me, opened up about some things I hadn't really shared with others before and because he had similar experiences with me, it was pretty helpful, there was no judgement, it was just listening and offering advise, but not shoving those advice down my throat and I think just the fact that I was able to open up and have a conversation where I don't have to lie about certain things, it just felt freeing.

Continued chatting over Matcha at Hvala, it was pretty good.

It was a really great catch up and definitely something I had needed, catching up with people I have known for a long time and talking to them is very different from talking to ones that I have matched on a dating app, these long time ones feels more consistent because I have known them organically in real life and stayed friends throughout the years, the ones from those dating apps are not, and my mistake was putting too much reliance on the connections I had made on the dating app for my socializing needs, aka that friend that I had met 2 weekends ago to help with his home furniture layout.

He has decided to just stop replying to my messages since last Thursday when I really needed it the most, I have a feeling he has since archived my chat or something because not only are my last few messages not replied to, they have not even been read, and I have been sending some over the weekend to try and illicit a respond, all the same, not even read, meaning he didn't even bother opening the chat. Tried reaching out on Instagram by replying to some of his stories that involved him working on his home because I was the one who helped him with the furniture layout after all, also did not bother to reply to me as well.

To be fair to him, I have only really known him for a few weeks, and I was texting him a lot of  during those few weeks, like 10 messages back and forth on the daily, and they are like pretty chunky text messages of just random stuff because I really needed to keep my head distracted, and those chats did help, so for it to suddenly stop honestly does not surprise me because I have been sapping his energy to refuel myself. Do hope he hasn't decided to completely cut  me out because I really could use more friends in my life.

Depressive Sunday... not as bad as Friday

Sunday was still a relatively tough day to sit through, but it wasn't as bad as Saturday and definitely did not hit the same kind of low as Friday evening.

I had zero appetite the entire day, so I skipped my morning coffee and only had water in the morning, I didn't eat breakfast and lunch, felt lethargic the whole day and just really down in general, I would  return back to normalcy every once in a while and my mood will stabilize, so I did end up having enough appetite during that period of normalcy to eat a slice of Hershey's Chocolate Pie.  

I guess being physically sick also didn't help because of my cough, block nose and jaw ache. Saw a doctor at the private clinic near my place to get medication for it, the total bill came up to $98, which is nuts because the Polyclinic bill from Saturday's trip was only $40, and that was along with like 60 anti-depressant pills, which I am not planning to touch because the side effects of that pill isn't something I want to go through. There is a very valid reason why most people would go to the Polyclinic instead of Private Clinics, but I was honestly too lazy to take a bus over and spend an hour there, so I paid more and managed to see the doctor, get my medication and leave within 20 minutes. 

Came back home from the clinic, was in and out of that depressive state, but I think I did notice that I was able to snap out of it a lot quicker now, I don't stay too depress for too long anymore, it never did hit quite as bad as Friday evening. 

The evening was spend at a restaurant with my family to celebrate Father's day, being outside and with family definitely helped take my mind off whatever is going on internally, my baby nephew was also a great source of entertainment during that dinner period, along with my Sister's dog, although a lot of attention was definitely on the human child. 

Happy to say when I got back home, I think my mood did stabilize a lot more, it didn't hit as hard anymore and I would like to think that it is because I just really needed time to process everything. The reason why it hit so hard on Friday was because that was the day right after I confessed to that person, and that person left me on read like the inconsiderate fuck they are...

Red Flag Alert! 

... and I had way too much time to just keep thinking about it on Friday evening because I had nothing else to look forward to and think about for the weekend.

Anyways, it's Monday morning now, I will be visiting the Therapist today, I think I will be going in with a clear mind and should be able to talk to her a lot more coherently about what is going on, we might end up focusing more on my career stuff than that stupid red flag fuck who had been causing me all the emotional turmoil, because I think that red flag fuck is a trigger point, but I already had a lot of underlying issues that I had to deal with before that.

Update : After meeting the Therapist.

It was a pretty good session, I was able to talk freely to the Therapist about what I was going through and because I had really done a lot of introspection through blogging about my experience, she told me I was actually extremely self aware about everything that is happening to me.

She made an assessment based on what she noticed and told me I probably just have an Anxious Personality trait and not so much depression, a personality trait which could potentially lead to a disorder if I don't keep it in check, and she told me what I am feeling, this sadness, is normal, especially because it was the first time I was giving dating a chance and I ended up investing way too much emotion into it due to 35 years of pent up excitement from being single, which is also something I am aware of. She was telling me a lot of things that I am already aware of, so there really wasn't too much of an Eureka moment for me, but to blabber and talk about my feelings and the experience I had with the dating app, which I had a lot to say because I had to explain the parties involved, the lead up to my sadness, it was A LOT of building to have her see the full picture, and she did, and she expressed that aside from my Anxious Personality, the other party is also, really, a selfish piece of shit, well she used the word selfish, I just added in the piece of shit at the back to really drive my point across.

I had really hoped we could have extended the therapy for an hour or 2 longer to be honest, I really had so much I wanted to talk about, there was just so much background I had to build-up, but then as I was about to introduce another person into my experience, she told me I only had 5 minutes left and we couldn't stay longer because someone else had booked the room we were using, which was a bummer.

Next session is in 2 weeks, hopefully I will be in a much better space by then, appetite has returned and I am feeling quite lethargic, almost feel like crashing out because of bad sleep and the lack of proper meals over the weekend.

My boss actually gave me the day off, but I still decided to come back to the office anyway because going home and just being in my room the whole day won't help me a lot. The plan was to get some work done, but sadly, I don't have the attention span to do that now.

Depression. Legit.

I have been going through episodes of sadness over the past 2 months, and I knew I had developed a mild form of depression for a while now, but last night, I actually fell into an extremely depressive state where I was truly and completely overwhelmed with this sense of melancholia. It was sadness at a level I had never experienced before.

There has been this lingering sadness in me for a while now, one that started from after I had been socially isolating myself, and by that I mean a lack of socializing at work, because I am alone in the office half the time, and a lack of socializing on my off days because I haven't been meeting up with friends to fill up that need to socialize. I tried to fill that void by meeting new people through a dating app and it didn't really work all that well, they all came and went, the first few matches and dates, although didn't go well, didn't affect me too much, that was until I met someone that I ended up investing too much emotions into, and when nothing came to fruition between us, it send me into a downward spiral. 

This ended up worsening my already existing mild depression from the lack of socialising, and during yesterdays' episode,  I actually ended up getting very worried about what I would have done to myself. Thankfully I did mange to get out of it, but because this feeling comes and goes, I know that feeling will return again, so I decided I was going to visit a General Practitioner today to get a referral letter to actually see a Mental Health specialist. 

I had 2 options this morning, I could either go to the private clinic near my house, or I could book an appointment with the nearest Polyclinic. My initial plan was to go to the private clinic because it was within walking distance to place and I was pretty sure I could get connected to a Mental Health Specialist sooner compared to the Polyclinic route. 

I had a meeting with a client in the afternoon, so visiting the one near my place made the most sense, I could just walk over, have a quick chat with the GP, share my feelings and what I am going through and I guess they will direct me to a specialist to talk to.

I was experiencing the lows of my depression, so I really really needed to talk to the GP to at least be able to share what I am currently going through, however, when I finally reached the clinic, I see a sign that had been placed at the main door..

"No doctors in today."

... I stood outside the clinic for a while because it had just opened then, I thought maybe that was placed there to stop people from coming into the clinic before opening hours, but I was not feeling very patient and opened the door, only to be greeted by the staff who confirmed that there were indeed no doctors today. When you are depress and you finally take the steps to go seek help, being told that there was no doctor in the clinic, a clinic I had visited multiple times with the doctors always available, felt like the universe is taking a knife and just pressing it against my wrist.

I was so upset, I remembered how helpless I had felt last night and I knew I really needed to seek professional help, so I quickly went to the NUHS app and booked the earliest appointment at Bukit Batok Polyclinic. I had to rush back home, take a quick shower (literally 20 minutes after I had just taken my morning shower, because of how sweaty I was), grabbed everything I needed for my afternoon meeting with the client later and just rushed over to the Polyclinic. I had booked the 9.50am slot but I was a bit late because the stupid bus was late, I sped walk into the Polyclinic as soon as I reached the bus stop, scanned my IC and then proceeded to wait at the waiting area for my turn.

I went to get Soymilk from the Mr Bean in the Polyclinic, 2 packet of Soymilk for $3, the first packet I had ended up being a curdled mess, but the staff was very nice and ask me to get a new one from the fridge, so I did and I drank my Matcha Soy Milk while waiting for my turn to be called. I hadn't had anything to drink at that point because I had no time. 30 minutes later, my turn finally came and I headed in to the consultation room.

The doctor greeted me as I stepped into the room and I started off by I was in for a sore throat I had been having(was actually a cough but I mixed it up) , but then immediately shared with her my main reason for going down, and that was my intention to get a referral letter to see a Mental Health Specialist because I suspect I have depression. 

She was really nice and immediately started asking me how I was feeling, so I told her how I had been feeling really sad, what had been going on in my life recently and also what I think the trigger point for the episode I had last night was, I was on the verge of tearing up a few times because this was the first time I had verbalise what I was going through to someone, this emotional turmoil I have been suffering in silence since May that had gotten significantly worst, she got me to fill up a quick questionnaire and I ended up scoring a "mild depression"

She went ahead and prescribed me some lozenges for my sore throat (which is really a cough so that lozenges is redundant), and then 6 weeks worth of anti-depressant medication called Fluoxetine, she then highlighted to me that the anti-depressant medication has certain side effects, one of which is the the increase in having suicidal thoughts, but then she told me it takes the medication 6 weeks to be fully effective and that the first 2 weeks, I just have to power through it.

2 weeks? I was almost having a mental breakdown last night, and I am suppose to go through that for 2 weeks?  I went to reddit to check how other people's experience with that medication was like and it was really bad, a lot bad panic attacks for the first 2 weeks - 1 month, they became more depress, the suicidal thoughts became louder and it was all kinds of fucked up. I am already fucked up as it is, I don't want to have to endure 2 weeks of what is potentially worst before it gets better.

I'm not touching those pills for now, I have been having dark thoughts during the more severe episodes, but I never had plans to follow through with any of them, so the last thing I need are pills that will actually make me want to follow through with those thoughts.

She told me she can help me arrange for an appointment with a Mental Health Specialist, but it's going to take 6 weeks. That means if I take the medication, I might not make it before the appointment.

Anyways, after that visit, I still had some time left, so I decided to head over to my Sister's place to wait until my appointment with my client started, I didn't want to wait at the nearby mall where my client lived because that is where I had my first meet up/date with the person who is partly responsible for causing me to feel the way I am feeling right now, if I wait at that mall, it will only be triggering me even more. 

When I was at my Sister's place, I told her about my anti-depressant medications and then asked her if she could introduce her therapist to me because I really needed to talk to someone about what I am feeling. She was worried and I really didn't get into detail about why I am feeling the way I am, I just told her it was just life in general and also because of my recent attempt at trying online dating, which got me feeling really emotional, she explained to me how therapy had worked very well for her, so it made me feel better knowing that there is at least something I can do.

My stay at her place wasn't long, I really just wanted to share about my depression with her and then get her therapist contact. 

I then went for the appointment, and I was feeling relatively fine at first, I was talking to the client with my boss, my role was more active at the initial design discussion, then my boss took over during the quotation discussion. As I was sitting at the table, my mind started drifting and I started to think about where I was, and I was reminded of that person again because the place where we first met last month, IKEA Alexandra, was just across the street, and the mall where we had our first and only meal was literally a 2 minute walk away from where the client was staying at. It brought on this feeling of sadness, and as I am typing this out, I am engulfed by it again. 

I really wanted to get the meeting over and done with, and when we were finally done, I opened up to my boss and told him I had visited a Polyclinic earlier this morning and the reason why, he was quite surprise and also worried for me, so when we were in his car, I kinda just told him I had been feeling depress because of how isolated I have been feeling and then also because of some other personal stuff, and he jokingly ask me if it is because of relationship stuff, if I had broken up, I then told him we didn't even manage to get together, to which he immediately switched topic so as not to trigger me. 

He dropped me off at Orchard and I immediately thought of Laderach Chocolate, which I had gotten a few weeks back when my boss also dropped me off at Orchard after meeting that very same client, back then, I was still on contact with that person and they had been the one who introduced me to Laderach,  but I will admit, back then, communication between us was already pretty sporadic, and I was going through a period of sadness at that time as well, but it isn't as strong as the sadness now. I knew I wasn't going to Laderach to get any chocolate today that's for fucking sure. I walked around Orchard a little but it was really way too crowded for my comfort, so I left after a while.

It's currently 6.12pm as I type this sentence out, that overwhelming sense of melancholia I had felt yesterday happened around 7pm, I am not sure if that feeling is triggered by the timing, but I am definitely feeling a lot more depress right now, especially after writing out this post about how down I was feeling. Everything is triggering me right now. 

Oh, I also messaged the therapist in the middle of my meeting with the client and she was able to slot me in for Monday morning, so I will be talking to her very soon, I hope talking about all of this to someone and letting it all out will help, I will probably start crying during that chat because I already felt like it when I was sharing what I have been feeling with the Polyclinic GP, my Sister and my Boss. I hate this feeling so much! 

A charitable Saturday...

Visited a friend who had recently gotten his own place and decided to offer my expertise to assist him in his home layout. 

I was actually very happy that he was able to host me at his new place because my weekends have been extremely unfruitful for the past few months (except last week when I accompanied Yen to the tile shop), so I was really looking forward to just catching up with him.

His place is located around the Bouna Vista area, so I decided to get us some Bubble Tea from KOI Signature at Star Vista before heading over, each cup ended up costing me about $10 because I had gotten the booze option.  He told me to help him surprise him, so I had actually ordered a cup of Matcha with Baileys for myself and a cup of Rum and Raisin Earl Grey for him,  because oddly enough, the caffeine in Matcha doesn't really affect my sleep, but when I actually went to his place, instead of just passing him the Earl Grey drink, I offered him the option to choose and he chose the Matcha one, so I felt like I got fucked now because we met at 3pm and if I drink any tea or coffee after 1pm, I would usually end up staying awake until 3am.

 

So anyways, his place was originally in a bit of a mess, the renovation phase is technically done, all he needed to do was get a professional cleaning team in come in and clean up the place as well as clear some of his rubbish and the house will be completed, the only problem was the plethora of furniture he had gotten from another friend. 

He had willingly accepted taken a bunch of display cabinets, dining table and chairs without really planning how they would all be able to fit into the space, so it looked a bit daunting at first when I entered the home, the sofa was just plopped right in the middle of the living room, there was a random high table right behind the sofa, his display cabinets were placed against the wall because that was the only area that had any space.

I had been playing around with the layout the day before, so I already had some ideas in my mind of where I wanted to place everything.

We did some catching up for a while at the start, and then I shared my ideas with him, before that, I didn't have the measurements of his furniture, so my initial space planning layout was based on assumption, turns out a lot of his items were slightly bigger than what I had thought.

Initially, I had thought I would only be sharing my ideas with him and he will only start shifting the furniture once his place had been properly cleaned up, but then I was really curious how everything would actually look once they were positioned according to my layout, so I asked him if he would like to shift his furniture around to see how it would look and if the layout would make sense, he agreed to it. 

It was very exciting and extremely gratifying when the space started opening up as we shifted the furniture to the planned out location and you could just see the flow of the house started making more sense, I managed to carve out an office space, a dining space and a living space all within the confines of a 2 Room HDB Living Room with just the furniture pieces he had, and after we had shifted everything and all the items were in their rightful place according to my proposal, I just sat on the sofa and started to really appreciate the space for what it was. It really reminded of my Visual Merchandising days at the furniture store, the pushing of the large furniture, the creation of new spaces by using existing cabinets to segregate the room, it made me miss that old job of mine for a bit because it is honestly so much easier than what I have to deal with at work right now.

Needless to say, I was very happy with the layout and if this had been my own place, I would be very satisfied with it. Other Interior Designers / Stylist may have been able to come up with a better layout, but I was personally very glad with the one I had come up with, so was my friend, which was most important because it is his place. He will be living alone, so what I had planned suited his needs and it would have suited mine as well.

After all the shifting, I had originally wanted us to get dinner together at Holland Village, figured we could walk over, but then he suggested we could just order Grabfood in because he had done that the day before when another friend of his had visited to assist with some other stuff, the only difference is now, we had a proper functioning dining space in his home, so that's what we did. 

I was at his place for a good 5 hours, which was a lot longer than I thought I would have stayed, but again, it beats being at home and doing fuck all the entire day. We eventually left together at about 8pm, walked over to Bouna Vista MRT and man was I glad we didn't walk to Holland Village because just that shorter walk to Bouna Vista already made me feel extremely sticky.

Being at his new home just makes me also want to quickly get my own place soon, and I had been swaying back and forth between getting a Tengah SBF and a Clementi BTO. Right now in this present moment, getting the BTO makes more sense, it will give me more time to save up and also still allow me to do some travelling since the flat will only be ready in 2029.... if I am lucky enough to ballot for it that is. The Tengah SBF is tempting, but I really do not have much money on hand to pay for the renovation works if I do get the flat, or at least I won't have enough to do it the way I want it done, I will have to wipe out pretty much my entire savings and settle for a compromised design instead.

It was very exciting though, to have been able to play around with the space. I can't wait to be invited back to help with the Interior Styling aspect of it when the rest of his stuff finally arrives from his current family home. Doing all these as a favor for a friend just feels a lot more fun than doing it professionally. 

Saturday Stuff

Today is probably the first Saturday in a very long time that I have been out of the house to meet up with a friend and it is something I really needed because I have not had any social interaction like this for a while now.

That being said, this meeting still felt a bit like "work" because I was meeting up with Yen to look at tiles for her new place. We visited the tile shop in Kranji, which I had to take a Gojek to get to because of how inaccessible it was. Getting a Gojek/Grab to get there was easy, but getting a Gojek/Grab to get out was a pain in the ass because it was so hard to get any cars from there. It reminded me of the first time when I got assigned to the secluded Changi Airbase camp and had so much difficulty trying to call a cab home because no one really goes there, thus began my car rental journey for the remaining reservist cycles that came after that. 

The tile shop visit wasn't very fruitful because Yen couldn't find a suitable tile for her place, I was really just there as a friend so I was just offering very few inputs every now and then, the vibe that she wanted to achieve for her home wasn't one that I personally liked, so I also couldn't really offer too much assistance in that regard.

After that hour long tile shop visit, we both headed over the Orchard to have lunch, I had to try Gojek/Grab a total of 6 times to actually get a driver, we tried to look for one while we were in the tile shop and failed multiple times, so we decided to just head to the nearest bus stop to get out, the afternoon Sun was fucking intense and the single bus that serves that area had a 15 minute interval between each one, it just so happened that one had arrived while we were still quite distant away from the bus stop, so we would have had to wait for another 15 minutes in that heat. I tried to get a Grab/Gojek from the bus stop and thankfully, managed to find a driver within a minute.  

The driver was surprised for us that we managed to find a driver in that area as we boarded his car.  Had a bit of small talk at the start, he probably sensed we weren't too interested to have any small talk, so the rest of the trip after was just silent. Yen and I were both headed to Orchard, she had a hair appointment there and I wanted to just go to Orchard for the sake of it and also to get chocolate, so we decided to have lunch together, her husband joined us shortly after and honestly speaking, we didn't really have much to "catch up" on because she is now working with my boss on a project basis, so I do still see her on a weekly basis during our company meetings, and her husband is a full time employee who is working on some of my projects as a Project Manager, so I am almost always in contact with him. 

The meal didn't feel really special, she wasn't feeling particularly chatty because of how uneventful the tile visit was, and it felt like we were just colleagues having a meal together rather than friends, but I was still happy to actually be outside having a meal with friends compared to being at home and ordering the same food that I will usually get from Foodpanda.

After lunch, we split up, Yen and her husband headed to ION and I headed over to Takashimaya to get more Laderach chocolate...

... my plan was to get the Dubai chocolate because the ridiculous thing is, this Laderach chocolate slab is still cheaper than the Fix Dessert Chocolate Bar that is being sold by this reseller in Singapore.

The reseller is selling a 200g bar for $65.

Laderach is selling a 200g  for $44, and Laderach is not a cheap brand,  goes to show how ridiculous that reseller shop is selling their bars for.

I got introduced to Laderach by someone I had met on a dating app, said individual gave a lot of mixed signals during our 1 month of getting to know each other, so I do not have a good impression of them, and that, in proxy, has also kind of affected my feelings towards this particular brand. That being said, it is objectively really good chocolate, so I will still splurge on it when I feel like it. I just don't like the feelings that I have associated to the brand because of that person.

Anyways, since it was a Saturday afternoon, the mall was packed as fuck, especially the route to get from Wisma Atria to Ngee Ann City, and then back again all the way to ION Orchard to get to the MRT Station, I was just shuffling along with the crowd and taking baby steps because it was so difficult to cut through all the slow walkers, so that was an unpleasant back and forth journey. I thought of PopMart when I was in the ION Orchard area, but I didn't step into the store to get anything, which I think is something that I deserve a pat on the back for., and well, it was also crowded as fuck so I really had no desire to step in.

So that's my Saturday, it was alright and a definite improvement from the last few Saturdays I have had, I really do need to stay in touch and meet up with more friends, hopefully also make some new ones online through dating apps. I tried to find dates on there and the last few that I have been on have been terrible, online dating is definitely not the way to go for me, the last 3 individuals that I had met on the app that I thought had so much potential were all disappointment, and they really went from bad to worst.

More PopMart shit

I decided to get another set of blindbox from PopMart last Friday and it arrived today! 

This is the Chaka Candle Whisper series, the second Chaka series from PopMart. The first one is the Light Sprite series, which I also got the whole set  a few months back and managed to pull the secret from that collection, and I was super happy to have pulled that secret because I really like it. 

This new set however, I wasn't too keen on the secret because it was a double figurine, which I am personally not a huge fan of.

It's like meh.

Before opening the boxes, I was shaking them all to see if I could tell if one of them would be the secret, it looked pretty chunky so I thought I could feel the shape from shaking, I shortlisted 3 and none of them were it, they were the normal ones, and they are fucking pretty.

I thought since those 3 that I thought were the secret weren't it, then I must be safe, this whole set does not include the secret, so I started to open them and was just amazed at how pretty they all were...

... I mean the detail of this is so intricate, this is probably my favorite figurine in the entire series! 

I was so happy just seeing each figurine, that was until I started opening maybe the 6th or 7th box and noticed that the back of the card that came with each figurine looked a bit different, I flipped the card over and lo and behold, it was the fucking secret.

 

I pulled the fucking secret.

I was excited to have pulled a secret, but also disappointed because I didn't want this particular secret, pulling a secret means I am missing one of the main figurines and what's annoying about this series is that each figurine has a matching pair, this means one of my figurine is short of their significant other.

Sigh

I guess I have really good luck when it comes to getting full set from PopMart because I was really not expecting my second full set to have a secret in it as well.

First series.

I have since upgraded the display case for this Chaka series because it has the secret and it deserves to be lit, now it seems I may have to buy another one for the second Chaka series since that has a secret as well.

Random Updates for April

I went from having a shit load of projects to work on to having absolutely nothing to do at work, and it has become a regular cycle that happens all the time, which sucks because I honestly do not feel very good in both situations.

When there is too much work, it's overwhelming.

When there is little to none, the days just feel so unproductive.

My boss is currently on an overseas trip for the next 2 weeks and my accountant choosing to work from home instead of coming to the office as much as she can, so I am pretty much alone in the office either watching YouTube, TikTok or blogging because I don't really have much else to do, most of the projects that I had been working on previously have either started renovation or have been lost, so right now, the ones that are busy are the Project Manager, or the only Project Manager we have left, who also has the unfortunate task of taking on my boss's project while he is on his 2 weeks trip.

As someone who has worked as a Project Manager before, and I feel like I have said this many times before, I am so glad I don't have to deal with all that shit anymore

Sadly, I do think that our current Project Manager isn't very efficient at his job and his level of experience in this field is a constant reminder that my boss has most definitely made the wrong decision of letting Yen, the most experienced PM in our company at that time, go. It's really stupid and now everyone is paying the price for it, especially my boss because our current PM has been making mistakes after mistakes that the company is paying for, literally affecting the profit margin for a lot of the bigger projects because of unnecessary rectification works to correct his mistakes. 

He has recently made some on-site decisions on his own without consulting me or the clients, it's really frustrating because he is bringing attention to issues that do not need to be highlighted to the clients, but then not running through issues that actually need to be highlighted. 

I'm not very happy with the way he is running the projects because this isn't so much about him being overloaded with projects, I am very aware that he is, this is just him not being very efficient at this job. I really wish my boss would hire another PM with actual experience who will be able to guide the current one, take some workload off of him and also be able act as some sort of motivation for him to do better.

Update :

The Project Manager has now gotten into a full on argument with one of the clients in the group chat.

In his defense, the clients are being difficult, but for him to lose his cool and be so aggressive towards them is honestly not helping anyone, my boss had to step in to try and defuse the situation, but this back and forth between the PM and the clients is really really bad.

We are not even halfway through with the renovation and he has already begun to lose his cool.  This action of his has essentially screwed all of us over because now, the clients are going to become even more difficult to deal with in the future, my boss has recommended for him to meet the clients on site to resolve the issue, and for some reason, pulled me into this mess and ask me to go down to the site and assist if necessary. 

Anyways, on to Carousell related things.

I have managed to sell off my iPad Air 13 and Apple Pencil Pro last week on Carousell, it has been collecting dust in my storage bed ever since I reverted back to my iPad Pro. 

I had originally paid $1,238 for the iPad Air and a free Apple Pencil Pro thanks to the student discount I got from my sister, and I sold both those items at $880, which means my total damage is $358, if I were to pretend I had been renting that iPad, then it is about $45 per month, which isn't too bad I guess.

Having that $880 has caused me to develop an itch to get a new tech item, like a new iPhone for example, but when I think about it, getting a new iPhone 16 Pro wouldn't really be worth it because it will be just like my iPhone 14 Pro, with a USB C connection and a few extra buttons. I am ignoring all the technical spec bumps because it probably won't be noticeable to me base on my usage patterns. 

I could just save up the money for my renovation works in the future, but I also need to do some retail therapy every once in a while.

Aside from the iPad, I was also able to clear some my PopMart items, they were sold at losses but at least I got rid of them, which I am very happy with.

Speaking of which, I just bought myself more PopMart shit.

They recently release the new Labubu V3 and colour me surprise when I saw how many viewers were online for the TikTok Livestream drop. 

For the past few weeks, the Livestream hasn't been performing very well because the Labubu hype had slowly died down, the V1 and V2 were readily available for purchase and the white Zimomo was also in stock, so there wasn't any FOMO anymore since the ones who wanted it already got it, and the ones who may want to get it can since it is now available everywhere at retail price,, this was reflected in the viewership then and PopMart was only getting about 200 - 300 viewers on average, that's half of what they would usually get when I first started watching them.

Well, the V3 was released this Friday and when I went to tune in to the Livestream, there were 3000 viewers! 

..the new release attracted 10 times the viewers they were normally getting. 

It made snatching the V3 very exciting, so I tried and unfortunately, I failed to snag any on the stream. I did however snagged 2 from the official website, which was crashing a lot in the beginning, but since I didn't have shit to do at work, I just spend like an hour, trying to refresh the website and finally got myself 2 boxes. 

Just like that, $50 wasted on 2 Labubus.

I got my hands on the blue and purple one, I am very happy with the purple one because that was the one I had been eyeing, the blue one however is kind of meh because the ombre effect is not as prominent. Don't think I will be getting anymore Labubu from this collection, 2 is definitely more than enough.

That's all the update for this month. 

Turning 35

My birthday has come and gone, my younger Sister brought me out for dinner and my Mum somehow ended up paying for it, so that was a nice gesture, but other than that, it was honestly just like any other day.

What's exciting about turning 35 however is I can now officially apply for a HDB Flat, I applied for the HFE a day after my birthday, and according to HDB, it could take up to a month to have the HFE approved.

It got approved the next day. Talk about efficiency. 

The next BTO Exercise is in July so I have a lot of time to weigh out my options, which I started doing right after I got the approved HFE.

I am contemplating between getting a SBF or a BTO.

The SBF option I am interested in is the Tengah estate because it's cheaper, I think the estate has a lot of potential for growth and more importantly, a lot of flats, so I think I will have a much higher chance to get a unit there, plus I have friends who will be staying there as well, so it would be nice to have people I can meet up once in a while for a meal when I start to feel too lonely in my own home. I MIGHT end up getting a cat to be my roommate, so who knows. The SBF will either be available immediately or within a year or two, depending on my balloting luck.

The BTO I am interested in is the one in Clementi, it will have a longer wait time and is estimated to be completed by 2019, which means I will almost be 40 Years Old by the time my house is ready. That being said, going the BTO route might make more sense for me at this time because as I was starting to do my finances, I realize even though I have enough funds in my CPF to get the flat now, I don't have enough cash on hand for the renovation works.

As an Interior Designer, it actually pains me to think about having to settle for a basic run of the mill renovation, a basic one that will require me to get a renovation loan to achieve and also wipe out almost all my savings, I'm poor as fuck because I have been putting so much money into my Insurance and Investments, more into the latter, which I will probably be able to get back in another decade and will have an estimated worth of between $60,000 - $70,000, which isn't too shabby, and I will thank my Insurance Agent then.

I may need to save at least another $20,000 within the next 4 years (if I manage to get the Clementi BTO), it is very doable since it's just a matter of putting $400 aside every month, but this means I won't be able to splurge on stuff anymore, like my year end Switzerland trip to visit my Sister because I am estimating that trip to cost at least $7,000 in total.

I might consider a short trip to Thailand or Vietnam if I have a travel itch to scratch, I don't want to deny myself the joy of travelling. 

I am really trying my best not to buy anything unnecessary, I was even contemplating whether I want to buy another tub of Cerave facial moisturizer because I am almost done, but then when I was on TikTok and saw the TikTok Livestream dropping the SkullPanda plushies that have consistently been out of stock, I snatched one without thinking twice. The plushie cost more than the Cerave facial moisturizer, what the fuck is up with my priorities? 

Speaking of PopMart, I recently also went to PopMart at Bugis Junction to get a Crybaby Blindbox and I managed to pull one of the Secret, which was very exciting, but not great for my spending habits because this type of luck will only get me back into the blind box craze again.

Saturday Burned

It's Saturday and I just got back from a Design Meeting with a client, the meeting did not go well and I just don't enjoy engaging with this couple.

I have not been able to click with either of them, the husband is constantly questioning my design decisions, he keeps telling me something feels off with the color scheme, or the combination of materials I have selected is not nice, and when I ask him for more feedback so I can understand his preferred aesthetics even more, he tells me...

"We need your help to propose the design for us, you help us propose."

... so you want me to propose a billion different options for you to consider and possibly shoot down instead of telling me exactly what you want, these kind of clients are one of the most time consuming clients to deal with.

This is the second Saturday in a row of mine they have burnt, my boss and I literally just met them last Saturday and that meeting was actually worst, I was literally scowling during that meeting because I was so irritated at how inefficient the whole design meeting was going, like I don't know what the fuck you want! 

I had presented to them a reference photo of a Kitchen I had found on Pinterest previously to use as a jumping off point for the theme of the home, they told me they liked it, so I followed the colour scheme of the reference photo, and the comments I get from the husband is...

"Something looks off. The colour don't match very well, it doesn't look like the reference photo."

... it's literally the same colour scheme and is literally on theme with the reference photo that they agreed to, but suddenly the colour don't match well.

For the meeting today, I was not looking forward to it because the clients are really dense, so that was bad enough, but right before the meeting ended, the husband suddenly requested for us to go to the tile shop together, this is after a 2 hours meeting, so I asked...

"You mean later?"

... because again, you have just burned our Saturday with a 2 hour meeting, we just want to call it a day and go home. I'm mentally exhausted because for a 2 hour meeting, we really should have tied down a lot of things, but it didn't feel like we did, and just felt like such an inefficient 2 hours for everyone.

He then said...

 "Yeah, since it's just nearby right?"

...and we couldn't tell him that we didn't want to go, this is one of those request where you don't really have the option to turn down because it is true, the tile shop is nearby and it would be better for us to just settle all the tiles by today, so my boss and I begrudgingly agreed to it.

This particular tile shop is in the midst of moving to their newer outlet, so they are taking the opportunity to clear a bunch of old tiles. In an attempt to try and cut down on the renovation cost, the clients only looked at the tiles that were on clearance, which severely limited their options, most of what were available were honestly either ugly or dated looking, and the ones that were passable were either low in stock or completely sold out, worst part for me as the Designer (3D Drafter) is that I can no longer find the digital print of the tiles online because they have been taken off from the shop's website, so I have no idea what I am going to have to do to implement the selected tiles into my 3D for the renders.

Thankfully, the tile selection was pretty quick, I just wanted it to end, so I didn't offer too many suggestion, not that I could anyway because again, limited selections available, the vision I had in my mind can't be executed with the tiles they had, although if I were to be honest, I think we have very different aesthetic sense, so it would be a pointless endeavor to force what I think would be nice on them, I still did my job and spoke up if the tiles they had selected were really really ugly, but if they were passable, I just told them to go with it, because the choices were so limited, it's going to be average at best.

We were done within an hour. My boss had initially told me he will need to leave within 30 minutes for another meeting, but he ended up staying all the way with us, which I was thankful for because he had to liaise with the sales person to help us reserve all the tiles right at that moment due to the limited quantities available.

Before we bid adieu to them, the wife asked if we should meet again next Saturday, my immediate thought in my mind is...

 "Fuck! No! You know we don't work on Saturdays, but you have already burnt 2 Saturdays of ours in a row, and now you want to make it 3?" 

... I do not appreciate clients who only start looking for Interior Designers at the last minute and then puts us on a time crunch. 

If you want to move into your new home by a certain date, you better start looking for, and actually engaging the services of an Interior Designer AT LEAST 3 -4  months before that date.

Literally just ask Google! 

To be meeting the same customer every week is intense, usually, I will meet every other week just so I can have at least 2 weeks in between to update my drawings, especially with the amount of projects I am currently dealing with at the moment, 2 weeks should be the bare minimum. 

Sigh.

We eventually decided to settle on a Monday with an online meeting instead, which I think will be even worst than meeting in person, so I am definitely not looking forward to that.

I so wish this clients would just drop us and look for someone else, but it's probably too late for them to do that unless we really fuck things up, like me engaging in some sort of verbal assault with them, plus the project is worth at least $100,000, so financially speaking, it doesn't make sense to do that just because the designer is uncomfortable with the clients. 

Aside from this big project, we also have another big one, for that one, I am a bit more hands-off, or at least I am trying to be a lot more hands-off and just let my boss handle it because the clients did say that they didn't need a designer onboard with their project, the husband for that project is pretty much doing all the drawings and layout plans. My boss just added me into it to help "tie up any loose ends" for the clients in terms of design choices, but I am honestly not needed at all.

As sorry as I feel for my boss, because of how overwhelmed he currently is with all the projects coming in, I really do not want to help with that particular project. I am also extremely overwhelmed myself as well with my current project load where I actually need to be involved in as a designer, my bandwidth is at it's maximum capacity, I just cannot deal with anymore new ones or ones that I am not necessarily required to be a part of, and this is something I have been hinting at my boss, so all the new enquiries have also been redirected away from me. 

When I see job ads online and they write...

"Relish working in a challenging environment." 

...this is what they mean I guess. Most companies would treat it as an opportunity for growth, but when you are overwhelmed with work, you are overwhelmed with work, growth can only happen when the workload is a lot, but it's still manageable, not overwhelming, that will allow the workers to grow by teaching them how to manage their time better, but if a company is overwhelming you with work, than that is different, if they do that and are not aware that they are doing that, it just shows that they are the ones who needs to growth and actually learn.

To be fair, my boss didn't write that in the job ad, also I have not gotten any pay increment since I joined the company almost 2 years ago, which I am personally not very pleased about, but it's a give and take situation since my boss is much much nicer than any other bosses I have ever worked under.

That being said, times like this just makes me want to look for a simple admin job. Don't have to think too much, clock in, clock out, stress free life, or work in a Government Sector where there will be stability and consistent pay increment. I would really like to work in the Government Sector, I just need to really look for one that is suitable with my current skill set and experience, one would assume HDB be the obvious choice since it seems to be co-related to Interior Design and Construction, but then all I see are openings for Estate Management, Data Scientist, Technical Product Manager, HR Manager, etc, which makes sense because the Interior Design aspect of it is for the homeowners to go look for on their own once they get the flat.

My search continues...

ILP Cancelled. Agent Soon To Be Cancelled As Well.

I have successfully cancelled my ILP through AIA directly and my agent also finally gotten back to me about an hour after I cancelled the policy. He wasn't aware I had already cancelled it so he was just following up on the message I had left him the day before, telling me he will cancel it for me, or at least I am assuming he doesn't.

I told him I had already cancelled it directly with AIA because I was a bit concerned that he wasn't responding to my text and he just told me he got "caught up" yesterday, that's why he couldn't get back to me.

I thought everything was settled, so I just left it at that because what is important is that I will be getting my $4,800 back. 

Today, he posted on his Instagram about an award he had won and in his written speech, I noticed that he also wrote this as the ending paragraph...

... pretty sure it's a subtle dig at me. I am not 100% sure, I did post it on my Insta-story after I unfollowed and removed my Insurance Agent from my follower list, to see if my friends also felt like it was a subtle dig at me.  

I wrote down the whole ILP situation, the cancellation process, the slower than usual respond rate from my agent after I requested to cancel and most of my friends who replied to my story felt like it was a dig at me and that it was also very unprofessional of my agent to have done that.

I originally wrote this long post lambasting him for it to let off some steam, but to hold a grudge just feels tiresome, so I am gonna delete it and try not to make this whole experience more negative than it already is by leaving  a post I had typed out in anger.

The plan to switch Agents is definitely still one I will definitely want to explore, but it won't be very easy because the agent who takes over my portfolio won't be able to get the commission from my existing policies, any commission that will be generated from my current policies will still go to my current agent, which sucks.

I am planning to use the month of March to gauge if my current agent will actually stick with his resolution to "let go of people who won't help themselves" because it will be my birthday month and he will usually send me a birthday greeting and a gift, if there is no well wishes from him, then I think it will be safe to say that I have been "let go" and it will also be time for me to let him go as well. 

The idiot buys the same Investment Linked Plan again...

Met my Insurance Agent yesterday and he managed to convince me to sign up for the very same policy called the AIA Pro Achiever 3.0 that I had to cancel last year.

It's an Investment Linked Policy (ILP) and those policies do not have a good rep on the internet because compared to regular investment routes, an ILP has very high management fees, and traditional ILPs are also laden with a lot of extra fees that are weaved into it that will actually generate a lot of commission for the Insurance Agents, which is why so many agents are pushing it to their clients and why so many people online who are aware of how it really works and also know how to invest on their own are so against it. 

My agent assured me during our meeting that what he is selling me is not the same as the one that scummy agents sell for the sake of their commission, but is supposedly one that only focuses on generating wealth for the client, like a proper investment plan.

So I got it because I figured I do need to invest my money to let it grow for my old age, since one of my Savings Plans was going to reach it's maturity, I will have one less policy to pay for, so why not just throw that amount that I would have set aside for that savings plan into this Investment Plan and then add a bit more to let it do it's job. I wasn't prepared last time, but I thought I will mentally prepare myself this time for how much I will be putting in.

He recommended me to put in at least $400 per month, which was like $50 less than last time, so I agreed....

...and he told me to put that much because the welcome bonuses are better in the amount is at least $400 per month, or $4,800 per year, anything lesser and it wouldn't really be ideal, sounds fine, so I agreed.

I didn't think too much after that and was feeling quite pleased with myself that I am actually doing something with my money, investing it and letting it grow, I have heard from my boss about how he has rich friends now who are just enjoying life because they had invested so much money in the past and are now reaping the rewards from it, so I was just imagining myself 20 to 30 years down the road, being able to withdraw all the money that has accumulated and patting myself on the back, but as the day went on, I kept thinking about the amount and I started getting more and more uncomfortable with the plan, something just didn't feel right, and it was the very same feeling that I felt when I first bought it last year, I was investing way too much.

I am not only paying $400 for that Investment Plan, I also have another Investment Plan that I am pretty much stuck with because surrendering that will have a penalty fee that isn't worth it, that Investment Plan is already sapping $250 every month.

Investment Plans aside, there is also the Insurance side, which I am paying a whopping $400 for per month, I honestly think I might have too much coverage as well because a good rule of thumb I have read online is that you should only set aside about 10% of your take home salary for Insurance, I am hoping to earn enough for $400 to be my 10%, but I am nowhere near that amount, which means I should be paying only about about $200 per month for my insurance coverage.

Once I calculated everything, I was actually forking out $1,100 per month on my policies with him, against a $2,800 salary, that is way too much. I calculated how much I will need for food and travel, that came up to about $1,300, which only leaves me with $400 for my personal savings and random splurges.

My plans to travel to Switzerland will have to be cancelled with that measly amount I am able to save every month, I can forget about planning any travel trips because majority of that money that could fund for any trips will have to go into the Investment Plan, an Investment Plan that I will not be able to touch until 10 Years later, and the rest will have to go into my Renovation Fund. 

When I read about the Investment Plans on Platforms like Reddit, the common consensus is almost unanimous, and that is to not take on that plan because the Management Fee is very expensive, using a Robo-Advisor like Endowus, you will be charged a Management Fee of 0.4% of what you have invested, but if you decide to invest with the Insurance Company, they will be charging you a Management Fee of  3.6%, that is 9 times more than Endowus. 

That means if I were to put in $4,800, the Insurance Company will take $172.80 as part of their Management Fee, ,and I am guessing part of that goes to my Agent, and here is another reason why so many people are against this Investment plan...

1. You will NOT be able to access the funds for the next 10 years, whatever you have invested will be locked away.

2.  If you are unable to continue the investment because of some lifestyle changes, say you have a baby and need to redirect that money to take care of that baby or if you get fired from a job and have no income to spare, choosing to surrender the investment policy before the 10 year mark will not entitle you to whatever has been accumulated,  instead, you will only get a portion of it the more premature the surrender...

This chart is conveniently left out from the online brochure that is introducing this Investment Policyy.

... Full Surrender Charge Rate is essentially the penalty you will have to pay if you choose to end it prematurely, so let's say I suddenly have some lifestyle change on my second year and I decide I want to back out, so I surrender the policy.

 100% Surrender Charge Rate.

The Insurance Company will cancel the Policy and then charge you for 100% of the amount you have invested, in short, you get fuck all. 

You will essentially have to pay some form of penalty if you decide to pull out early, you won't have control of the investment as well, so if by sheer bad luck, the shares that the agent got for you ends up nose diving like no one's business, you won't be able to do shit, you can't surrender the policy because you will end up having to pay the penalty, but if you continue pumping in money, you will also end up losing the money, it's a lose lose situation.

This is how Insurance works, so it shouldn't be any surprise that they also implement this in their Investment Policies.

If I were to put $4,800 with Endowus on the other hand, I am charged only $19.20 for my Management Fee, and I have constant access to my funds at anytime.

1. I can choose not to top up if I am ever tight on cash.

2. I can choose to pull out if I ever decide not to continue the investment at anytime.

I have so much more freedom to do what I want to do with MY MONEY and am able to do what I feel right with it, honestly, if I am investing with Endowus, I will probably not touch the funds unless I can see my money grow elsewhere at a much faster rate, which it did when I let the money generate interest in my UOB One account. I ended up getting like a few hundred dollars over a span of a few months, which was great.

I have reached out to my agent since to share with him my decision to cancel the plan for a second time and even listed my reasons why I wanted to cancel it, he told me it wouldn't be ideal to cancel it because I don't really have any proper investment plan with him and that it would be good to continue with the policy for when I retire.

I reiterated that I am simply not comfortable with the amount I am putting in and even told him how much I would be left with monthly if I actually continued with the policy, he then offers me a suggestion to lower the amount to just $200 per month instead of cancelling the entire policy, which I was a bit uncomfortable with because I want to cancel the policy. I told him I would rather put that money in a Robo-Advisor than continue the Investment Link Policy, he then told me he will arrange for a Zoom call to help me with it, which I was really confused by.

A Zoom Call to do what? Help me cancel the policy or help me invest using the RoboAdvisor? The latter has nothing to do with him at all and the last time he cancelled my policy, I didn't have to do any Zoom Call at all, so I asked him why I need to do a Zoom Call to cancel the plan and he just leaves me on read.

That was at 11.35am.

At 4.30pm,  I send him a follow up message a to remind him to help me cancel the policy, told him I was appreciative of his intentions behind offering me the policy again, but that I am just not comfortable continuing with it. 

He reads the message half an hour later and doesn't acknowledge it. It's now almost 9pm and he still hasn't acknowledged my message, he just left me on read.

My brother and I share the same advisor, so I did ask my brother if our agent had recommended him the ILP before, he told me he hasn't, which I think is proof that my agent probably just sees me as a gullible idiot who will buy anything he recommends, and I was a gullible idiot until last year when he did this shit to me, it just pisses me off that I actually fell for it again this year.

Anyways, I took an advice from a friend and have decided to just attempt to cancel the plan through AIA directly via their virtual agent tomorrow. This will definitely leave a really bad taste in my mouth if I end up actually having to cancel it on my own. I am honestly quite pissed off that my agent decided to just go radio silent on me after I questioned him about why we needed a Zoom meeting to cancel the plan, but I think after this, he will probably not want to call me out for lunch anymore to discuss my policies, would be really awkward for you to pretend you care about my well being when the shit that you have doing (or not doing) proves otherwise. 

iPad Pro Lives!

My old iPad Pro has resurrected! 

The last time it had died due to water damage, thanks to my Owala bottle, which I have stopped using because of how bulky it is. I only got it in the bigger size for my Reservist, but now that I no longer have to do 6 hour Guard Duty shifts anymore unless I ever decide to retire in the future and just pass my time becoming a security guard somewhere, which will be many many many years later, there really isn't a need for me to have such a big bottle, so I have just abandoned that iPad murderer.

I digress

I could have thrown the iPad away because it had pretty much just become a very expensive tray the day after it got wet, but I was feeling sentimental since it had been my very first iPad, and it even has my name engraved on it, so I kept it as a memento. A part of me was hoping that the water will eventually dry up and the iPad will suddenly work again some day, so I have tried taking it out and powering it up every once in a while to see if it would, and it always just stayed dead, but earlier this week, I decided to dig it out again to see if it would work, it actually showed the no battery sign on the screen. 

That was when I knew my hopes had come true because it actually started working again! 

I immediately went to plug it into a charger and it was able to charge it to full battery, and it managed to boot up successfully!  

There are still some visible water damage mark on a small part of the screen but it has significantly reduced compared to how it had been previously...

...which was like this...

I am quite amazed that it actually came back to life, I had hope for it but I never really expected it to do that.

I'm not sure how long it will actually work for, so I am a bit fearful that this could be a sudden surge of energy, like the iPad is trying to say a proper goodbye to me before it dies a permanent death, so I am feeling very apprehensive.

I had shared this good news with Yan and her husband, whom I shall call Shawn, a few days ago during our CNY Company dinner, my boss had invited all of us, including Yan and Ruby, both of whom were victims of the company lay-offs last year, to catch up and give them red packets because my boss does feel bad about having to let them go so I guess this is his way of  "apologizing" I suppose.

When Yan heard about the news of my iPad, she asked if I was interested to sell it, since I technically have 2 iPads in possession, the other being my iPad Air that had been purchased to replace the iPad Pro when it "died". I didn't think it through properly and told Yan I don't mind selling it to her if she wants it, and that I am planning to let it go for $500, since it isn't in the best condition, she then told me her maximum budget was only $300, and that it was totally fine if I can't drop it that low for her, to which I went...

"Okay lah, since I won't be using it anyway, I can just sell it to you for $300."

....Yan and her husband were very happy because it was an amazing deal. 

When I got home and was packing the iPad to pass it to Shawn the following day in the office, that was when I started to realize it was way too good of a deal, like the kind of deal only an idiot buyer would pass up and the kind of deal only an idiot seller would make, in this case, there can only be 1 idiot, and that was me, the dumb fuck who didn't think it through before agreeing to the price.

I still have the original iPad Packaging and pretty much everything else in it, aside from the iPad had been unused, the charger and the USB cable is brand new, like still wrapped in the original packaging new, and I am going to just let all this go for $300? I am a fucking fool, and I was also letting the Apple Pencil go together with the iPad Pro. 

Aside from the lower than average selling price, a bigger reason why I didn't want to sell it was because after holding the iPad Pro in my hands again, I just realize how much more comfortable it is to use compared to my 13" iPad Air, the iPad Pro, despite being the previous generation model, is also just a much better iPad in every sense, the camera is better, the screen is smoother, it's so much lighter and less clunky. The 13" is only viable if I wanted to use it as a laptop replacement, otherwise it is way too big.

I ended up rescinding my offer to Yan and Shawn and had to apologize to him. I  told him I couldn't bear to let it go for $300 and that I was contemplating to use it as my main iPad again and retire my iPad Air. I also causally told him that our boss had offered to buy the iPad Air off from from me. His reaction looked fine when I told him about it, but a few minutes later, Yan messages me and informed me that she was aware I am no longer interested to sell the tablet to her anymore, assured me that it is fine if I plan to sell it to someone for a higher price, but that she is upset at my boss for counter-offering to buy the iPad from me. 

I got a bit confused because it doesn't make sense for her to be upset that my boss offered to buy my iPad Air from me, that was until I realize  Yan the completely misunderstood my reason for taking back the offer.

What Yan thought had happened ...

1. I offered Yan and Shawn my iPad Pro for $300

2. My boss counter-offered me for it.

3. I decided to sell it to my boss instead of Yan and Shawn.

What actually happened...

1. I offered Yan and Shawn my iPad Pro for $300

2. I decided I didn't want to sell it anymore for personal reasons.

3. I told my boss during lunch about the iPad Pro offer to Yan and Shawn and how I was planning to take back that offer because the selling price was too low and also because I might want to use it as my main iPad again.

4. My boss ask me about my current iPad Air and told me he can buy it off of me if I was planning to use my iPad Pro again. It wasn't an official offer, so we didn't really discuss a price.

Yan already has a bad impression of my boss after he terminated her last year, so I really didn't want to tarnish the image of him in her mind and had to quickly clarify the whole situation. I can sense that she was still a bit upset about it despite her telling me it was alright, and I could see from Shawn's expression during the company meeting that day that he was also not very happy about it, so I feel bad about the whole thing, but I know I myself would be feeling a lot worst if I actually sold them the iPad. 

Anyways, I now have 2 iPads and have since returned to using the iPad Pro as my main iPad, the iPad Air has been retired back to it's original box along with the new Apple Pencil. It was definitely a mistake to have gotten the 13" back then, it was great when I first got it because the screen was so big, but it is such an inconvenient size to be carrying around, especially when I bring it for site visits and need to take notes on it. The bigger size also makes it feel like it's going to topple anytime when I prop it up to watch my shows, especially during my last flight to Taipei, but that might also just be an issue with the case.

To be using my 11" again just feels so much more natural to me, the size and weight is perfect, the partially damaged screen is a bit of an eyesore that I may consider replacing one day and I also think the battery has been slightly compromised by the water damage because it isn't really lasting as long as I think it should. If this 11" really dies again, I might consider just getting another 11" iPad instead of going back to the 13", so I am definitely thinking of selling the iPad Air away soon.

Random PopMart update...

 

I managed to snatch this ugly Labubu today during the TikTok Livestream on Friday. I really don't like the colour, but I am trying to start this tradition of collecting all these Limited Edition Labubu, just for the sake of it.

I did also try to snatch the big one because FOMO...

...but this one was way too difficult to grab, it was getting wiped out within seconds of getting released, that being said, I am happy I didn't manage to snatch it because I really have no space in my room for a large Labubu, and it's like $110, I don't need to be spending that kind of money on this. 

I do however want to get a brown Zimomo...

... but this one has only been released very randomly once on the TikTok Livestream like 2 weeks ago and has never appeared again. 

Obviously it got wiped out almost immediately. 

I also think I may be buying another full set of figurines from PopMart soon because recently, there has been leaks of a new SkullPanda series called The Mirage.

No photos, just the names of all the different figurines. It looks to be a set of 9 instead of the usual 12, I am hoping it is a set of figurines and not some random collection of candles or what not because the last time this leaker leaked the new Labubu series 2 weeks before it was officially announced on PopMart...

... they listed it as Labubu V.3, which I had thought would be a new line of plushie blind boxes, which got me really excited. 

It was then revealed that this new collection will only have 2 Plushies, one is the Plushie Pendant, which I snagged on the Livestream, and the other is the larger one, which I am happy to have not been able to snatch, the other items that have the "King" "Queen" "Rook" "Bishop" "Knight" "Pawn" and "Bond" labels aren't plushies, they are....

... a candle collection, thus my hopes that the Skullpanda one won't be candles...

... and fridge magnets.

... the disappointment was real, but my wallet is very grateful for the immediate death my interest in these collection faced upon realizing they are not what I thought they were, if they had made a full plushie collection out of the Labubu designs based on the design from the Fridge Magnets, and made the "Pawn" a secret because it is Tycoco, otherwise no one would want it because let's be honest, that one ain't cute unless it becomes a secret. I think it would have been a hit. But honestly, anything that is a Plushie, especially the vinyl faced ones, are always an immediate hit.

The only "Plushies" that I think will not do well in the SEA Market if they ever make a Plushie version of it is Peach Riot...

....this series struggles to sell out when they are release as the new collection of the week on the Livestream, I personally find them to be really generic and boring looking, and I think majority of the PopMart collectors in SEA probably feels the same way about it, that's why it's not super popular. That being said, I do believe this series is pretty popular among the Caucasian demographic... I think, because it has to be popular with them, otherwise PopMart wouldn't be constantly releasing new collections with the lack of demand it is getting in SEA.

Update :

I came across this on the official PopMart Shopee page...

 

It's a Mui-Chan figurine for $109.90! 

GROSS! It's so fucking ugly!

2 people actually paid $109.90 for this ugly abomination of a doll from PopMart! This looks like the kind of shit I would find in those old school heartland mall that sells cheap toys from China that looks like shit and goes for $10...

....and comes in this type of packaging.

That Mui Chan is officially the ugliest looking PopMart figurine I have ever seen, the fact that it is going for $109.90 feels almost criminal.